The Unity Party/March 2009 TUP Manifesto
The Unity Party on the Wiki
The Unity Party is the largest party in the UK and the twentieth biggest in the world, with around 400 members.
Click on the links on the right to read more about The Unity Party, its goals and its ideals, or click here to go to The Unity Party on eRepublik.
The following document is The Unity Party of the United Kingdom Manifesto for the congress elections in March 2009. This represents our program of reform for this parliamentary session.
Contents
Tax Policy
The UK has suffered from having a strong public sector without the necessary taxation to support it. The Unity Party believes in progressive taxation to support public and private sector industries. Weapons and Gifts are two industries which rely heavily on the government as a main customer. Current income taxes are being increased to 20% for all industries. It is our view that by raising taxes in this way we can raise the money to fund our NHS and our military. This will not have an effect on businesses, as costs can be passed directly onto the consumer. This means that citizens will have public services they can rely on.
In addition, the raised taxes will support the ailing gifts and weapons industries, which have been suffering as of late. More money in the economy will also encourage new businesses, which in turn will mean increased income for the government. Although tax raises are often unpopular, we have to take the long view, and build a Britain which will do more than lurch from one economic crisis to another. We should never arrive at a situation where the NHS is shut down completely ever again, and for this reason we need to establish a taxation policy that builds our reserves, not just maintains them.
We will also begin to look into doing more deals with smaller economies, to provide them with mass produced cheap goods in exchange for raw materials. This policy allows us to develop a more free global market and goes hand-in-hand with our tax reforms by increasing the market and reducing saturation.
Taxation is necessary to help build a strong economy, but it must be paired with a comprehensive guide to to business for new people. Often our markets are saturated by cheap products. We need to let our business owners know that investing in foreign companies is an option too, and often a more profitable one. Controlling foreign markets can never be a bad thing.
Military Policy
The Unity Party believes in a strong military which can be an extension of our political power overseas. We believe in funding our military to take part in training exercises organised around the world, to increase our defence capabilities. We also believe in opposing PEACE imperialist aggression.
To this end, we believe in a rotating training schedule, to ensure that all troops receive the training that they deserve. The armed forces currently run themselves almost independently. We have no problem with this situation, however we believe that there needs to be more aggressive advertising for troops to join the armed forces. Many citizens have to search for information about the armed forces to find out how to join. We should be pushing the citizenry to register through increased newspaper activity with links to recruitment threads on the forums.
We also wish to pursue the possibility of creating a programme whereby lower strength players could form co-operatives to provide weapons and moving tickets for themselves to allow themselves to gain rank in a way that only paras currently have available to them. This would involve a system whereby a group of ten players would found and run a business with the profits being used to fund themselves. As they advanced through the ranks and qualified for the Parachute regiment they could sell their stake in the company onto another young player. 2 gold stakes are easily affordable to any player reaching level 6. Players would sign a standard contract, and the Ministry of Work would keep an up-to-date copy of the contract. This would essentially be run by the players themselves, and wouldn't really involve much extra work from the government, and no extra cost.
NHS Policy
The Unity Party supports a functioning, active NHS. We believe all NHS directors must be forum active, and available at least once a day to perform their duties.
We believe that there should be a rationing of gifting based upon wellness level and upon current experience. Low wellness low experience players should have priority, followed by low wellness high experience and medium wellness low experience players. Low experience is level six to ten. Low wellness is below forty.
We also believe in public scrutiny of government expenditure. Which is why we believe the Ministry of Health should publish budgets for each region, along with expenditure for each region. Budgets will be proposed by Clinics based upon expected minimum costs of providing healthcare to each region. Once all budgets are in they shall be subject to revision by the Health Committee. The Health Committee shall consist of the Minister of Finance and four congressmen. Budgets will be submitted on the 20th of each month, and will be approved by the 25th of each month. Weekly budgets are the easiest system to follow for individual directors, but monthly ones are easier for scrutiny. The purpose of this is to ensure that proper allocation of funds to each area is accomplished and that the Ministry of Health does not spend excessively to the detriment of other ministries.
In terms of clinics, each clinic shall only gift active citizens. Each clinic will do its utmost to advertise its services, but will only gift those who ask for it directly. If this occurs, the member will be placed on a list of patients, and depending upon priority (high, medium, low) will be gifted either 10, 5 or 2 wellness per request. Requests may be made no more than once a week. This will hopefully increase activity as well as reduce spending. To try and increase forum activity, the Clinic should respond to each request for gifting with both gifts and a link to the forums.
