Weekly Briefing from the Prime Minister - 24/01/2023

[img]https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fc97f47ac-a22e-11eb-949b-ab1b919d4f89.jpg?crop=4000%2C2667%2C0%2C0[/img]
[center][color=blue][size=250][u]Downing Street Briefing Room[/u][/size]

[size=150][u][b]Weekly Briefing from the Prime Minister - Tuesday 24th January 2023[/b][/u][/color][/size]
[hr][b]At the Podium[/b]: The Right Honourable [b]Owen Stewart[/b] KCMH KBE PC / [nation]Huks Gares[/nation] [i]Prime Minister of the [region]United Kingdom[/region][/i][/center]

[b]Invited Guests[/b]: Klaus Mikaelson (BBC), Ulrich Bauheim (The Age), John Alexander and Akillian Talleyrand (The National Chronicle)

[b]All citizens of the United Kingdom are welcome to attend and ask questions[/b]

[hr]
[i][b]*The Prime Minister walks out on stage from behind the dividing wall and takes his place behind the centre podium*[/b][/i]

"Good Afternoon Everyone,

Welcome to the Briefing Room here at 10 Downing Street and to the Prime Ministerial Briefing.

To begin this briefing, I would like to re-iterate my welcome to Klaus Mikaelson who has joined HM Government as Foreign Secretary. In the short time since his appointment, Klaus has jumped straight in and really hit the ground running, so I am really looking forward to seeing what he can accomplish going forward for the remainder of term.

As well as this, I would like to briefly talk about our nation count. As I spoke about last week, our nation count has taken quite a hit in the last couple of weeks, with us losing over 100 nations. However, with the tireless work of the Home Office, we have been able to stabilise our nation count, with it starting to increase again, which has been a really positive thing. Over the remainder of the term, myself and the Home Office will be keeping a close eye on our nation count, and continue to push the manual recruiting work, which will be vital for continuing our growth in this regard. If you want to get involved in the manual recruitment work, please take a look at our guide here.

Moving onto the departmental updates, we shall start with the Foreign Office. Since his appointment, Klaus has been working hard on our diplomatic relations, with the opening of a couple of new relationships, which will be announced by Klaus soon (as soon as ambassadors are confirmed). As well as this, he has been working closely with me on discussions with diplomatic partners abroad to continue the work that we have begun at the start of this term. Klaus has been amazing in this regard with helping me to steady the ship and continue the growth that our region wants to see. During discussions between Klaus and myself, we have also decided that the differentiation between consulates and embassies is no longer suitable or necessary, so we will be combining the two groups and just having one big group of embassies going forward. Apart from that, the Foreign Office is working hard on the drafting of a new edition of the Royal Messenger, which will continue to update our allies abroad on our work.

Next up, we have the Home Office, who have been working really hard throughout this term on many different projects. First up, we have the current Cabinet QnA with the Deputy Prime Minister. Yesterday saw the closing date for questions to be submitted, so Christoph is currently working through the questions, with the answers to be published later this week. The Home Secretary has also been working on improving transparency for the manual recruitment work. This has led to the creation of a recruitment tab on the Government spreadsheet, which will set out all of the stamps being used as well as the number of manual recruitment telegrams being sent out by citizens (when they submit their numbers). This is important because it allows everyone to see how our recruitment efforts are going, and allows us to keep track of what is working best. Alongside this spreadsheet, the Home Office has been working more generally on a number of issues relating to recruitment to ensure that our recruitment is as effective as possible. If you want to check out the rewards you can get for recruitment, please see here. HM Government would be particularly appreciative of any stamp donations that citizens are willing and able to make.

Moving on to the Culture Office, their work has been led so well by George Stewart. The first event of note from last week was the Winnie the Pooh avatar contest, led by Junior Minister Martynas Wright. After 5 submissions from citizens, and 24 hours of voting, Culture Secretary George Stewart was voted the winner (I promise it wasn't rigged). As well as the avatar contest, the Culture Office hosted a VC on Saturday, led by John Alexander, playing Jackbox games. It was great to see a large amount of people in VC again, and I hope we can see more of this in the future. I am also looking forward to tomorrows Burns Night celebrations for our Scottish citizens, so please keep an eye out for that and take part in the threads when they are posted.

Moving on to the Treasury, a lot of their work this week has been around following up on the new Budget measures around applications for economic grants and departmental budgets, as well as advising the Home Office on a number of things around their budget for manual recruitment rewards. As well as this, the Treasury is currently in the planning stages for the first NSUK Business Expo, a joint project by themselves and the Culture Office, to get more people talking about the economy and involved in businesses themselves. So keep a close eye out for more information on that being announced this week.

Finally, we have the World Assembly Affairs Office, who have been hard at work keeping themselves up to date on new WA resolutions being written, as well as those already in the queue, as creating polls for resolutions as appropriate. The WAA Office has also been working hard on the endorsement + WA voting reward programs that were set out in my election campaign, which should be completed in the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye of for that, and please take part and support the region when they are published.

As always, I am available to each and every one of you should you have any questions, ideas or concerns. Please drop me a telegram on NationStates to the [nation]UK Prime Minister[/nation] or [nation]Huks Gares[/nation] nations, on forum or via Discord Owen#8590. I hope everyone has a great week and I will now take any questions the media or citizens may have. Thank you."

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