LEX.D.2.10.4. Talossa.com and Kingdomoftalossa.net are the property of the government and shall be run by the ministry of STUFF.


Upon my appointment as Minister of STUFF, and following discussions held with the Seneschal, I opened a dialogue with King John to discuss the Kingdoms' web domain assets.  The domain kingdomoftalossa.net is hosted on a webhost account in the name of the king, and not in the name of the Talossan Web Registrant, who is an officer of the Ministry of STUFF, and who should currently be the named agent on all web domains owned and operated by the government.  To achieve full compliance with statutory law, the domain kingdomoftalossa.net needs to be transferred from the King's old webhost account to the webhost account held in trust by the Talossan Web Registrant, who is currently Istefan Perþonest.  This account is currently also where Talossa.com and all related subdomains is hosted.

The Seneschal actually has access to the old webhost account.  Legally, the Seneschal could initiate the domain transfer unilaterally without even consulting with the King.  However, we felt that a having a conversation with the King and have him work with us would have been the better action to take.  And, so, I began my aforementioned dialogue with the King.

El Lexhatx only explicitly mentions the domains of talossa.com and kingdomoftalossa.net, but in conversation with the King it was discovered that other domain names are also held in his name.  These are kingdomoftalossa.org, kingdomoftalossa.com, talossa.net and talossan.com.  The king agreed that all these domains should be transferred to government control.

About a month has passed since I last heard from the King on this matter.  Several communications with the King have since gone unanswered.  Today, the King has named a Regent to act in his name.  I would ask the Regent to help me complete the required tasks, however, I fear that the Regent will be unable to do so as he probably has not been given access to the webhost accounts in question.

The King has left me in the difficult position of being in legal limbo on this.  The domains controlled by the government must be in the name of the officer of my Ministry, but I am unable to achieve compliance with the law until the domain transfer is complete.  This leads me to making the decision that I shall press ahead without further communication with or action of the King.

Therefore, I, as Minister of STUFF, hereby make the executive decision to initiate the domain transfer procedure and request that the Seneschal accesses the account of the old webhost and forwards to my office the domain transfer epp code (aka domain transfer auth code, aka domain transfer authorisation code).



Tagging:
@Miestră Schivă, UrN  - Seneschal
@King John
@Sir Alexandreu Davinescu - Regent

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on October 13, 2020, 12:27:12 PM
Honestly parliamentary supremacy is probably one of the worst concepts of the British political system. It basically means everything is ad hoc, and the only thing that prevents abuse on a massive scale is either precedent (which can always be disregarded since Parliament is supreme) or the good will of every actor involved. It's a recipe for disaster.

The alternative being that you end up restricted by a document written a couple of hundred years ago in a different age with different needs and without foresight of what the future may bring.  I have a lot of problems with Westminster, but the ad hoc and pragmatic nature of British constitutional affairs is not one of them.

Quote from: Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on October 13, 2020, 05:43:36 AM

Quote from: Eðo Grischun on October 12, 2020, 10:52:16 PM

Quote from: Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on October 12, 2020, 09:14:09 PM
Any party with a majority in the Ziu and any province can create themselves a friendly Senats seats whenever they please.  A simple act of the Ziu creates a new province from the existing one and assigns whatever specific citizens they want, however they please (as long as it includes one active person and nine other citizens).  Theoretically this could be done multiple times, in fact, if there are enough citizens available -- but I think only Benito could actually do it more than once right now (yielded two new ten-person provinces and one four-person province).  As far as I can tell, there is nothing to prevent this.  It's actually a significant danger, since any majority in the Ziu is going to command a majority in at least a couple of provinces, and two Senats votes would be a big deal.

I'll bite on this one for academic debate.

Isn't everything you wrote in the quoted statement just democracy?

A party with a majority in parliament would have been democratically elected, so as long as it's actions are not inOrganic and also fall within the Organic powers vested in VII.3 then the governing party can pretty much do whatever it likes*.  That's just parliamentary democracy. 

If a government then chooses to carry out the actions you write about above, they could only do it following ratification from the original province.  The Ziu can only create new provinces, from OrgLaw, "such that the sovereignty and territory of any extant Province is not altered without the consent of that Province".  So, a referendum would need to be held.  Again, this is democracy.

For the events in your example to occur and reach conclusion, then a party would need to first convince the electorate to democratically elect them into majority to form a government, followed by the Ziu passing legislation in line with the Organic Law, followed by a democratic ratification from the original province, simultaneously with the democratic proclamation of the people forming the citizenry of the new province(s).  This is all just democracy.

