TalossaWiki is currently non-functional due to some kind of error with its extensions which I cannot make head nor tail of, and neither can the rest of the Government. We hope @our national webmonkey will be able to pop in sometime soon.

The Free Democrats will be going into the next election on a platform of having a Senäts Committee agree on a compromise proposal for reform of the Ziu and the electoral systems of its two houses. Notwithstanding this, we would like to suggest for consideration a new format for a "Real Cosa", as existed in Talossa 1997-2002. I have @MPF to thank for the inspiration here.

The essential points would be:

• A "circular" party list. Seats would now be allocated automatically by the SoS, one each to every candidate on the list, in order, and when the list comes to an end, it begins again from the beginning. Example: a party which has 5 members on the list but wins 8 seats would end up giving 2 seats to the first 3 people on the list, and 1 to everyone else.
• The current "1/3 allocations off list" would be changed to "a party may add 1/3 extra members, rounded up, to its list after the election". If your original list had 5 people on it you could add another 2 later. If you only had 1 person on your list, you could only add 1 later.
• Existing provisions barring MCs from individually holding more than x% of the Cosa would still exist, meaning there would be a limit to how many seats could be held by a 1-person party.
• Seats would be allocated by a rounding system known as Webster/Sainte-Laguë, which benefits smaller parties.
• The basic idea is for a 20 seat Cosa, which would mean that - based on the votes from the last election - a party would need at least 3 votes to win any Cosa seats. If this threshold is considered to stringent, the model would work well with more MCs. If one or more parties were "tied" for the last seat, they would all get a seat and thus the Cosa would be slightly expanded.

Based on this, the results of the last election would have been: FreeDems 8 seats, AMP 5, ZPT 3, PNP 3, NPW 1, MTGA 0. I can recalculate it for a larger Cosa if anyone's interested.

What do you think, sirs?

In an otherwise impressive display of the art known in our national language as nas-bråneu, the Senator from Maricopa made a shocking accusation:

QuoteHad it not been for a sudden busy life with work and 3 kids coupled with some very unfortunate incidents caused by some wily Talossan(s) who tried to invade his personal life and create havoc, we wouldn't have to see a situation when our great AD looked at the Witt once in a while. In fact there should be a ban on such individuals from joining Talossa later as 'returning citizens'.

To whom is the Senator referring here? I'm pretty sure I know the incident to which he is referring (which targeted Admiral Timoþeu Asmorescu as well as Sir AD), but who is the "Talossan(s)" he believes to be the culprit?

WHEREAS Organic Law VIII.1 states:

QuoteThe justices of the Cort pü Inalt and the judges of any inferior courts shall hold their offices for life (or until resignation), but may be removed by either a two-thirds vote in the Cosa with approval by the King and the Senäts or due to inactivity as defined by law.

(emphasis added);

and WHEREAS "inactivity" re: the CpI is nowhere defined by law at the moment:

BE IT ENACTED by the King, Cosă and Senäts in Ziu assembled that:

1. The following section shall be added to Title G of El Lexhatx:

QuoteA Justice of the Cort pü Inalt shall be declared inactive, and to have vacated their seat, within the meaning of Organic Law VIII.1 if the Clerk of Courts, contacting the members of the CpI to assign a case as described in El Lexhatx G.5.3, is unable to contact that Justice or does not receive any response to their enquiries, within 30 days.

2. The following amendment shall be made to El Lexhatx G.7.1:

QuoteJustices (or Judges) may be compelled to retire through organic removal from office through an act of the Ziu in accordance with Article XVI VIII Section 1 of the Organic Law. In such case, the Ziu shall stipulate whether the removal is punitive in nature or simply to compel retirement. In either case, such measure shall include a clear and objective narrative which highlights the misconduct or negligence which resulted in a punitive removal from office, or the merits and career highlights of a retired Jurist, respectively.

WHEREAS a novel strain of Coronavirus, known as Covid-19, has spread globally, resulting in an ongoing pandemic, and

WHEREAS the effects of this pandemic are impacting every living soul on the planet, and

WHEREAS governments around the world have taken measures to protect and to help their citizens including unprecedented measures to help them financially in as far as practicably possible, and

WHEREAS the government of Talossa recognizes that we, too, share that same responsibility to help our own citizens in times of peril, and

WHEREAS the government has analysed the state of the Treasury and has taken into account estimations of projected income and expenditure for the next two years, and

WHEREAS the government, in group conscience, has achieved achieved consensus on the following, so

THEREFORE be it resolved that:

A financial assistance fund of US$480 shall be made available for the benefit of Talossan citizens who may find themselves suffering from financial difficulty as a result of events related to the pandemic of Covid-19.

