Turn 27 - Just a jackknife has old MacHeath babe
Turn 27 - Just a jackknife has old MacHeath babe
You have the rare pleasure of not having to come up with a speech on the fly for once. Jake has learned enough about your ‘style’ and preferences that he was able to write a full speech for you that you didn’t need to deviate with at all.
You pretty much put the most obstreperous of the Lords in their place with it, pointing out that the planet was in a state of war, and thus the normal priorities couldn’t be considered valid. You manage to make it quite stirring, with plenty of references to the hardships caused by the dastardly Dragon. After all, this was being broadcast, so it was quite possible the Dracs were listening in so a few choice adjectives were more than warranted.
Public reaction is pretty positive, and you start getting reports about new farmland being tilled and prepared for food crops. Food prices are dropping, although to be fair the majority of what is being grown is more high yield crops rather than high nutritional value crops, so there are some health issues caused by the increased access to cheap food.
You are watching the holo one evening when a new music video comes up, with the anchor of the news program snickering. At first you think it’s something that the Periphery Studies department cooked up.
Then you recognize the three ‘musicians’ performing…
You glare at Willis. He’s too busy laughing. So are you.
Evidently your three boys had gotten together and recorded a parody video of ‘Vegetable Rights Activists’... and your husband had known about it. He’d, in fact, done much of the recording.
Then the Periphery Studies people take this seriously and start actually organizing protest marches on farmer’s markets. You get a horrible headache from all of this.
It’s obviously Willis’ fault. He probably inspired the boys. Unfortunately your attempt at a glare is ruined by how hard you are giggling at the sheer absurdity of the situation.
Then again they are also pretty good. You decide to counter-troll your loving sons by having Isoroku contact a few professional promoters he knows and having them offer the boys a contract for distribution. With ALL the paperwork.
The grumbling and muttering and dark looks you get from your sons is totally worth it.
There are several more communications with Tai-sa Gustavson, pretty much all being handled at the ministerial level rather than requiring your direct input. According to Sarah the Tai-sa seems to be quite serious about not mistreating the civilians. His men are still in, admittedly well-insulated, tents while he prioritizes completing prefab residential blocks for the civilians. In the months since his arrival there have been no public executions, and the infantry who are guarding the fields seem to be adopting a far more hands-off manner. No whips have been in evidence at all.
You have seen several other apparent malefactors being hanged, but all of them appear to have been DCMS soldiers who somehow ran afoul of whatever passes for military regulations in the Combine. The brothel has been shut down, although the building itself appears to now see use as an off-duty watering hole for the troops Sarah sees no signs of it being used for its prior purpose.
He has gotten reinforcements, though. While the Excalibur has departed, along with one of the Mules a pair of Gazelles and a single Buccaneer have arrived. As far as you can tell they contained additional ground crew for the ASFs, but Sarah reports that a number of larger ASFs that are not in her databanks are being assembled. They appear to be medium fighters, on the large end, with a flying wing layout. Sarah has no information on what these fighters are capable of which is rather worrying as the Dracs have 18 of them.
There is a severe earthquake on Castor. Luckily there are no casualties and damage is minimal, however landslides from the quake reveal large deposits of rare earths which are highly valuable. Exploiting these materials would be highly beneficial to the economy, but safely accessing them would be.. Expensive, if rather straightforward.
[] Go for it - up front cost of 10,000, +5% GDP this turn, +1% Tax Rate this turn
[] Save it for later - there will be an action to exploit this deposit
There’s another mess in Parliament. And this one is a doozy.
It started as a minor story in the business section. A small but dynamic company manufacturing fuel-cell powered farm equipment had been targeted for a hostile leveraged takeover a few years ago. The company engaging in the leveraged takeover had been one of the major players in that sector, although far from a monopoly.
Following the leveraged takeover, however, the company in question had promptly shifted all of its unprofitable business lines that it was stuck in long term contracts for, along with nearly all of the corporate debt, into the formerly independent firm, then spun it off.
The spun-off company had just gone into bankruptcy, completely unable to ever operate effectively burdened as it was by unsustainable debts and worthless contracts that made it nearly impossible to ever become profitable. With that failure, large numbers of small investors have lost enormous amounts of money, as when the company had been spun off the ‘parent’ firm had partially financed it by a stock shift into the division in question right before it was spun off. The large institutional investors had ensured that all of the shares split off were those of independent small investors, thus they are reaping the rewards of the increased profitability of the parent company while the small investors took it in the shorts.
The House of Commons is in an uproar, however every single action taken by everybody involved was, technically speaking, perfectly legal. They followed every single regulation to the T, they obeyed every single disclosure requirement, they did everything by the book so well that regulators haven’t been able to find even a minor violation to hang an investigation on.
It was a perfect storm, and it all came down to timing. The notices about the stock shift had gone out, but had done so at the same time as the markets had gone crazy from the opening of Pollux and the associated business boom. None of the notices had ever been, well, noticed, buried as they were beneath masses of other news. Suspicion of deliberate intent had been defused by the minor detail that the company had republished the notices in a paid advertisement several weeks later, well before the deadline to object to the stock shift, but that ad had never run in the intended time slot because it got preempted by the mandatory evacuation order and Martial Law declaration.
It’s a mess. There are loud cries to ‘do something’, but there really doesn’t seem to be anything to do that would in any way be helpful.
