| Cabinet's Questions: Seraph |
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Punchwood - Hello and welcome to Cabinet's Questions with me, your host for tonight, Punchwood. Our first ever guest tonight is the Minister of Regional Affairs, Seraph! Seraph - Hello! It's an honour to be first, unless this turns out to ruin my career, in which case, blame the gin! Punchwood - The format tonight is simple. I'll begin by asking Seraph questions on his performance as Minister and the performance of RA as a whole, then we shall move onto questions sent in by the public. If you are ready Seraph we shall begin. Seraph - Yup, fire away! Punchwood - What has the Ministry done this term? So far, to someone not involved in the Ministry, all that seems to have been achieved is one Southern Journal issue and two Treasure Island Reports. Seraph - So, we've been fairly busy, although perhaps not as busy as I would have liked. We started running with the Z Day preparations and managed to pull that off without too much drama. The result wasn't what everyone might have hoped for, but then it was a more difficult year even before you consider my lack of experience at handling an event of that magnitude. In the end I was really proud of what we achieved. Right after that we held Nation Showcase Week on the Regional Message Board which proved to be a great way to get the RMB thinking in terms of roleplaying their nations and writing up factbooks and so on. It's definitely something we want to build on. Alongside all that the Ministry has overhauled the welcoming process for new nations in the region. With the help of the Tsunamy we've edited the welcome telegram and created a welcome guide which is linked in the telegram and pinned to the World Factbook Entry. We regularly promote ministry involvement and other ways to get involved on the Regional Message Board and we're working on ways to improve that. We've also been working in the background on ways to make it easier for new nations to get involved in RP; Roavin is still working on the new fellowship program, with the hope to unleash it on the unsuspecting region before the Christmas holidays; there's a team of fellows slowly trying to put together a festival with a couple of our allies, which should come to fruition in the next few weeks and, spinning out of that, we're working on reviving Southern Radio. Finally, but by no means least, Punchwood here has been doing sterling work keeping the journalism going and getting new initiatives, like these questions, off the ground when they maybe haven't met with success in the past. I'm really proud of the team as a whole. Punchwood - Things like promoting Ministry activity could be seen as something that should just be done. Z-Day, it could be argued, did not require Ministry work and could have worked fine on its own. As for behind the scenes work, did Roavin not start that project when he was elected Minister? Should it not have been completed by now? Seraph - Promotion of Ministry activity is a fundamental part of what the Ministry is for - it's all part of welcoming people into the region and getting people involved and it's something I think we haven't been very good at since I joined back in April, so if it's to be considered as 'something that should just be done' and not listed as an achievement, i don't think it has been done, or, at least, not done very well, for a while. As for Z Day, the region has an expectation that there will be some kind of central organisation for that event. I think if we hadn't done anything, hadn't put the effort in to co-ordinate efforts, put on a bit of an RP show and re-did the WFE and flag etc., many in the region would have been very disappointed. I certainly didn't want to be the cause of that disappointment. It would have been a very poor start to the term. Finally, as for Roavin, yes, he did begin the new fellowship program last term. I was involved in it then and have contributed a fair amount of work to it, so the fact that it wasn't completed last term did not mean that I thought it should not be continued into this term. There's a lot of work, especially for Roavin, to get this thing off the ground, and it'll take as long as it takes, but I firmly believe it will be worth it when it's done. The fellowship program badly needs an overhaul and it's part of the reason we haven't been great at welcoming people and getting them invovled for a while now. I can't wait until it's complete and can be used to help make the most of the continuous crop of new nations joining our region every week. Punchwood - If we were to move onto your performance as Minister, what have you achieved this term? Seraph - I believe that the huge scope of the Ministry of Regional Affairs means that the Minister has to delegate a lot to those who have the expertise to get the job done. That said, I've used my own talents as much as I can, proofing and editing our journalism, writing the welcoming guide, doing a lot of writing for the RP side of Z Day to keep the atmosphere going. I also created the new Ministry Discord server and have personally been promoting it on the RMB and encouraging those who join to get involved and make the most of their talents. It's a real joy to see these newer players (bearing in mind that I'm hardly a veteran myself) spreading their wings with new projects and finding the things they like to do. There's more, but the job is such a mix of larger planning and co-ordinating and little nudges here and there that those smaller things are harder for me to catalogue. I'd like to have seen my efforts achieve more in the way of new players involved, but it's still relatively early days and I'm so pleased with the crop of players who have joined under my leadership and the work they've already put in to the Ministry. Punchwood - Your campaign in the October elections talked more about giving other people seniority rather than you yourself taking a leading role. Your answer would back that up. Is there not a risk here that you yourself will end up doing perhaps little in the Ministry while other do lots, but you are given the credit for it? Seraph - As someone passionate