Talossan citizens may apply for financial grants and loans from this fund by making an application to the Ministry of Finance. Any loans awarded from this fund shall be zero interest. The Ministry of Finance shall, as far as practicable, obtain evidence or supporting documents when processing applications, such as proof of illness, proof of loss of income or evidence of financial hardship.

Payments from the fund shall be administered by the Burgermeister of the Inland Revenue. The Burgermeister shall release monies from the fund to citizens via whichever methods are most practicable. The Burgermeister shall release monies from the fund upon authorization from the Minister of Finance with the assent of the Prime Minister. The Burgermeister shall not release any monies without authorization from the Minister of Finance with the assent of the Prime Minister. Each individual release of monies requires the authorization of the Minister of Finance with the assent of the Prime Minister.

===

His Majesty the King has already consented to this PD by email.

I quote the response of the Senator from Maricopa to the latest Clark, in respect of the Non-Hereditary Monarchy Amendment:

QuoteThe day is not far when the present government will try to turn this country into a Republic. Reunison destroyed the Constitutional fabric of the Nation.

A few comments:

1) the present Government includes two monarchist parties and one party which is agnostic on the issue, so no it won't.

2) the Free Democrats will not attempt to found a New Republic - or to make serious amendments to the powers of the monarchy - without prior authorization in a referendum.

3) of the 19 current MZs, only 4 of them came in with Reunision. If ideas of democracy and limits to monarchical power have now won a broad majority among Talossans, it's surely due to the power of the ideas and not by "real, royal Talossa" being swamped by dangerous immigrants. I should also note that, for example, I, GV and MPF were veterans of Talossan politics while the Senator from Maricopa was in short pants.

4) if Reunision was a mistake, then the mistake lies with His Majesty, Lord Hooligan and other leaders of Talossan monarchism who happily invited the Republicans back in, perhaps wrongly thinking that Reunision meant the final defeat of Talossan Republicanism. Blame those guys, BenArd. Or you can perhaps blame Talossan monarchists in general, who let the RUMP wither away, wasted their votes on the stillborn ZPT, and haven't been able to re-organise themselves in the current Cosa.

So does anyone want to run Fiovă's provincial government for the next year?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Bueller?

I'll make this brief but bold.

Any suggestions as to what important Talossan text needs to be translated into our national language first?

¡Azul!

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that @Cresti d.I Nouacastra has submitted his resignation as Attorney-General. Cxhn. Nouacastra is currently helping staff a hospital in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has had to (rightly) prioritise that over his Talossan duties.

After consultation with the Cabinet, I have nominated Senator @Açafat dal Val as the new Attorney-General, and he has graciously accepted.

The Cabinet is aware that at least one Talossan citizen is living with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in their close family. We don't know how many others might be "suffering in silence" - who knows how many of us might not be participating in Talossa at the moment because they're ill, or worse.

Therefore the Government aims to set up a fund from our national reserves to support Talossans suffering from the COVID emergency. We are in discussions with the Burgermeister of Internal Revenue as to how much funding we will make available in total, and what the provisions of such a fund could be.

If we claim to be a nation, or at least to be having fun acting like one, we must be supporting our citizens to the extent which we are capable.

Ha ha ha, he actually looked it up on l'Översteir :D

QuoteAzul from Talossa!

The Greater Talossan Area roughly overlaps with the East Side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but the Kingdom itself—founded in 1979, when 14-year-old Robert Ben Madison, first in a line of elected kings and queens, declared his bedroom a sovereign state—is one of the earliest and most successful examples of a primarily online micronation, with more than a hundred active citizens around the world. Since 1995, Talossa has developed an elaborate government and culture, with a two-chamber legislature, cabinet ministers, political parties and its idiosyncratic invented language.

"We are like any other micronation out there in that what we do is very tongue-in-cheek and gives our participants a chance to make a difference in a unique societal framework," Talossian Jeffrey Ragsdale told Newsweek.

