A Load Of Legislation To Review
HebronGazelle
As you as know by now, the eUK Congress is full of useless and stupid legislation. I was previously given a link to the whole of the "Statute Book" by the Speaker of Congress, which gave me the idea to go through and look at all of the stupid parts. I have highlighted many below in my article that I think need to be discussed or just removed straight away. Once all that is done we can talk about wording some of it in a way that normal humans can understand.
"The Country President cannot call for a democracy without a new dictatorial election and all prospective candidates failing to reach the minimum required level of support to run, or without this Act being repealed.
If a random liberation has been started then it is the duty of the CP and their government to support the current Dictatorship unless the resistance bonus is considered too high. If the dictatorship falls without this act being repealed then the government must organise a fresh coup as soon as the cooldown has expired."
We may as well get rid of this, or at least discuss it as a country. With the cost at one million currency to start a new dictatorship we may as well not bother going back to dictatorship once someone liberates the country. The original purpose, to protect us from MTOs, isn't as much of a threat anymore and one million currency can be better spent elsewhere. Definitely something that should be discussed.
If this is changed then someone would need to look at changing Part 4 too.
"c. The Dictator has the right to ask the CP to refuse a Congressman’s request to give someone citizenship. The Congressman can however directly appeal to the CP.
d. The Dictator must respect Congressional mandate in regards to ingame laws and rights usually determined by Congress in a democracy, even if it means refusing the orders of the CP."
Contradicting sections. Am I the only one who sees it?
"Anyone can challenge the Dictator for their position at any time, and if defeated it is the duty of the incumbent Dictator to hand over the dictatorship MU to the winner, failing which they will be considered a traitor and deposed by the CP through an organised liberation."
Largely repeating what has been said in Part 1, except for the tiny clause at the end. We could easily cut most of that out.
"To be included in these articles is: all public proposals (bills, laws & motions), citizenship applicant information, links to government updates and a general legislative report that includes details of voting turnouts."
Links to government updates rarely seem to appear in the Congress articles (even though I can see them in the media). Unknown whether people are applying for citizenship but I don't see anything about that. We should remove the parts we don't actually do, maybe?
"Proposals should be made by private messaging the Speaker."
Didn't happen when I was in Congress, don't think it happens still. Remove.
Everything not related to the Finance Committee can definitely go. Whether we keep the Finance Committee should also be up for debate.
"Orgs may be transferred between Congress and the Executive or to new bodies by congressional vote."
It doesn't happen. Remove.
"The Chairman of the Congressional Finance committee will administer orgs under congress’ control, and ensure that relevant congressional officials have access to any relevant orgs."
Last time (and the time before, and the time before, and the time before...) I checked it was either the Minister of Finance or the Country President that actually did this. Should be checked out and possibly removed.
"Congress will hold a full list of orgs and which organisation or citizen has jurisdiction of them."
Doubt many Congress members actually knew they were meant to do this. Just leave it up to the Minister of Finance. Remove this section.
The whole part should be reviewed because CP candidates don't always submit their budgets, and rarely on time anymore.
"Each Ministry is to maintain a record of all public funds allocated from central Government showing how resources are employed. These records are to be accessible by members of eUK Congress and public."
That was never done by the Ministry of Home Affairs while I was there. I think it may have been managed by the Ministry of Finance. Possible removal?
"This law comes into effect when the eUK Treasury holds a surplus of 300,000cc."
This doesn't happen. And while we are here can we talk about why I've been holding 100,000cc for over a year which could have been used for something but will probably never be used again and if I spent it no one would know?
"a. If, for any reason, a trusted citizen refuses or fails to the return funds that they hold when legally requested to do so, the CP and/or Congress will use all available means to reclaim the funds."
Anyone need me to explain how stupid this one is?
- Contents page needs updating
- Check out Part 1 of the Congressional Procedure Act, Section A and B should all be Section A or it doesn't make sense
- No Part 4 on the outline for the Congressional Procedure Act
- Half the time "Congress Members" is capitalised, half the time "congress members" isn't
- Part 2 of the Finance Act has been called Part 1
- Woldy's Angels Act has Part A, B and 3, consistency isn't hard
I hope Congress members take the time to read this so that they can change the laws they are meant to be following. And if they can't be bothered? Well maybe we should just get rid of legislation overall.
Thanks for reading,
CheetahCurtis,
A Concerned Citizen
Comments
Banners, Banners Everywhere!
Agree on that with you CC legislations damn stupid legislations.
Banners are good 😃
Didn't read any, didn't need to: burn it all.
I was the first (and second) President under all this legislation. Have yet to read a word of it. Apparently we need it or we'll fall apart though!
I mellowed a bit in my old age so I understand that some people enjoy all that windbaggery, but still.............
I didn't read it until a couple of weeks into my CP term, and even then only to check just how much it gets in the way of getting stuff done.
I'm sure the intentions were good, but in reality all the meta stuff just adds extra hoops that everyone needs to jump through, and slows everything down.
Burn it all.
I've been president three times under this legislation. I've never read it
It's very rare for a congressman to read it.
Hell the book never changed while Appleby was speaker despite motions going through so I don't think he even read it and the speaker's meant to be the expert on it.
I agree completely, this needs to be introduced right away. Especially agree with Finance Act part 4, public records of finances are nonsense and a hassle, remove it!
In fact remove the whole financial act. It all belongs to Woldy anyway.
Never liked meta-Congress, even though I've never read any legislation...now I've tried to read this, my head hurts...and I have a big head, it's serious pain. Tbh, the only reason why I would support a removal of dictatorship is just to get rid of this silly meta stuff...
Btw, who are all the trusted people who have the money? This gave me another thing to propose to Congress - I want all the money back in the treasury.