The "friendly Senator" is just an incidental by-product, and it would probably be temporary as there would be no guarantee for the governing party that the Senate seat would remain in their control beyond the next election.

Sure, it's all democracy in the sense that a party must win a majority in the Ziu at least once to be able to do this, but it's clearly not an intended feature of the system.  It could be done in one Clark, and it's not clear to me that there's any requirement at all for provincial referenda.  You'd just need the government of a province, then you could carve out a new province from the old one and have the old one's government approve the deal.  One hiccup does occur to me -- this would alter the composition of the Senats, so it would maybe need to actually pass one high bar before this would work.  Hmm, so this one might actually not be a problem, thanks to that feature of the OrgLaw.

You're using words like 'problem'.  I'm asserting that it isn't a problem at all.  What I'm arguing is that the Ziu should be able to do all this and for it not to be an issue.  Again, this is the constitutional United States perspectives smashing up against Westminster parliamentary perspectives.  I am arguing that the actual "problem" is that the OrgLaw makes things difficult for the Ziu to do what it wants, but I say that from a point of view where parliamentary supremacy is more important to me than being tied to a rigid written constitution.

***

Quoteit's not clear to me that there's any requirement at all for provincial referenda.

The OrgLaw literally says "such that the sovereignty and territory of any extant Province is not altered without the consent of that Province".  Yes, it could be argued that that line can be interpreted to mean 'not altered without the consent of that province's executive assembly", but I think the nature of the provinces, the spirit of the OrgLaw and all prior convention pretty much makes a referendum necessary.  I would trust that the Court would also think the same.

Quote from: Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on October 12, 2020, 09:14:09 PM
Any party with a majority in the Ziu and any province can create themselves a friendly Senats seats whenever they please.  A simple act of the Ziu creates a new province from the existing one and assigns whatever specific citizens they want, however they please (as long as it includes one active person and nine other citizens).  Theoretically this could be done multiple times, in fact, if there are enough citizens available -- but I think only Benito could actually do it more than once right now (yielded two new ten-person provinces and one four-person province).  As far as I can tell, there is nothing to prevent this.  It's actually a significant danger, since any majority in the Ziu is going to command a majority in at least a couple of provinces, and two Senats votes would be a big deal.

I'll bite on this one for academic debate.

Isn't everything you wrote in the quoted statement just democracy?

A party with a majority in parliament would have been democratically elected, so as long as it's actions are not inOrganic and also fall within the Organic powers vested in VII.3 then the governing party can pretty much do whatever it likes*.  That's just parliamentary democracy. 

If a government then chooses to carry out the actions you write about above, they could only do it following ratification from the original province.  The Ziu can only create new provinces, from OrgLaw, "such that the sovereignty and territory of any extant Province is not altered without the consent of that Province".  So, a referendum would need to be held.  Again, this is democracy.

For the events in your example to occur and reach conclusion, then a party would need to first convince the electorate to democratically elect them into majority to form a government, followed by the Ziu passing legislation in line with the Organic Law, followed by a democratic ratification from the original province, simultaneously with the democratic proclamation of the people forming the citizenry of the new province(s).  This is all just democracy.

The "friendly Senator" is just an incidental by-product, and it would probably be temporary as there would be no guarantee for the governing party that the Senate seat would remain in their control beyond the next election.


*Talossa's parliamentary system doesn't explicitly include the concept of imperative mandate.  In fact, it's not even an implied concept bound by protocol or tradition.  The concept just doesn't exist within our systems.  Sometimes, and only sometimes, we have seen members of the Ziu mention the term 'mandate', including myself, however, it holds no real legal basis in Talossa.  A government can legally do whatever it likes and pass all kinds of laws even if they never campaigned on that issue in the previous election.  This all may be an accidental result of Talossa's somewhat odd system where American influenced federal aspects, and concepts like elected bicameralism, smash together with concepts of parliamentarianism, and also that the parliamentary system in Talossa is actually pretty, pretty weak and has many major parliamentary concepts missing.  Some may argue this is by design.  Again, probably a result of American influences, such as the very strong desire for constitutional supremacy over parliamentary sovereignty (in a Talossan context, the OrgLaw being superior to the Ziu). 


***


This does make me think about another related point which has always had me feeling uneasy, by the way.  You are correct that it is somewhat easy not difficult not impossible for the Ziu to change the composition of the provinces.  However, at the same time, the provinces themselves are entirely disallowed to secede from the nation (or any territorial subdivision for that matter).  But, the provinces are also supposed to be Sovereign and autonomous at the same time.   This has never made a whole lot of sense to me; nor does it sit right with my personal ideological stances (anyone who knows my macro-national political views wouldn't be too surprised at this).

