Turn 21 - Parliament and Progress
You had intended for there to be a formal introduction of your new ministers, but after consulting with Isoroku (as he asks you to call him, on the grounds that whenever he hears Mr Nikishina he starts looking for his father) you decide to let him introduce himself.
Which he does.
Spectacularly.
You hadn’t realized that ‘loves music’ translated to ‘is spectacularly good with exotic traditional Japanese instruments’ and ‘professional musician’ translated to ‘is in a band with his wife, sister, and their friends’.
That uses ancient traditional Japanese instruments.
To play Western-style heavy metal music.
He decides to introduce himself with a free concert featuring a number of asian-themed bands. Part of it is making a point that asiatics are part of the cultural DNA of Griffin’s Roost, but most of it is because these performers are good.
Of course, it freaks you out slightly when one of the bands is made up of three girls the same age as your oldest daughter performing some extreme metal like they were hardened metalheads.
Discovering that the lead singer is your new foreign minister's oldest daughter makes it a bit more understandable, you guess.
He then gives a stemwinder of a speech, which you heartily approve of. Real Japanese and Asian culture is a part of the cultural stew of your society. But, he stresses, House Kurita twists and distorts the real thing into a dark and fetid megalomaniacal cult of personality and fetishistic cosplay that pretends to be what it can never actually achieve.
The sheer scorn as he starts laying out the ways the Combine utterly fails at Bushido is palpable. By the end of it he is purely mocking them, and has the crowd eating out of his hand.
By the next morning the phrase ‘Magic Bushido Hands’ is trending planet-wide.
The next day you introduce Jake to the public, and he soon has the press covering the event laughing more than you’d ever managed. He starts by making fun of his own last name, cheerfully challenging reporters to spell it without consulting their notes and offering exclusive interviews for anybody who manages it.
None of them do. Hell, you need to consult a notecard if you want to pronounce it right, let alone spell it. Polish has far too many consonants and vowels in the wrong places, in your opinion. Mroczkiewicz, really? Do Polish parents just try to come up with the most insane spelling possible in an effort to taunt the rest of humanity?
He then earns a large number of media brownie points by giving any reporter who tried to spell his name an interview anyways, where his engaging cheer seems to sway even the most hardened of the political journalists over to his side.
Hell, he managed to get the Old Battleaxe of the Press Corps, Mary Masterson, to giggle, something that you would have laid odds on being one of the signs of the apocalypse, as he ever so gallantly escorted her to the interview room set aside with all the manners and grace of an ancient aristo, while flattering her outrageously.
You decide that you picked a solid crew here.
Parliament meets for the first time since your little intervention, and there are plenty of new members to replace those who’d… surrendered their office. Including the single largest grifftiger you’d ever seen in person.
You’d seen video of him, when he licked that locomotive, but he is so massive that even the remodeling undertaken to make the chambers of Parliament accessible to the big cats was almost completely inadequate. He filled the space with an ancient massive majesty that was awe inspiring.
He was obviously extremely old, his fur was almost more silver than black, and he moved with the slow deliberation of the aged. But those eyes were ancient and wise, and he’d clearly taken the time to utterly master the computer interface that facilitated communication between the cats and humanity.
You learn from Sekhmet that this here is the Eldest. And that knowledge shakes you to the core. This is a being who was alive when your ancestors first came to Griffin’s Roost. And he’d spent centuries preparing for the first meeting with ‘those in the flying eggs’.
And his very first act in Parliament is something that, frankly, somebody should have thought about already. The biggest problem that existed on Capricorn was maintaining the railways and surface transportation links between the inland resource areas and the coastal cities. Herds of deathapotamusaurus regularly smashed roads and tracks during their migrations. Repairing the infrastructure was simply part of the cost of doing business and the biggest job of the Mine Security Force was tracking and predicting herd movement.
The Eldest simply proposed taking advantage of all the vehicles being fusion or fuel-cell powered, especially the trains, to allow them to all be buried in massive tunnel networks deep enough beneath the ground that the herds could pass over without interference.
Capricorn was highly geologically stable, and the Eldest had actually consulted with civil engineers who agreed that while extremely expensive, such a proposal was perfectly viable.
