E
xcuse us, this month, for indulging in a
diary that takes place in a world of
imagination so detached from our
present reality as to be almost
unthinkable. A parallel universe with
almost no links to the lived experience of anyone who
will ever read this magazine.This month, I’m going to be a politician. One who’s in it to
make his rich friends richer, and isn’t against grinding the
poor if it keeps foie gras on his table. His policies are
good, old-fashioned, common sense – none of this
namby-pamby ‘kinder, gentler, politics’ or political
correctness here. Oh no.
All political careers in Democracy 4 end with failure.
You either lose an election and are ejected from power by
the will of the people, or crumple to the ground following
the crack of an assassin’s rifle. It doesn’t look much,
particularly in a magazine feature that makes such great
use of screenshots, but plays out like a modern-day
Crusader Kings with less pope-eating. At least, I don’t
think you can eat the pope, but I’ll certainly do it if the
opportunity presents itself.
Election time, and I’ve chosen to rule Great Britain. I
come to power with a majority of 1 0%, and inherit a
well-functioning health service, low poverty, moderate
levels of education and unemployment, and reasonable
levels of crime from the corruption-riddled and
incompetent previous administration.
My approval level is huge among the poor, the retired
and, for some reason, socialists. I’m really unpopular
among the church-going community, who must have
heard about the pope thing, but this is more than
balanced out by my enormous popularity among
environmentalists. Did I make green promises during my
election campaign? Maybe, but they’re more like
guidelines anyway. Yes, it all looks positively utopian out
here on Airstrip One. Let’s break stuff.
Some circles on the game’s main screen represent your
policies, which you can shift, and others represent moreabstract concepts, such as GDP or respiratory disease.
Green icons mean something is going well, and red means
things are not so peachy. Lines between icons convey a
map of influences and relationships, with arrows on the
line moving faster when there’s a stronger relationship.
This latter subtlety isn’t going to come across well in
print, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.FAT CHANCE
Where to begin? Obesity! Bright red in the bottom left of
the screen, this seems like something I could sort out for
an easy, vote-winning victory. Its lines of influence come
from areas such as health policy (big, complicated, scary)and smaller things like car usage, which we’re all for; food
standards and labelling, which we’re against (unnecessary
red tape); and compulsory school sports, which are
character building. I didn’t get where I am today without
being forced to run miles in the rain by a sadistic games
master then involuntarily showered down afterwards.
Eventually I settle on free school meals as the cause of
the obesity epidemic, because they’re a really easy target
mainly used by the poor, who love me, and cutting them
saves me money. So bam! Funding slashed. Personal
responsibility reinforced. State interference curbed. Heh
heh heh oh yeah, this feels good.
Also in red on the other side of the screen is the
competitiveness of our economy. The lazy workers, it
seems, are too busy worrying about what they’re paid and
not about the value they’re producing for their bosses and
their shareholders. I suspect that if they had more of their
money taken from them in taxes then they might value it
more, so shift the tax burden away from corporate taxesMY APPROVALLEVEL IS HUGE
AMONG THE POOR, THE
RETIRED, ANDSOCIALISTS
and onto personal taxation. This will
be a new age of personal
responsibility, and if the workers
want a low-tax, high wage economy,
they’re damned well going to have to
work for it. There are no free rides
here. Unless you’re a CEO who
worked hard for their inherited
wealth, of course.
Finally, in order to promote
foreign investment into the country, I
gut competition law. Democracy uses
a system of ‘political capital’ to decide
how many things you can do, rather
like action points in an RPG, with the
size of the individual changes limited
by the effectiveness of your ministers.
If you’ve got enough capital and a
highly effective cabinet, you can do
anything, but ending up stranded
without either makes you useless as a
leader. I’ve run out for this cycle, so
it’s time for the quarterly report.
Prison overcrowding is, the report
says, a big problem. What could be
the common sense solution? I couldEXTRA LIFE
119
NOW PLAYING (^) IUPDATE (^) IMOD SPOTLIGHT (^) IHOW TO (^) I DIARY (^) I WHY I LOVE (^) IREINSTALL (^) IMUST PLAY
The poor. It’s not hard to have
had an ancestor on the right
side of the civil war, you know.
THE RULES
Old-fashioned
common sensepolicies.
A returnto personal
responsibility.
Rules apply to other
people, notme.