The provinces find themselves trapped within a quasi-federal union in which they are not allowed to leave.  It is inOrganic for them to even attempt to secede, while simultaneously having the Organic status of being "inherently Sovereign and autonomous". 

Org.IX.10 has similarities to Scotland's situation with requiring Westminster's permission to ask ourselves questions about our own self determination, and also with Catalonia's situation where they are constitutionally barred from same.  It also doesn't jibe well with Talossa's own spirit of self secession.

The Crown's obstructionism and non-feasance is now preventing my Ministry from completing work on governmental projects, not to mention preventing the Ministry from ensuring compliance with the law (LEX.D.2.10)

I last heard from the King on the matter that we were dealing with just over two weeks ago.  Within the last fortnight I have sent the King two emails, plus he has been contacted via sms text direct to his phone.  These points of contact have yet to yield so much as confirmation of receipt.  As a result, my Ministry is now in limbo on the particular matter at hand.  I cannot move forward with the project and I am currently, technically legally, in breach of the law because I cannot bring the current status of our webdomains to be in line with what El LEX demands without his action.

Seriously, at what point is enough actually going to be enough?  It's no longer just a matter of the King failing to perform his own duties and damaging his own office; he is now preventing a governmental minister from performing their duty and potentially damaging the office of someone other than himself.

This is not on!

I, hereby, publicly demand that @King John responds to my communications immediately else I will begin legal action to seek remedy.

Bump

M-M and Cezembre, please?

9/20 Caption:

The Secretary of State reacts to the volume of Bills being piled onto the first Clark of the new Cosa session!

Attached:  Example of Ministry page with it's "entangled" Wiki infobox

Interesting conversations happening here!

Bumping this.  If you haven't taken part in the survey yet, please do so now! 
There are some really interesting results coming in! 
Make sure your voice and opinions are heard!

TAKE THE NATIONAL SURVEY HERE

A major update to the Talossa.com site has been implemented which "quantumly entangles" it with the TalossaWiki. 

This is fracking cool!

A number of pages on the website have had some code added to them that links those pages to data on the Wiki.  This means when something changes on the Wiki then the associated page on Talossa.com will automatically get updated with that change without the need for any further human interaction.  This will prevent certain webpages falling out of date and will also reduce the amount of work required by future Ministers of STUFF or Website PermSecs.

Phase one of this project is complete, which sees all the Cabinet Ministry pages on Talossa.com now having a "quantum link" to the Ministry pages on the Wiki.  The 'sidebar infobox' for each Ministry from each relevant Wiki page now appears on the respective website pages of Talossa.com and whenever the information within that box changes on the Wiki (such as a new office holder being appointed) the change will instantly and automatically reflect on the main website pages without any further human interaction!

These pages on Talossa.com are now 'timeless'


Additionally, The pages on Talossa.com for the OrgLaw and El Lexhatx have had the same treatment.  These pages now contain a "reference copy" of the law, which, again, is "quantumly entangled" to it's respective Wiki page.  Whenever the Scribe of Abbavilla updates the OrgLaw and LEX on the Wiki then the pages on Talossa.com for the OrgLaw and LEX will update themselves with those changes in real time!  How freakin' cool is that?


The next step in this project will be to do the same with the Civil Service pages (Secretary of State, Scribe, Archivist, et al.) and then do a deep dive and identify any other pages where this system could work and do it there too. 

This is a major leap forward for our website and helps future proof it so that the information contained on it is less likely to fall out of date, and it reduces the overall number of pages that require a manual update whenever a change happens.




***

Other changes to the website that have been made recently:

1 - A page redesign has happened on all the pages where the new "quantum" system has been added.  This redesign has amended the layout a bit to make things fit together better and to also bring some uniformity to the pages (before this change, the Ministry pages all looked wildly different from each other).

2 - A "contact us" page has been created and added to the main menubar.  This new page lists the public @talossa.com emails for the chief offices of State and Government.  (Credit for this goes to the new PermSec for WebMonkey Business, @Adam Grigoriu )

3 - The top menu bar and page-tree structure (or sitemap) has been changed a little.  This is primarily to ensure that there is room for things to fit nice and neat.  The changes made here are:
3.1 - The menu items "The King" and "The Realm" have been merged into a single menu item "King & Country".  Within that menu item the 2 previous items of "The King" and "The Realm" now appear as sub-items.
3.2 -  A new menu item titled "Law" has been created and within that you will find "The Judiciary" (which has been moved there from the "Government" menu item) and also the pages for OrgLaw and LEX.
3.3 - The aforementioned "Contacts" page had been added to the menu.