Therefore the Eldest proposed legislation to direct the Ministry of the Interior to undertake such a project, to bore massive deep tunnels between the various cities on Capricorn and the inland resource areas, and thus bury most of the vulnerable infrastructure. This would not only nearly eliminate the threat of the deathapotamusaurus herds, but would also provide significant protection for the infrastructure in the event of future Kurita attacks.
[] Support - If this passes, it will cost 20,000 a year for 10 years. At the end of this time there will be a 1 time +10% GDP boost that cannot be cancelled by any event. The techniques developed in this project will further permit building one buried size 2 factory on Capricorn in addition to the regular allotment. Will increase support in the Lords and Commons by 5 and at the conclusion of the 10 year period increase Political and Economic Rating by 5.
[] Oppose - -5 Support in Lords and Commons
Another proposal brought before Parliament is rather controversial. It is noted that wealthier children tend to be able to obtain better educations from lavishly funded private schools, while poorer kids are left to languish in poorly funded public schools. This isn’t universal, there are public schools which perform as well or even better than private schools, but the correlation is significant enough to be valid statistically. Moreover, many parents in certain demographics insist on home-schooling their children, with wide variance in quality of the ensuing education.
So a number of Members of Parliament from both the Commons and Lords propose legislation banning private for-profit schools and heavily regulating homeschooling into near non-existence, while still permitting parochial schools. Otherwise, all students would be required to attend public schools, funding would be equalized on a per-student basis through the Interior Ministry and ‘donations’ and ‘fundraisers’ would be banned to prevent inequality from taking root between wealthy and poor regions. The curriculum would be standardized across the planet with no variations permitted even to the parochial schools. They’d be allowed to teach religion classes in addition to the mandatory curriculum, but they would not be allowed to alter, contradict, or neglect any aspect of the mandatory curriculum.
[] Support. This is highly controversial. Upkeep of 10,000 a year to maintain the system, an immediate -20 Approval, -10 Approval Change, +5 Research Rating, +5 Economy Rating, increases chances of unrest across the planet.
[] Oppose. No negative effects.
You had intended for there to be a formal introduction of your new ministers, but after consulting with Isoroku (as he asks you to call him, on the grounds that whenever he hears Mr Nikishina he starts looking for his father) you decide to let him introduce himself.
Which he does.
Spectacularly.
You hadn’t realized that ‘loves music’ translated to ‘is spectacularly good with exotic traditional Japanese instruments’ and ‘professional musician’ translated to ‘is in a band with his wife, sister, and their friends’.
That uses ancient traditional Japanese instruments.
To play Western-style heavy metal music.
He decides to introduce himself with a free concert featuring a number of asian-themed bands. Part of it is making a point that asiatics are part of the cultural DNA of Griffin’s Roost, but most of it is because these performers are good.
Of course, it freaks you out slightly when one of the bands is made up of three girls the same age as your oldest daughter performing some extreme metal like they were hardened metalheads.
Discovering that the lead singer is your new foreign minister's oldest daughter makes it a bit more understandable, you guess.
He then gives a stemwinder of a speech, which you heartily approve of. Real Japanese and Asian culture is a part of the cultural stew of your society. But, he stresses, House Kurita twists and distorts the real thing into a dark and fetid megalomaniacal cult of personality and fetishistic cosplay that pretends to be what it can never actually achieve.
The sheer scorn as he starts laying out the ways the Combine utterly fails at Bushido is palpable. By the end of it he is purely mocking them, and has the crowd eating out of his hand.
By the next morning the phrase ‘Magic Bushido Hands’ is trending planet-wide.
The next day you introduce Jake to the public, and he soon has the press covering the event laughing more than you’d ever managed. He starts by making fun of his own last name, cheerfully challenging reporters to spell it without consulting their notes and offering exclusive interviews for anybody who manages it.
None of them do. Hell, you need to consult a notecard if you want to pronounce it right, let alone spell it. Polish has far too many consonants and vowels in the wrong places, in your opinion. Mroczkiewicz, really? Do Polish parents just try to come up with the most insane spelling possible in an effort to taunt the rest of humanity?