According to Talossan Prime Minister Daphne Lawless, Talossans haven't had an in-person meet up for several months, ensuring that "community transmission of COVID-19 in Talossa is zero."

"Talossans are pioneers at social distancing," Prime Minister Daphne Lawless told Newsweek, citing the exclusively online nature of their government and civic life. "For our Big Neighbour, the United States of America, I wish nothing but the best of health and welfare."

The Prime Minister ended our email correspondence with a Talossan proverb: "Voastra soleu ispéu da sürvivonçă, c'è despasar acest malignh crisomileu din la Casă Biancă."

Using their online lexicon, their proverb translates loosely to, "Your only hope for survival is to get rid of that orange goblin in the White House."

Dear friends of the Talossan language, please be present at the unveiling of the new Översteir, the online English-Talossan dictionary. Programmed by Talossa's official webmonkey, @Senator Lüc da Schir, it is now as fully functional as the previous model, and (importantly) it uses up-to-date spelling based on the SIGN "Provisional Rules".

Lüc adds:

QuoteThere's a little to do list,
- filtering the search on part of speech
- noun/adjective declination
- control panel for future Treisour changes / fixes
- voice synthesis (maybe?)
and there certainly are other things that may be requested (or me or Marcel couldn't think of)
but this as it stands is a fully usable replacement for old Översteir, with the new spelling to boot, which we can maintain and improve in the future
I will keep working on a beta version while the official Översteir is stable and untouched
And every time the stable Översteir is updated, I will publish the code of that version somewhere

(You know what I just thought of? Some day some real GIANT of linguistics will translate El Treisour into other languages... French? Esperanto? Quenya?)

¡Amusetz-voi ben!

1) It is with great regret that I announce the resignation of @Iac Marscheir as Ladintsch Naziunal. Cxhn. Marscheir is overloaded with work outside Talossa now (a silver lining to the COVID-19 cloud) and can no longer fulfil the duties of the role.

As Minister of Culture, I am making the decision to disestablish the Permanent Secretary role of Ladintsch Naziunal, and to assume the statutory duties of Ladintsch Naziunal (as set out in El Lexhatx 2.7.2) myself for the time being.

2) It is with excitement that I announce that Lord Hooligan has transmitted to SIGN the incomplete proofs of the Third Edition of Ün Guizua Compläts àl Glheþ Talossan. An informal SIGN committee is being set up to discuss completing the text, including updating the spelling to the new SIGN rules. Any volunteers for this committee, please contact myself or @the SIGN Convenor.

3) I've seen an alpha-test version of the new Översteir, and it's beautiful, if not fully functional yet. :D

I just found out that the Talossan word for a lost-and-found bureau is büreu d'anfladă. Curious about where the second element comes from, Google could only tell me (in German) that it's a Rumantsch word which means "finding", but only in the religious sense of the Discovery of the True Cross.

KR1 was pretty abstruse at times. Anyone got any funnier stories of Talossan etymology?

Is there any objection to continuing to use Hool's grammar as the official grammar endorsed by SIGN - after we bring its spelling up to date, of course? Or do we need to make changes to it?

(Me, I'm going to continue to use KR1's Scurzniă Gramatică from 1996-7 until such point as Hool makes his version available in digital format, but then I'm old-fashioned. Are there any serious differences?)

On OldWitt, the Senator from Florencia said:

QuoteI reiterate my earlier concerns. As much as this bill has good intentions, and as much as I support the principle which it tries to achieve, if it became law today then our OrgLaw and process would be a mess. This needs a rewrite, and it needs to come with simultaneous and complimentary changes to other sections of the OrgLaw and El Lexhatx.

Time to put up or shut up, Açafat: please let me know what amendments you require to the below.

===

WHEREAS the current Government agreed to submit various Organic Law reforms to the current Ziu, including a provision for the Seneschál to be nominated by the Cosa prior to appointment by the King;

AND WHEREAS the following seems the most likely procedure to enable this to happen;

BE IT ENACTED by the King, Cosa and Senäts of Talossa in Ziu assembled as follows

1. Organic Law VI.2, which currently reads:

QuoteThe King appoints the Seneschal. If a single party occupies a majority of the seats in the Cosa, the King shall choose as PM whichever individual shall be designated by that party. If no single party has a majority, the King shall appoint a Seneschal after consulting party leaders with the objective of finding a PM who can be sustained in subsequent Votes of Confidence by a majority of seats in the Cosa. The King must appoint a new Seneschal or announce the continuation of the incumbent in office within one month of the end of elections, or, if after one month no candidate can be appointed with the support of a Cosa majority, dissolve the Cosa after the first Clark and call for new elections.

shall be amended to read as follows:

QuoteThe King shall, on the nomination of the Cosa, appoint the Seneschál, before the beginning of the next Clark subsequent to their nomination.