Cheetah if I win CP I pledge to take your 100k off you and piss it up the wall attempting to batter off America.
Last time I asked congress to consider removing a lot of the crap (and created an incredibly abrasive google document that crossed out half of everything and made rude comments about the writers) only about three people in the PM I plopped it into actually cared so I assume if I made a proposal to burn all of the legislation in it's entirety only 2 people would actually turn up to the vote and both would vote against me.
Why not abolish it all?
Abolish Congress? That's what I keep saying...
Reminds me of my student days when I was a member of a Trot group. We used to spend bloody hours debating the interpretation of some sub-clause in the constitution. To think I actually used to believe in all that bollocks in those days.
Tl; dr. I read the legislation a while back. Full of legalese, most of it pretty pointless and in need of some good old common sense rather than walls of text. Scrap it all, put a simple plain English document in its place.
Strange thing is, congress actually voted this rubbish through...
vote
Kindly giving one more vote.
Most of these things are pointless and need a good burning anyways imo.
You burn everything.
Burn jamaica too! That island killed me!
i think you should just give up the whole eUK.
I'll take your 100k for COs
Have you not read the legislation? First you must beat Woldy in a week-long dance-off, then you must scale the heights of K2 to ask the Holy Rock God for permission to take the 100k from me. Once he has given you permission you must find a rusty sword in a lake, gather the finest men from the land and order a round table from Ikea. Then, and only then, I am allowed to give you the 100k.
And then only if Congress agrees. 😉
I did all that last week
Thought we did this whole exercise a couple months back... wasn't it Rob who did the review of the statute book?
I don't think his changed were adopted by Congress
I put it in the special active committee but only 3 people even bothered to look at what I'd done and comment on it so I didn't see any point in pursuing and putting it to vote if very few people were even going to notice the difference.
Pity. You'd done a lot of work. I know I read through it all and agreed with most of it...
I like holding on to that £100k. It makes me feel moist.
review the part about the dictator looking after the gov if a CP is impeached? Not that I don't enjoy it hurrhurr but seems a bit odd.
tbf tho it's pretty handy, I haven't a clue who the guy that came second to appleby even is.
I was a strong supporter of the Constitutional Dictatorship and the meta legislation. However, whilst I would still be of the same view if we repeated the events leading up to its original implementation some 14 months ago, if we were looking at introducing the system now, I would be absolutely opposed.
If you don't have a meta Congress and all that it entails, then the elections for Congress and CP are, under a Dictatorship, irrelevant.
There's no point in people trying to suggest we try again at having the CP becoming the Dictator - it didn't work last time and I see no reason why it would work in future.
The choices then would be having a Dictatorship and letting them do what they like, for better or for worse, or we return to Democracy with Congress and the CP exercising their powers according to game mechanics.
Personally I think it's time to consider a return to Democracy.
oooh does this mean we can do my "install a troll dictator and have a giggle" plan finally?
#bringbackfreegigi
As speaker and a conscientious player I have read the document, unlike the myriad of ministers who brazenly declare that they didn't follow or read it as a bragging right.
I agree with Paul Tyndale, on certain points. The document does have a lot of problems, is highly ambitious and tries to cover too much ground whilst leaving glaring gaps. Virtually every time I reference it, I find I'm saying 'yeah but, what about..' The goal is worthy, but the implementation detracts from what should be a useful reference of a framework that allows everyone to know where they are.
My biggest problem with scraping most/all of the doc is that it's often the precursor to 'lets burn everything'. The most likely outcome is everything remain the same, but we throw the doc away, that means we have a populist vote congress that supports issues less based on the good of the country but the viewpoint of the loudest.
My personal gripe with the player who says stuff like 'all this legal mumbo jumbo' and generally had zero time for reading, working within the political module, barely managing to utter the word 'Aye', 'Nay' or 'Abstain' once every few days or in some cases never in an entire month of congress.
Why are you interested in being active in the political module? The reason is of course patently clear, power, the power to press the button, even if that button is a big red one that blows everything to hell. Congress is largely populated with people that don't care, if you corner them, excuses flow and grand talk, but no commitment to taking part. We regularly have votes spanning several days where under half of congress turn up, some parties are represented by a single voter. We have emergency votes where 2 people vote.
There is absolutely no excuse, if you wish to abstain then that vote can be cast, instead we have a congress that only turns up for Christmas and sings very loudly the main verse of the couple of hymns they remember.
My primary concern and what I hope the constitution preserves is the rights of Congress (and the CP but Congress' role is more important anyway). Under a democracy historically we have slipped into cultures of ignoring congress and just making them rubber stamp things, in which case we fall into an autocracy anyway and that's led to silly decisions that are numerate of the behalf of our CPs who can quite easily take advantage of or manipulate a hardly active and complacent congress into letting them do whatever and who can do what they want and basically be unaccountable. At least with this system congress' rights are preserved providing you have a dictator who is vested in maintaining the rule of law.
The big problem and the stumbling block is always to do with an active congress. The only time things start to not work is when congress is full of inactive medal grabbers. That slows down processes and makes them impractical. What frustrated people is that whereas in a democracy that's when you can just ignore them and do what you want, under this system they still need to be consulted.
The solution is to therefore have a system which can flex around ebbing activity in congress, but more importantly to have an active congress - and that's something we have been lack lustre in trying to achieve. Month on month how many PPs put candidates on the ballot who they know have done nothing the month before? How many people then vote for that party? We need to offer more info on who is a crap MP and really seek ways to put the pressure on PPs to fix up. Every congressmen who doesn't vote just contributed to our slipping into autocracy, both under a democracy or dictatorship and that's them failing to meet their responsibilities.
It's in part due to the shite political module (regional elections would solve this) but I don't think we can say that as a nation we have sincerely tried to 'fix' complacent congressmen.