He then earns a large number of media brownie points by giving any reporter who tried to spell his name an interview anyways, where his engaging cheer seems to sway even the most hardened of the political journalists over to his side.
Hell, he managed to get the Old Battleaxe of the Press Corps, Mary Masterson, to giggle, something that you would have laid odds on being one of the signs of the apocalypse, as he ever so gallantly escorted her to the interview room set aside with all the manners and grace of an ancient aristo, while flattering her outrageously.
You decide that you picked a solid crew here.
Parliament meets for the first time since your little intervention, and there are plenty of new members to replace those who’d… surrendered their office. Including the single largest grifftiger you’d ever seen in person.
You’d seen video of him, when he licked that locomotive, but he is so massive that even the remodeling undertaken to make the chambers of Parliament accessible to the big cats was almost completely inadequate. He filled the space with an ancient massive majesty that was awe inspiring.
He was obviously extremely old, his fur was almost more silver than black, and he moved with the slow deliberation of the aged. But those eyes were ancient and wise, and he’d clearly taken the time to utterly master the computer interface that facilitated communication between the cats and humanity.
You learn from Sekhmet that this here is the Eldest. And that knowledge shakes you to the core. This is a being who was alive when your ancestors first came to Griffin’s Roost. And he’d spent centuries preparing for the first meeting with ‘those in the flying eggs’.
And his very first act in Parliament is something that, frankly, somebody should have thought about already. The biggest problem that existed on Capricorn was maintaining the railways and surface transportation links between the inland resource areas and the coastal cities. Herds of deathapotamusaurus regularly smashed roads and tracks during their migrations. Repairing the infrastructure was simply part of the cost of doing business and the biggest job of the Mine Security Force was tracking and predicting herd movement.
The Eldest simply proposed taking advantage of all the vehicles being fusion or fuel-cell powered, especially the trains, to allow them to all be buried in massive tunnel networks deep enough beneath the ground that the herds could pass over without interference.
Capricorn was highly geologically stable, and the Eldest had actually consulted with civil engineers who agreed that while extremely expensive, such a proposal was perfectly viable.
Therefore the Eldest proposed legislation to direct the Ministry of the Interior to undertake such a project, to bore massive deep tunnels between the various cities on Capricorn and the inland resource areas, and thus bury most of the vulnerable infrastructure. This would not only nearly eliminate the threat of the deathapotamusaurus herds, but would also provide significant protection for the infrastructure in the event of future Kurita attacks.
[] Support - If this passes, it will cost 20,000 a year for 10 years. At the end of this time there will be a 1 time +10% GDP boost that cannot be cancelled by any event. The techniques developed in this project will further permit building one buried size 2 factory on Capricorn in addition to the regular allotment. Will increase support in the Lords and Commons by 5 and at the conclusion of the 10 year period increase Political and Economic Rating by 5.
[] Oppose - -5 Support in Lords and Commons
Another proposal brought before Parliament is rather controversial. It is noted that wealthier children tend to be able to obtain better educations from lavishly funded private schools, while poorer kids are left to languish in poorly funded public schools. This isn’t universal, there are public schools which perform as well or even better than private schools, but the correlation is significant enough to be valid statistically. Moreover, many parents in certain demographics insist on home-schooling their children, with wide variance in quality of the ensuing education.
So a number of Members of Parliament from both the Commons and Lords propose legislation banning private for-profit schools and heavily regulating homeschooling into near non-existence, while still permitting parochial schools. Otherwise, all students would be required to attend public schools, funding would be equalized on a per-student basis through the Interior Ministry and ‘donations’ and ‘fundraisers’ would be banned to prevent inequality from taking root between wealthy and poor regions. The curriculum would be standardized across the planet with no variations permitted even to the parochial schools. They’d be allowed to teach religion classes in addition to the mandatory curriculum, but they would not be allowed to alter, contradict, or neglect any aspect of the mandatory curriculum.
[] Support. This is highly controversial. Upkeep of 10,000 a year to maintain the system, an immediate -20 Approval, -10 Approval Change, +5 Research Rating, +5 Economy Rating, increases chances of unrest across the planet.
[] Oppose. No negative effects.