New Britannic Cricketers Come to Alexandria

The Conseil d'Amélioration pour la Culture (CAC), or Council for Cultural Amelioration, has announced the first major sporting event to be hosted in Valenciennes.

It has been agreed with both the Emperor of Alexandria and the King of New Britannia, that there is to be a series of three 40-over One-Day International cricket matches and a Twenty20 cricket match contested between Valenciennes Province and the Britannic Sandwich Islands.

The schedule for the matches is as follows: 

• Weds 18th June - 1st One Day International (ODI) @ Edgardia, Valenciennes.
  
• Friday 20th June - 2nd ODI @ Vranscia, Valenciennes.
  
• Sunday 22nd June - 3rd ODI @ Franciscania, Valenciennes.
  
• Monday 23rd June - Twenty20 International @ Edgardia, Valenciennes.

There is a hope that the event will be well supported, not just within the Province, but also across the Empire and in New Britannia too. We hope that this will be the start of a much warmer relationship, again, not just between our Province and the Britannic Sandwich Islands, but also both Empires.

In the meantime, Valenciennes are constructing a list of names for the teamsheet. Anyone interested in having their name added to list, should visit the thread at http://www.valenciennes.tk.

If you need to know more about cricket, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket.

Visit Valenciennes

Dis-organising Resolution

The "Organizing Resolution", a relatively simple piece of legal documentation that allows the Imperial Parliament to start work. It requires the Speaker to declare who the leader of the majority is, who the leader of the minority is and also who the speaker for the next session is to be.

Despite the relative simplicity this process, the parliament is currently making a rather large meal out of the process. Instead of pro-activity, typical ACP-AAP niggling has taken over. At a time when the Empire really needs the Parliament to step up to the plate and be active in the real Parliamentary sense of the word, that is getting things done, they choose to stall over who should be the speaker.

Pete James (AAP) has but himself forward, a refreshing change perhaps following what seems like the interminable stewardship of Matthieu Poiters (ACP)? Apparently not. James has been accused of being a dictator by Jose Frias (ACP):

in the times that he has been speaker, he has treated the speakership as a dictatorship, threatening to throw out bills left and right, especially targeted were conservative bills.

James responded by declaring that he had always been fair and impartial. Adding to this he stated that:

The Speakership of Mssr. Poitiers has proved to be inefficient and lead to inactivity, and emergency elections.

In a certain ironic twist, John Carmichael (AAP), was quick to point out that the version of the Organising Resolution that the current Speaker, Poiters, has posted contained errors. He remarked: n discussing this resolution,

I would like to state firstly that my name is spelt wrong. Secondly, my party ceased to exist under the name of the Alexandrian Anti-Party for a number of Parliaments now.

I think that a lot of what this situation comes down to is that Poiters fears the loss of his position - perhaps the loss of the speakership will expose his weaknesses as a Parliamentarian? Equally, the AAP suffers from a substantial amount of jealousy over the amount of power the ACP effortlessly manage to retain from Parliament to Parliament - so are they trying to gain a more solid foothold in a Parliament that seems unwilling to grant them such a luxury?

One thing is for sure, they need to stop the backbiting and stop dredging up insignificant facts from the past and get this resolution passed once and for all.