In addition, an RRP must be attached to gifts. This means that should the price of gifts on the market be above RRP then the clinic must not buy them. This will hopefully end the cronyism which surrounds the gifting industry.
This may seem like a lot of work for the NHS, but in reality it amounts to an extra hour a month on budgets written by each NHS director.
In addition, we propose the creation of a private health clinic, which will be known as NHS on Demand. The purpose of this would be to provide gifting to citizens who wish to maintain a wellness close to one hundred. The citizens will donate money to the clinic, and the clinic will gift the citizen gifts. Due to buying gifts in relative bulk, the NHS Direct clinic will be able to buy gifts below market value.
Information Policy
The Unity Party believes in the freedom of information. We support the release of sensitive materials after they are judged to be safe information. However, transparent governance goes beyond all of that.
Transparent government means publishing information about how the ministries work, and about who is involved. For this reason, we support a new proposal called 'A day in the life of...'
This proposal would publish weekly reports on a day in the life of the Minister of _____. This would show non-involved players what kind of work goes into the Ministry in a form that most people could easily understand. The articles can be thought of as either a press release or public relations. Although some Ministers publish informative articles already, this is not the norm. Ministries such as the Ministry of Work are mysteries to most citizens, and this would allow them to see the hard work that often goes on behind the scenes. It would also show new members that the forums are more than just 'banter', they are the basis of power in the United Kingdom. Each week there would be a different “day in the life of...” article on a different Minister.
Atlantis is another black hole in public understanding. The Unity Party supports a more open relationship with Atlantis, to try and bring it back to the people it supposedly protects. Updates should not merely be about war, they should be about how people around the world feel about the UK, and our role in world politics. By having more open communication with our allies we can develop a sense of kinship with them that currently doesn't exist.
Foreign Policy
The Unity Party believes that foreign policy is not all about alliances. The future of the globe is not just won on the battlefields of Asia or Europe, it is built by nations at the debating table.
The Unity Party proposes and supports a new scheme, which will be called the Trustee Scheme. The Trustee Scheme (TS) recognises that every nation is part of the global community, and as the most highly centralised and organised country in the Western hemisphere it is our duty to reach out to fledgling states and help them. By helping small states now, we help build future allies.
The TS would be based around a team of advisers who would work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Led by the Under Minister, the team of apprentices would be involved in advising countries on issues such as how to encourage forum activity, how to implement tax policy, how to encourage new businesses and so on. In exchange the country in question would MPP with the UK, sign a mutual trade act which would involve rebates to UK companies and agree not to join PEACE.
Alliance Policy
The United Kingdom is a member of ATLANTIS, and due to many restraints - from geographic to economic - leaving the alliance at this point is neither practical nor desirable. However, there are some aspects of the alliance that we disagree with. Political takeovers, imperialist aggression for the sake of resources and the use of military force against countries based on the mistakes of past rulers are all things that we do not agree with as a party. We believe that is there is a way to mitigate the effects of these actions whilst maintaining our current position then we must take it.
For that reason, we propose that the UK support the new European Social Alliance. It contains within it the seeds of an organisation which can mitigate the affects of the negative side of Atlantis mentioned above, without removing the part of Atlantis we agree with - mutual defence. In the event that France or Italy invade one of our allies then we shall fight them without remorse. But otherwise, we see no reason why we should not oppose the invasion, political takeover, or other untoward aggression towards otherwise peaceful nations.
Saying all that, Atlantis is the primary alliance we are in, and if it comes to a straight choice we must support them.
Entertainment Policy
We believe that as this is a game, we should be working to make this as fun an experience as possible. However, regional games, whilst fun, are expensive for their cost. Therefore, we suggest that we pool half the current congressional allowances for regional development, and use them to run national competitions in-game, with a wide variety of prizes. For example, a paid holiday to Romania plus five Q3 weapons for the member who can name the top five posters on the forums. Games like this will show members that there is a definite link between the forums and the game, and hopefully whilst they're there they will bump into other areas of the forums as well.
Another issue with current entertainment policy is that although it is primarily targeted at new members, many of those participating are older. Therefore we propose that we run a series of competitions for things such as Avatar design, and have maximum level entries. So there will be a Level 6 and lower category. This will make new players feel like they have a better chance of winning. There will also be games for higher level players, but instead of being paid in money or gifts the games will be mostly for fun, or for personal prizes submitted by members. There isn't a need for a financial reward for more experienced players.