about Regional Affairs, I'm unlikely to end up 'doing little', but I understand your point. As far as I'm concerned, credit should go to those who have worked hardest. I think that attitude comes across in my summary of the ministry activity so far and I fully intend to make sure that remains the case. If the region credits those things to me, i'll defer them. To put it another way, I see a fundamental sign of success of this term being that there's someone else, or several someone's able to stand at the next election for this position. The Ministry is, after all, fundamentally about building people up in the region and giving credit where it's due is a big part of that. Punchwood - Does that mean that you won't be running for re-election? Seraph - I honestly don't know. There's still a lot of time to pass before the term is over and I'm not sure how I'll be feeling at the end of it. If I do stand again I think I would probably want to take a break after a second term (if I was even successful). I really love this job, but there's no denying it can be stressful at times and take a lot of time out of real life stuff to do well. Besides, I've read a lot of complaints from the Regional Message Board about the same people standing again and again and getting re-elected and whilst I am currently an example of how this really isn't the case at all, I wouldn't want to find myself proving those complaints right in the future. It's not what I'm here for. Punchwood - Could you see yourself running for Prime Minister or even Delegate in the future? Seraph - When I started in the region I said that I would probably never run for high office. Now, with more experience under my belt, I'm not so sure. If I thought I could do a good job and add something to the region in one of those roles, then yes, I would give it a try. At the moment, I'm just not sure that I'd be able to do a better job than others in the region. Punchwood - Well after those two potential political bombshells it's time to move onto questions sent in by residents. Our first question comes in from Land Without Shrimp who asks "What do you like to do in your free time...when you’re not writing elaborate back-story for Erinor!!" Seraph - So, my real life interests, perhaps unsurprisingly, have a fair amount of crossover with what I do here in NS. I read, I watch films and TV shows, write, play video games and generally revel in geeky stuff. I'm also quite involved in my church and I lead at a Bible study for international students at the local university. Actual free time is in short supply, however, as I have a three-year old daughter to fill up the hours with. Punchwood - Our second question is from Bjorktopia who asks "What is an etymology shark?" Seraph - My nation's pre-title (I'm The Etymology Shark of Erinor, for those of you who only know me on the forums, or Discord) comes from the fact that, when I first joined Discord, I used a picture of a shark for my avatar. People started calling me 'shark' and things like that, so I kept the motif through few other avatars (and indeed it's in the logo for the MoRA Discord server now). The other part comes from my love of linguistics and etymology and the number of conversations I've had on Discord about word origins (especially with Roavin). At some point I called myself everyone's favourite Etymology Shark or something like that and I decided it was just the sort of random thing that should go into a pre-title, so there you are. Long, dull story over! Punchwood - We now have a series of questions from Roavin. The first is “This is your first term in the Cabinet. How has that experience been so far?” Seraph - Well, the cabinet hasn't been particularly active or controversial so far, mainly because we haven't yet had a crisis or major event. It also helps that we get along pretty well and that, whilst we might have our disagreements, we're pretty calm about them. Beyond that, it's hard to say. I'll let you know when it gets stressful! Punchwood - "Do you see a potential source of regional activity that has yet to be tapped?" Seraph - I haven't really focussed on untapped sources of regional activity so much as poorly tapped sources. I want to expand on how we're getting people involved in all the areas we already have before looking for too many new things to pile on top of them. That said, I'm always open to new suggestions - there's even a suggestions box in the MoRA discord server (https://discord.gg/rBPjMJJ), so please, don't be shy! Punchwood - "What have you learned from Z-Day that, assuming you were MoRA then, you would do differently next year? What worked well?" Seraph - I think I mostly learned that I should never, ever be a military commander - in fact, as much as I believe there is a place for the MoRA in Z Day (setting the tone, etc.) I think it would be in the region's best interests to elect (or appoint) someone a month or so in advance specifically tasked with the role of running the actual operations of Z-Day. That way we get someone qualified and they have a good lead-up of time to prepare (I only really had a week). Punchwood – He finally asks an inevitable question: "Cake or Pie?" Seraph - As anyone who has spoken with me about this before will know, I'm an Independessert. I firmly believe in and will fight to defend the freedom of the individual to choose the dessert of their choice, be that cake, pie, ice cream or even meringue! Cakeitalists and the Pieletariat want you blinkered and confused, stuck in a narrow designation with no freedom to enjoy the diversity of sweet pleasures life affords us. I think that's wrong. Free the palate! Free the plate! Punchwood - Well that concludes our interview. Thank you to Seraph for agreeing to this interview and thank you to those of you at home for watching. Until next time, Goodnight! Disclaimer: this publication is the opinion of its author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Southern Journal or the Ministry of Regional Affairs. Europeian Ambassador to The South Pacific
Former Local Council Member Former Minister of Regional Affairs Former High Court Justice |
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