General Announcements

Wherein the great gods of the A-Team will grace you with information and knowledge.
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Barclay A.A. Stanley
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Re: General Announcements

Post by Barclay A.A. Stanley »

A quick note to say that I will be closing the General Press Comments on Sunday, January 10 at 11:59 BST for marking. If you have anything to say, do so now or forever hold your peace.
Lt. Col. Sir Barclay A.A. Stanley, Rtd., KBE
Member of Parliament for Macclesfield

Armed with nothing but a pint of gin, Sir Barclay went to battle against the forces of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism.
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Barclay A.A. Stanley
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Re: General Announcements

Post by Barclay A.A. Stanley »

Two things to note:

1) GPC is currently closed for grading which I will undertake to have done within the next 24 hours.

2) The PC about the Victim's Bill of Rights will remain open until the bill finishes with Division.

I would also like to make a note about division just to be explicitly clear: abstentions must now be outright stated. If a player simply misses the vote, then their BBS numbers will be reassigned according to what the A-Team believes is reasonable and according to how the rest of their faction has voted.
Lt. Col. Sir Barclay A.A. Stanley, Rtd., KBE
Member of Parliament for Macclesfield

Armed with nothing but a pint of gin, Sir Barclay went to battle against the forces of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism.
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Corgi
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Re: General Announcements

Post by Corgi »

I am pleased to release the 2001 budget pack, which has been compiled by Mac. Huge thanks from all of us to him for putting it all together – it has saved us a lot of time. He will be rewarded with 2xp!

The government budget will be due on Tuesday 19th. Though there is no time restrictions on shadow budgets, we'd recommend not leaving it too long after that date!

To use BP2001, use the link below and then make your own copy of it.

Buget Pack 2001: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
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Marty
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Re: General Announcements

Post by Marty »

This round, we'll be bringing back speech invites. This is your chance to shine in front of a very attentive audience and work on your ideas and rhetoric on the big issues of the day!

From time to time, various groups, clubs, business associations or educational institutes may wish to hear from Members of Parliament on issues of the day.

Speaking invitations will be set out each quarter, noting an invitation to a specific event hosted by a given group, listing who is potentially invited to speak and finally what the topic they are being asked to speak on. Each round of invitations will further note when the party leader must respond by noting who has accepted each invitation. When invitations are posted, the intial post will note by when attendance must be confirmed as well as the final date by when the speeches must be posted in the subforum.

Invitational speeches the same as other speeches, however audience expectations are higher and grading will reflect that. Politicians are expected to speak substantively on political issues, and the media will tend to provide reasonable coverage so long as expectations are met.

Players should not take more than one invitation unless it becomes apparent that the invitation would otherwise be ignored. Players who have been indicated as attending by the party leader are expected to actually present their speech. If they fail to do so, it will be considered as if they simply failed to attend the event in question. Please do not accept an invitation if you do not think you will be able to complete the required speech in the alloted time. Since NPCs do not build XP or profile, they should not take speech invites - they are for player characters only.

You can expect first round of speaking invitations (Q4 2001) to go out tomorrow.
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Re: General Announcements

Post by Marty »

We've set the Papers forum to a moderation queue. That means that if you want to contribute an editorial, you can now directly post a reply to a newspaper thread. We'll be able to approve your post on the boards and will contact you in case there are any problems.
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Barclay A.A. Stanley
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Re: General Announcements

Post by Barclay A.A. Stanley »

The Victim's Rights PC is closed for business. I will mark it tomorrow (Monday) when I am at work.
Lt. Col. Sir Barclay A.A. Stanley, Rtd., KBE
Member of Parliament for Macclesfield

Armed with nothing but a pint of gin, Sir Barclay went to battle against the forces of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism.
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Re: General Announcements

Post by Corgi »

We've had to fix a couple of minor bugs with the budget pack for 2001. Shouldn't cause any problems (it gives you more cash to play with)!

Budget Pack 2001 Latest
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Marty
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Re: General Announcements

Post by Marty »

The budget debate is one of the most important political debates of the year. Not just that, it's one of the most important news cycles and media happenings of the year. This is your opportunity to build your name recognition.

To simulate this news cycle and the way the press is watching Parliament, I'll be doing a number of live events and may be sending out some questions for articles. I'm endeavouring to do a daily, short episode of the Daily Politics for rapid-fire highlighting of the most important themes and best contributions from the budget debate in Parliament. If you're on this, you're getting noticed, so do your best!

I may or may not have time to bring on guests to spin stuff in these live events. If you're interested in talking to Andrew Neil and friends, send me a DM with your availability on evenings in the coming days. I'm looking for a wide cast of backbenchers, frontbenchers and everything in between.
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Re: General Announcements

Post by Marty »

I didn't account for the budget debate in the speech invites in specific terms. To account for it now, all speech invite deadlines will be getting extended an extra 4 days to January 27th.
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Barclay A.A. Stanley
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Re: General Announcements

Post by Barclay A.A. Stanley »

We have experienced an unfortunate case of the editing of a spreadsheet after the fact of it being released publicly. In this case, the A-Team wishes to remind all players that documents submitted for public consumption should never be subsequently edited. Players who seek to make a change to something which they have previously released should do so as a new addendum to previous document, which you should make in a new post. Editing, in general, has always been considered bad form in game and that hasn't changed.

Mac made two small changes to his released budget document: first, a clerical edit to explicitly state the triple lock. This first amendment is, as I say, clerical and in no way changes the budget that he released and, had this been the only edit, then the above reminder would have sufficed. His second edit was, I am afraid to say, a substantive one. He changed the WFTC. This substantive change makes very little impact on the overall budget (about 20 million GBP in the end) but the principle is one which the A-Team cannot overlook. He assures us that the change was made due to having to change from an old version of the budget pack and it having been missed.

We take the point but respond as follows: it is not outside of the scope of this game to have budget packs change during the process of budget-making. Indeed, it is a regular part of that process. Still, we acknowledge that changes made to the budget pack required Mac to switch from one to the other and that things can be missed in the process.

Unfortunately, this is not in itself a sufficient reason to make edits to publicly-released IG documents. The correct process, as it has always been, is to make a subsequent public post indicating the need to make an amendment. Failing this, players are always welcome to contact the A-Team for advice on how to proceed. In this case, had the change been made above board, there would have been no significant in-game consequences for Mac or the Liberal Democrats. That was not the chosen path.

In light of these edits, the A-Team has chosen to remove 5 XP from Rebecca Flair, and to consider the edit to have occured in character. The press knows that the edits occured and this will impact the grading of the budget debate. An article will be coming out in the Independent newspaper on the affair questioning if Flair and her team are running a professional outfit, or an amateur one. This is an embarrassing situation for the Liberal Democrats.

It must also be noted that the Liberal Democrats had a further 48 hours to submit their shadow budget. For this reason, we have chosen to be less lenient than we might otherwise have been. Let this be a note to everyone: deadlines exist for a reason, and choosing to jump the gun should only be undertaken if everyone is sure and certain that what they plan to release is a final and finished copy. The A-Team will regard errors, even of a clerical nature, with less clemency where the work was clearly a rush job that didn't need to be a rush job.
Lt. Col. Sir Barclay A.A. Stanley, Rtd., KBE
Member of Parliament for Macclesfield

Armed with nothing but a pint of gin, Sir Barclay went to battle against the forces of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism.
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