RUMP Campaign Underway

[Hooligan]

May 15, 2012 20:03:19 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

I managed to see a whole new paragraph! A whole new section with a whole new header! It was more than the odd typo.

Oh yeah? I added something? Cool. I don't remember adding anything. My very first change was a rather significant typo, though, a sentence stuttering, repeating itself without warning and ending badly. I reworded that sentence, ending the sentence correctly, which may have made the sentence extend to a new a physical line.

I'm sure if I added a whole new paragraph, it's an awesome one.

I don't give a rootin-toot about you making changes to your own document. I've done it. BUT I want to know, considering that I don't remember at least one of the sections, headers and paragraphs upon my second reading how the RUMP worked together on this and how they adopted it as policy ... together.

All members of the party were invited to help with drafting it. Party leadership and some others he roped in ended up doing so. Party leadership decided on the timing of the public announcement of the platform.

... I don't know why it is anyone else's business how the RUMP runs, in this particular election, ...

um, perhaps because your asking for our votes?

Fair enough, which is why, despite my little "not sure why you think it's important", I went ahead and happily answered your question. The RUMP is not ashamed of the way it does business, and does indeed ask for your vote, and will do all it can to earn it, including answer every single question (even those we might consider rather surprising) honestly and forthrightly.

Evidence in this thread, to me, pointed to the suggestion that discussions were not taken place openly in 'the coven' as you say because S:r Stamford did not get the mail, and a vote or whatever did not seem to have taken place. Now, I know how your mailing list works having been a member of your party, so I was led to the conclusion that perhaps some of your party was excluded from the conversation.

S:r Stamford is not a member of the Coven, and as Party Leader I did not include him among those I pulled in to help draft the platform. Why he may not have received the party's plea for platform-drafting assistance a month or more ago is something that cannot concern me, as the calendar has been turned.

(( Hool ))

[Eðo Grischun]

A lot of things go back to the Golden days, but they can still fail at their intended purpose.

Lets be fair. Allowing prospectives to choose their province is backwards in approach to solving the problem your trying to solve. Abolishing the "closed to immigration" rule is the right answer (credit for the idea to Ían A).

If the closed rule was not in place in the first place, XPB would be Florencian and not Cezembrean and this whole thread would never have had to happen.

Eðo
(minority of one)

[Iustì Carlüs Canun]

Provinces are occasionally closed because if they weren't, certain provinces would become huge, and Vuode would be even smaller than it is. The answer does not lie in abolishing the closing of provinces.

[Eðo Grischun]

and apologies, I have indeed just realised that 'the coven' and 'the RUMPs yahoo group' are not the same thing.

So, the entire party did not work on it, just the executives.

Clear enough.

[Eðo Grischun]

May 15, 2012 20:40:56 GMT -6 Iustì Carlüs Canun said:

Provinces are occasionally closed because if they weren't, certain provinces would become huge, and Vuode would be even smaller than it is. The answer does not lie in abolishing the closing of provinces.

Vuode would be smaller than it is because the list of geographical areas obviously doesn't work then.

The 8 lists need to be more balanced along with abolishing the closed rule.




NOTE: This post was EDITED by Baron Hooligan accidentally, and restored to its initial condition when he realized his mistake (sorry, Eðo; pushed the wrong button is all).

[Bleic'h Ianescu]

May 15, 2012 20:34:24 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

Abolishing the "closed to immigration" rule is the right answer (credit for the idea to Ían A).

While this may address the issue of personal recruits from across the street from being split amongst several provinces it may create separate issues of its own. Population is not equivalent to vitality and activity but we must avoid concentration into one or two super-provinces. Allowing for the prospect to indicate a preference while preserving the relative size restrictions grants new citizens agency and preserves the fabric of our provincial system.

For the record, the platform in its current form has had no material modifications made to policy stances since I first saw it six days ago. I didn't catch it in the first half hour but my guess is that the mangled sentence that Baron Hooligan is referring to is one I bugged him about that first day!

EDIT: Four minutes is obviously too long to take on a post in this thread.

[Eðo Grischun]

What is wrong with one or two super provinces?

[Bleic'h Ianescu]

May 15, 2012 20:46:41 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

What is wrong with one or two super provinces?

The more opportunities individual Talossans have to take ownership of issues and lead the better off the whole nation is. More provinces means more opportunity.

[Hooligan]

May 15, 2012 20:34:24 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

A lot of things go back to the Golden days, but they can still fail at their intended purpose.

Correct. And catchment areas (with closure) have failed. So, since the one thing people all seem to agree on is that the intended purpose is still a correct goal to pursue, the RUMP is right to propose changing the olden-days implementation of a system that fails to meet that goal.

Lets be fair. Allowing prospectives to choose their province is backwards in approach to solving the problem your trying to solve.

Some may think so. Others may not. That's why we will have a debate when proposals are made (or, it seems, a debate when a promise to make a proposal is even put into a platform!). I would currently put myself in the "others" group. I do not think that abolishing catchment areas is a "backwards" solution at all. Rather, it is the only way that a great many of our citizens can ever even have a hope to share a "geographical" space with someone assigned to their own province (which is the intended goal everyone agrees on, and which has been denied so many Talossans).

Abolishing the "closed to immigration" rule is the right answer (credit for the idea to Ían A).