4 - The Pages for "The King" and "King John" have been merged into one single page.  There was very little benefit to having them be separate and the only reason things were like that was that it was a hangover from the transfer from the old KoT.net site.  So, now those pages are one single page, with a bit of a layout redesign, and things looks a bit neater.

5 - The page for "History of the Monarchy" has had the layout design updated to look a bit nicer and also a lot of the content text has been edited to read more like an informative articles and less like the copy and paste mess that much of it read like before.  Some bias was removed and some present tense passages (related to King John) made to be past tense.

Shall we open a book on this? Who's good at working out bookie odds?

Quote from: Eiric S. Bornatfiglheu on October 06, 2020, 06:39:07 PM
That's probably a pretty good idea, yeah.

Will do later in week.  Really busy trying to make some ends meet right now in the macro.  2020 can go do one.

¡Azul, citaxhiên da Talossa!

The Prime Ministry of the Kingdom of Talossa is reaching out to all citizens to get feedback on what they think of Talossa at the moment; how much they are involved; and how it could be improved.

Your answers to this survey will be anonymous and will greatly help the current Government improve Talossa for all its citizens.

We will leave it open for ONE MONTH so you can have a good think about this. Thank you for your patriotic contribution.

Click here for the National Survey

restéu voastrâ,

Miestrâ Schivâ, Seneschal (Prime Minister)
and
Éovart Grischun, Distain (Deputy Prime Minister)

Quote from: Eiric S. Bornatfiglheu on October 01, 2020, 07:58:50 PM
As the Interim Capitan of the Zuavs, and consistent with the standards of my predecessor, is to ask to join.  The first inquiry entitles one to the title of Private, and a membership in the Zuavs.  Further ranks are more involved.

Ok. Cool.  For the purposes of having a specific way for people to join that I can put on a flyer or advert would it be helpful if I created a new mailbox for you? Something like Zuavs@Talossa.com and set it to forward to your regular inbox?

As stated in the FreeDem platform and in line with the mandate we achieved in the recent election, the coalition government will be conducting a second National Survey to gain valuable insights in regards to "activity" in Talossa.  The survey has now moved out of its drafting phase and we will be going live with this on October 1st.

Links to the survey software will be published on Oct 1st on Wittenberg and on our official social media channels, and will also be sent out by email to all citizens via the Chancery's systems.

We have decided to pre-release the content of this edition of the National Survey so that everyone can have a think about how they will answer and to invite feedback and suggestions before final release.  Please do not post your answers to the questions just yet; rather, please wait for the survey to go live.  Likewise, please refrain from starting conversations and debates on any issues raised until the survey has taken place. 

If you have suggestions for any more questions that you would like to see in the survey or any comments on the existing questions, then please get in touch with myself either by sending me a Witt PM or by email at stuff@talossa.com or if you prefer you can post such comments here in this public consultation thread.



The questions that we intend to include in the upcoming survey are as follows:

1. How often do you check the Wittenberg discussion forum?

2. Over the last 5 years, has the amount of time you spend on Talossa increased, decreased or stayed the same?

3. If the time you spend on Talossa has decreased over the past 5 years, what reasons would you give for that?

4. Do you think that more interaction between Talossans should take place Off Wittenberg?

5. Which of the following options would you be interested in seeing more of in regards to Talossan interaction?  (Tick all that apply)
(possible answers for Q5: Social Media, Emails, Live chat rooms, Teleconferencing, Physical Meetups)

6. When prospective citizens apply for citizenship, do you greet them, ask them questions about themselves or otherwise engage with them during their immigration period?

7. Please give any more detail about your answer to the previous question, including what could be done to encourage you to engage with prospective citizens more, if anything.

8. Do you think that Talossa as a nation and a community is healthier, less healthy, or about the same as it was a year ago? (By "healthy" we mean enjoyable and attractive to participate in).

9. Which of the following would increase your interest in learning/using the Talossan language? (tick all that apply)
(Possible answers for Q9: (a) More or better learning materials for absolute beginners. (b) More literature, poetry, videos or songs in Talossan (whether original or translated). (c) More discussion on Wittenberg (or elsewhere) in the Talossan language. (d) More of the business of Government (including law-making) carried out in Talossan. (e) None of the above.)

10. Do you think Talossa would benefit from a fully rewritten new Organic Law?

11. Does the current level of impoliteness/nastiness in Talossan conversations discourage you from participating?

12. Do you have any other comments on Talossa, or suggestions on what could be done to improve citizen involvement?


Many thanks.