You decide to punt this down to your economic and legal advisors, see what they come up with.
You have the rare pleasure of not having to come up with a speech on the fly for once. Jake has learned enough about your ‘style’ and preferences that he was able to write a full speech for you that you didn’t need to deviate with at all.
You pretty much put the most obstreperous of the Lords in their place with it, pointing out that the planet was in a state of war, and thus the normal priorities couldn’t be considered valid. You manage to make it quite stirring, with plenty of references to the hardships caused by the dastardly Dragon. After all, this was being broadcast, so it was quite possible the Dracs were listening in so a few choice adjectives were more than warranted.
Public reaction is pretty positive, and you start getting reports about new farmland being tilled and prepared for food crops. Food prices are dropping, although to be fair the majority of what is being grown is more high yield crops rather than high nutritional value crops, so there are some health issues caused by the increased access to cheap food.
You are watching the holo one evening when a new music video comes up, with the anchor of the news program snickering. At first you think it’s something that the Periphery Studies department cooked up.
Then you recognize the three ‘musicians’ performing…
You glare at Willis. He’s too busy laughing. So are you.
Evidently your three boys had gotten together and recorded a parody video of ‘Vegetable Rights Activists’... and your husband had known about it. He’d, in fact, done much of the recording.
Then the Periphery Studies people take this seriously and start actually organizing protest marches on farmer’s markets. You get a horrible headache from all of this.
It’s obviously Willis’ fault. He probably inspired the boys. Unfortunately your attempt at a glare is ruined by how hard you are giggling at the sheer absurdity of the situation.
Then again they are also pretty good. You decide to counter-troll your loving sons by having Isoroku contact a few professional promoters he knows and having them offer the boys a contract for distribution. With ALL the paperwork.
The grumbling and muttering and dark looks you get from your sons is totally worth it.
There are several more communications with Tai-sa Gustavson, pretty much all being handled at the ministerial level rather than requiring your direct input. According to Sarah the Tai-sa seems to be quite serious about not mistreating the civilians. His men are still in, admittedly well-insulated, tents while he prioritizes completing prefab residential blocks for the civilians. In the months since his arrival there have been no public executions, and the infantry who are guarding the fields seem to be adopting a far more hands-off manner. No whips have been in evidence at all.
You have seen several other apparent malefactors being hanged, but all of them appear to have been DCMS soldiers who somehow ran afoul of whatever passes for military regulations in the Combine. The brothel has been shut down, although the building itself appears to now see use as an off-duty watering hole for the troops Sarah sees no signs of it being used for its prior purpose.
He has gotten reinforcements, though. While the Excalibur has departed, along with one of the Mules a pair of Gazelles and a single Buccaneer have arrived. As far as you can tell they contained additional ground crew for the ASFs, but Sarah reports that a number of larger ASFs that are not in her databanks are being assembled. They appear to be medium fighters, on the large end, with a flying wing layout. Sarah has no information on what these fighters are capable of which is rather worrying as the Dracs have 18 of them.
There is a severe earthquake on Castor. Luckily there are no casualties and damage is minimal, however landslides from the quake reveal large deposits of rare earths which are highly valuable. Exploiting these materials would be highly beneficial to the economy, but safely accessing them would be.. Expensive, if rather straightforward.
[] Go for it - up front cost of 10,000, +5% GDP this turn, +1% Tax Rate this turn
[] Save it for later - there will be an action to exploit this deposit
There’s another mess in Parliament. And this one is a doozy.
It started as a minor story in the business section. A small but dynamic company manufacturing fuel-cell powered farm equipment had been targeted for a hostile leveraged takeover a few years ago. The company engaging in the leveraged takeover had been one of the major players in that sector, although far from a monopoly.
Following the leveraged takeover, however, the company in question had promptly shifted all of its unprofitable business lines that it was stuck in long term contracts for, along with nearly all of the corporate debt, into the formerly independent firm, then spun it off.
The spun-off company had just gone into bankruptcy, completely unable to ever operate effectively burdened as it was by unsustainable debts and worthless contracts that made it nearly impossible to ever become profitable. With that failure, large numbers of small investors have lost enormous amounts of money, as when the company had been spun off the ‘parent’ firm had partially financed it by a stock shift into the division in question right before it was spun off. The large institutional investors had ensured that all of the shares split off were those of independent small investors, thus they are reaping the rewards of the increased profitability of the parent company while the small investors took it in the shorts.
The House of Commons is in an uproar, however every single action taken by everybody involved was, technically speaking, perfectly legal. They followed every single regulation to the T, they obeyed every single disclosure requirement, they did everything by the book so well that regulators haven’t been able to find even a minor violation to hang an investigation on.
It was a perfect storm, and it all came down to timing. The notices about the stock shift had gone out, but had done so at the same time as the markets had gone crazy from the opening of Pollux and the associated business boom. None of the notices had ever been, well, noticed, buried as they were beneath masses of other news. Suspicion of deliberate intent had been defused by the minor detail that the company had republished the notices in a paid advertisement several weeks later, well before the deadline to object to the stock shift, but that ad had never run in the intended time slot because it got preempted by the mandatory evacuation order and Martial Law declaration.
It’s a mess. There are loud cries to ‘do something’, but there really doesn’t seem to be anything to do that would in any way be helpful.
You decide to punt this down to your economic and legal advisors, see what they come up with.