This has been bandied about for years, but the downside is that provinces (like Florencia) would be three, four, maybe five times as large as others. Vuode would literally have died on the vine if Trotxâ had not slipped there. Seriously. It would have been dead until Viteu Toctviac'hteir came along. And then he would have been alone until Dréu Gavárþic'h came along (who has now been pretty much gone for years, so the recent addition of a new New Yorker would have finally given Viteu someone to talk to...just in time for him to physically move west, out of New York and the Vuode catchment area). The closure system ensured that our provinces grew relatively equally, and to completely abandon that would be to invite them to grow unevenly.

If the closed rule was not in place in the first place, XPB would be Florencian and not Cezembrean and this whole thread would never have had to happen.

Perhaps. But since it was in place in the first place, now he (and a great many other Talossans) are in a position that I feel is disadvantageous compared to other Talossans (like me), and some legislative remedy is called for.

Ending closure without any other remedy will only (as I said) invite uneven provincial growth and keep all the people like XPB eternally alone and disadvantaged.

The proposed proposal (that's all it is, folks) in the RUMP's plank 1, which keeps closure but lets people choose from any OPEN province will allow people in Colorado to choose to become Cézembrean like the very very lonely XPB, people in Sweden to become Fiovan like Ián, and people without ANY friends anywhere near them to choose to join whichever province's culture matches theirs. Encouraging the provinces to develop and advertise a culture that appeals to immigrants is a good thing ("When you Immigrate, consider Benito -- we like spaghetti!")

(( Hool ))

(a fellow minority of one!)

[Hooligan]

May 15, 2012 20:40:56 GMT -6 Iustì Carlüs Canun said:

Vuode would be smaller than it is because the list of geographical areas obviously doesn't work then.

The 8 lists need to be more balanced along with abolishing the closed rule.

If anyone can reliably predict exactly where the next, say, forty immigrants will come from, so that we can be sure that five go to each province under newly drawn catchment area lines, then I would like to know if you would accept free airfare to travel to Las Vegas with me.

I worked on -- it's still in the Hopper -- the Great Linguistic Provincial Shuffle Act, an attempt at splitting the world up not only along lines that equate to the ingredient languages of our glheþ but evenly according to "probable" Talossan immigrants. I gave up. There is really no way to know where lines should be. I am more than sure that when Ben drew the Vuode line he thought he was doing his home province a favor by giving it New York City. Didn't work out that way at all.

The only way to be sure provinces grow equally is to close them when they get too big to allow others to catch up. And the current closure system does not even help the small ones! — people get slipped to the "next one on the list" which might be the second largest! (Which is why in the Linguistic Shuffle Act I Hoppered, I proposed a change to the slip -- people would always slip from closed provinces to the smallest province.)

(( Hool ))

[Capt. Sir Mick Preston]

May 15, 2012 20:46:41 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

What is wrong with one or two super provinces?

How would you feel if Talossa was split between Florencia and Fiôvâ.
You either followed one, or the other.

The RUMP owns Florencia, and Fiôvâ was controlled by Revolutionaries.

You don't find yourself in either camp - but because of the Super Provinces, YOU have to choose from one or the other.

[Eðo Grischun]

May 15, 2012 21:32:06 GMT -6 Capt. Sir Mick Preston said:

May 15, 2012 20:46:41 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

What is wrong with one or two super provinces?

How would you feel if Talossa was split between Florencia and Fiôvâ.
You either followed one, or the other.

The RUMP owns Florencia, and Fiôvâ was controlled by Revolutionaries.

You don't find yourself in either camp - but because of the Super Provinces, YOU have to choose from one or the other.

I'd flip a coin. In all honesty.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

May 15, 2012 21:32:06 GMT -6 Capt. Sir Mick Preston said:

May 15, 2012 20:46:41 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

What is wrong with one or two super provinces?

How would you feel if Talossa was split between Florencia and Fiôvâ.
You either followed one, or the other.

The RUMP owns Florencia, and Fiôvâ was controlled by Revolutionaries.

You don't find yourself in either camp - but because of the Super Provinces, YOU have to choose from one or the other.

The flipside to mega-provinces and tiny provinces is that a Senäts seat would be easy pickings for a citizen of a tiny province, but be a terribly contested election in the big provinces. I don't see a problem, any more than California, Texas and New York have to be split up to make the US federal system work. ERM-200, while I dislike it for several reasons, at least makes even the smallest provinces important electorally.

My simple answer to the question posed is: make the provincial assignments ordinary law and ask the SoS to suggest adjustments to them every year, to balance immigration flows. Alternatively, make new provinces easier to found, and make it easier for provinces to merge. Why exactly should the boundaries of our eight provinces be as they are now, which is only how they've been since the mid-90s with the exception of Fiôvâ, forever?

[D. N. Vercáriâ]

May 15, 2012 15:41:05 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

In the Republic we always sighed with frustration at those who put principle above the greater good of the Talossan nation.

This sentence contains everything that is wrong with the ZRT, which is why I will never vote for them. Who is this imaginary group "we" that always sighted with frustration? What principles? Who determines what's the greater good of the Talossan nation? This sentence is a baloon full of fear-mongering hot air, with 0 % verifiable information in it. In other words, plain nonsense, but apparently it sells.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

*ahem* Deet, by "we", I meant the Republican Talossans sighing that the Royalist government were too wrapped up in principles such as "constitutional legitimacy" and "Betrayed Stolen Kept" to recognize us as fellow Talossans for so many years. One approach to criticism is to suggest that the critic always says more about themselves, so perhaps one way to recognize: "The ZRT writes balloons of fear-mongering hot-air" is as a coded way of saying: "I am prone to get very afraid".