Your elected official at work....

Assignment 4-Satire.

In August of this year it was discovered that all constituent inquiries are to be routed through the political staff of the ruling party. The Government maintains that this is nothing new and that it is simply a matter to expedite the process. If, for instance, a constituent were to ask a question of their elected member, and the elected member then were to reach out to the government department responsible on behalf of the constituent, the department contacted would then further the details of the inquiry to the government for the edification of the cabinet minister involved. Thus insuring that the constituent, who was thus far anonymous is now adequately identified and their problem laid bare for the cabinet minister in charge to either agree or disagree as they see fit and therefore resolve the issue without doubt.

It’s all really simple you see, and to cut the amount of red tape involved the elected official should bring the constituents complaint directly to the cabinet minister in charge or rather to the bureaucratic aide to the cabinet minister in charge, who would then pass it along to the bureaucratic aide of the Premier Minister and a decision can then be rendered. What could be better for seeking a top down decision? In order to further expedite the process the constituent can contact their elected member who would then run at full speed to the nearest bureaucratic aide to the cabinet minister and forcefully encourage the aide to further this along to the Premier Ministers aide so a decision can be rendered.

This should in no way affect the democratic process however when voting one might consider electing the fastest candidate rather then one simply there for the good of the people. The voting electorate may also look at a candidate’s ability to “wheedle” and “finagle” to insure their inquiries receive the utmost attention from the bureaucratic aides. Should privacy be a concern you need only rest assured that the elected official, members of the ruling party and several dozen aides de camp would be the only ones to hear of the issue. Besides said the Premier Minister of the ruling party “this is only a policy not a law, a simple policy to insure that if a constituent has an issue with government the government will hear about it.” (Note: The policy, if broken, is punishable by fines or imprisonment). In an effort to assuage all fear the Premier Minister then stated, “Your democratic rights are perfectly safe, I just felt it would work better with one person to administer them.” 

Assignment 3-The Devils Advocate.

     I chose to change my research topic mid stream and left American Politics for the somewhat innocuous idea of what killed the video store. What comes to mind immediately is that the digital age killed the video store but some areas that were not fully understood was primarily what video store? It is true to say that there are far fewer neighbourhood video stores but the most noticeable absence in the video store market is the lack of blue. Blockbusters blue signage that adorned almost every mini mall and big box shopping centre has disappeared entirely and not all because of the so called direct to viewer revolution. They lost to Netflix. They could not change fast enough to compete with the Netflix model. Netflix themselves could not even compete with their own model as they have tried to reinvent themselves and lost the mail order movie rental market and their streaming video is mostly unpalatable oldies you can see on Turner Classics 8 days a week.
     That Blockbuster lost to Netflix is a given, but the collateral damage in that war of rentals saw the loss of the neighbourhood video store, the convenience store that had a room on the side for movies, the ability to view, on one wall, a thousand titles and to rent a new release for the low, low price of 5 bucks. Sure the digital age provided a lot of competition, but it was the model itself that could not hold. Now the movie studios and distributors have a new model, they just sell you the movie at Walmart or Amazon at 30.00 dollars a crack, no license fees, no fee's per views ratios just direct to consumer. No muss, no fuss, you buy it you own it and the studio get a good slice of the revenue. It will be tough to move them off this position and with streaming video still a quagmire of who should pay who for what I do not think we will ever see a resurgence of the mom and pop video rental store or have the ease of legal access to a new release when Blockbuster had a hundred copies on the wall.