View Topic

Title
1. This act is to be cited as the Authorization of the Direct Management of Culture Act

Authorization
2. The Storting hereby grants the Monarch the responsibilities, duties, and authorities to manage the Culture of Wintreath in all facets allowed by Wintrean Law. The authorities are all that is necessary and proper that conforms with existing Wintrean Law. This includes matters including, but is not limited too: Festivals and Festivities, Games and Gaming, and Competitions. It also includes the direct management, regulation, and control of any Role Playing or Role Playing matters. In gaps of law where no court decision, statutory law, or constitutional law exists, the Monarch has controlling discretion.

Reauthorization
3. This act must be reauthorized by every Storting within the first month of that session. If it fails to pass the Storting after the first month of that session, the act is considered null. Reauthorization occurs through this act being passed through the normal mechanisms for law, and must pass unaltered in form. If an amended or altered version of this is passed, then that act automatically repeals this act. The twenty-ninth storting recognizes this as a stop-gap measure until such a time that a better law is passed.

Peers (myself, @Wintermoot, @Aragonn, @Cinciri and @trader) may now vote Aye, Nay, or may Abstain from voting. Apologies for delay on this, been on planes from Canada back to UK!

I don't know how I feel about this one.

Abstain

To be clear, I'm abstaining because I'm not sure it would be appropriate to vote on an act to empower myself. However, I'm not sure how I feel about this act anyways, so I'll talk about my feelings on the topic in general.

For the most part, I don't feel that it's necessary for anyone to regulate culture. The Ministry of Culture has never had any hard power or authority over culture. It exists because it's generally agreed that it makes sense for a group of people to spearhead the building and maintenance of a regional culture, by leading their own efforts and by cooperating with others to do it. That's why I like to call it a cooperative ministry, as opposed to an authoritative ministry with hard power over some area such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Additionally, the Storting has had this authority for years and never used it, precisely because it's usually unnecessary to.

However, the discussion that initially spawned this act was about roleplay, and it makes sense to me for the Monarchy => Ministry of Culture to step in and help keep a roleplay going or require that loremasters take steps to allow their roleplay to continue if they go inactive. A roleplay is unique in that being part of one is a big time and effort investment, and if the loremaster or important players go inactive and the roleplay ends prematurely, everyone's investment in that roleplay has been wasted. And if that keeps happening, as it has at times in the past, all it can do is discourage people from getting involved in RPing in Wintreath at all, and that hurts our regional culture and our community at large, especially when you consider that RP is the number one interest expressed in Citizen applications.

What I find bizarre about this bill specifically though is Section 3. If the Underhusen doesn't feel that this is the best law to address this issue, then why did it pass it? Naming it as a stop-gap measure implies that it was urgent for something to be passed to address the issue as soon as possible, but I don't think that's the case here. Practically, I'm concerned that the law must be reauthorized six times a year until it's replaced...if the Storting would go inactive again at some point in the future, it would be easy for this requirement to be forgotten and for the act to lapse.

I just don't know how to feel about this one overall either. I don't think I've ever seen an act that the Underhusen passed with so little confidence. I'm a little baffled on this one.

I'll just vote Nay.

Nay.

As Moot said, aside from everything else, if this is a stop-gap measure for a non-urgent issue then we should take the time to write something more permanent.

I vote NAY on this. As many have stated it seems fairly fragile and non-urgent as an act all together and relatively futile, especially because of the complexity in terms of reauthorization.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Nay.

With no votes for, four against, and one abstention, I declare this act has FAILED to pass the Overhusen.