The Cosa must nominate a Seneschál by the end of the first Clark of each Cosa, and by the end of the next Clark (if any) of each Cosa after the office of Seneschál shall become vacant as in VI.7 below. If this fails to happen, the King shall dissolve the Cosa and call for new elections.

2. The following new section shall be added to El Lexhatx, at the beginning of Title D, with following sections to be renumbered accordingly::

QuoteThe Cosa shall nominate the Seneschál under Organic Law VI.2 as follows.

1. At any time between the Election Deadline and the following Dissolution of the Cosa, any Member of the Cosa shall be empowered to publish and open for signatures a petition nominating an eligible person for the office of Seneschal.

2. Once a petition is published, any eligible Member of the Cosa shall be empowered to second the nomination by countersigning the petition in public.

3. Members may not second multiple nominations concurrently; if a Member wishes to support a different petition, he/she shall first publicly retract the earlier countersignature.

4. Following any number of petitions supporting the same candidate, being signed or counter-signed by members currently representing an absolute majority of seats in the Cosa, the candidate named in the petition(s) shall be presented to the King as the Cosa's nomination for Seneschál.

5. Petitions may not be carried over from one vacancy in the office of Seneschal to another. Once a Seneschal is nominated, all petitions shall be made moot.

Speech of the Seneschál, Miestra A. Schiva, in her capacity as President of the Free Democrats of Talossa to the Free Democrat Convention, March 2020/XVL

a) Who do we talk to to get a big banner on OldWitt saying "THIS FORUM IS NOW BEING CLOSED DOWN, PLEASE GO TO NEWWITT PLZ THNX"?

b) You could post to OldWitt on phones using Tapatalk. Any chance we can get some app to do that for NewWitt?

This is for the Cultural Development Secretary who's also our Talossaware guy: a guy in Wisconsin has written to me to ask to buy a flag. I've sent Iason Taiwos the details on Facebook because I don't have his email.

There has been a lot of stink raised by various people (usually people who were leaders of the defunct Moderate Radical Party, for some interesting reason) around members of Government parties deciding to Clark various bills that the first group of people have objections to. There seems to be an idea that they are not being "properly Hoppered" and it is somehow inappropriate to Clark them while certain people (some of whom aren't even members of the Ziu?) still have problems with them.

A couple of points:

1) I don't think that people who, in some cases, made a conscious withdrawal from Talossa's legislative politics have a real right to complain when those who have been elected make a note of their objections, and plough on anyway. For me, I welcome concerns and comments, especially polite ones, and I hope you've all seen that I do deal with them rather ignore them. But the questions I ask myself when Clarking a bill  are as follows:

- am I satisfied with it, given the comments of others?
- will it get the necessary majority?

Pleasing everybody with my bills is not a priority. Pleasing people who have strong objections with which I disagree, and who do not have a vote or political influence in the Ziu, is quite frankly "nice but inessential". If you are drawing the conclusion that if the people who have objections with the Government parties' agreed legislative project should make damn sure there is an effective party which represents their views in the next Cosa (and on lobbying Senators in the meantime), then damn right.

2) While we're speaking on influence and politeness the other day, several of my critics don't seem to have gotten the memo that comments which are phrased in aggressive, pugnacious and condescending manners are far less likely to be taken heed of. Or, to put it another way - I'm not REALLY predisposed to listen to your suggestions on legislation if you just called me an "asshat" in the OldWitt Shoutbox.

3) Current law on the Hopper states:

Quote from: el Lexhatx H.6No bill may be published in a Clark unless it has spent at least ten days in the Hopper as a legislative proposal, except according to H.6.1.

Some criticism has taken the form of criticising the proposers of bills for amending them quite soon before Clarking them - even if that amendment has come in response to criticism! Would these people prefer we change the law to read:

QuoteNo bill may be published in a Clark unless it has spent at least ten days unamended in the Hopper as a legislative proposal, except according to H.6.1.