The Economist ~ Interview with Bernard75 and Operation Cleanup updates

Day 1,364, 13:56 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313


Dear friends,

Today I’m going to mix it up by releasing the first of my new interview series. With the media module becoming ever more dull and constrictive, a lot of people don’t get much in the way of international recognition. Many who are famous or notable in their own country might be unheard of in another. In an effort to bring the international community together, I’m going to interview a bunch of people I know from round the world, in the hope that we can all get to know each other a bit better.

First up we have Bernard75. I met him for the first time as an organiser in the ONE alliance, but before that he had served as a commander of two elite military units- GROM and Bluerose, as well as the first MoD of Belarus and as both MoFA and dMoD of his native Poland.



So to start off with an easy question, how did you come to join erepublik?
I read about it on a Polish football forum and joined Erep in early January 2010, when Poland had this huge babyboom and had 65k+ players for a few months.

Cool. What module interested you most when you first joined?
Obviously the military module, but I quickly discovered that as a noob I sucked at it. So the economic module was the obvious part. I started buying and selling houses wholesale when they were 20-45g 😮 and made a small fortune with it. Later I invested that cash into the early stages of ERX and made a shitload and I mean shitload, still living and fighting from that gold. 😉


Haha I guess you got out of ERX before everyone lost all their money then?
Yeah, since I had pretty good connections from the house trade I got out pretty cheap. Although I lost some cash like everybody did, when the Admins abandoned it. But as I said I made more than I lost 😉

So when you got a bit older and stronger, you got into the military module?
I know many older players hated v2, but that’s when i could finally catch up and i tanked hardcore. This was also the time when i changed from Perun to Grom, where i later became commander. Nowadays I’m pretty much only military module oriented. Battle hero hunting nonstop, a little sad with most of the strategy gone, but that is what admins made of it.

So becoming GROM leader was your first major step on your career in military command?
Yeah, i started as a foot soldier in Perun but became quickly bored there. I always wanted to join GROM as it was the elite unit in Poland. And when they finally accepted me i quickly rose thru the ranks as i had a lot of time back then. Actually I still spend way too much time on this game. 🙂

When were you dMoD and MoFA of Poland? What was it like being in a high position like that?
It was an exciting time and i enjoyed most of it, but to be honest i hate politics and have fully retired from it.
 
What is politics like in Poland? To parties have much difference between them?
There are basically 3 parties in Poland and since its such a big and gridlocked system there isn’t much difference between them. I wouldn't even be surprised if they rotate presidents on a regular basis. 😉

I heard you had a problem with vote buying and selling citizenship, how did the government respond to that? We have had similar problems in the near past in the UK.
This has become a huge problem in Poland. It all started with us having full resources bonus and people getting into congress for the sole purpose of selling citizenships. There isn't much the parties and government can do about it, other than ban those from future elections. It is far from those buyers staging any kind of PTO, but they always get 1-2 people into congress, which increases their numbers and even disrupts politics. Like that Chinese guy, who recently proposed Serbia as NE and almost obstructed a lot of people to finish their NE missions.

Yeh that seems to be a big problem worldwide these days. Moving onto Foreign Affairs, with Poland dominating Northern Europe and having been to America and Asia, what challenges do you think Poland has in its future?
I firmly believe into deleting Germany over and over 😃 But seriously, we have big problems to keep our channels to our important colonies in Holland and France. I think this is not only a short term challenge for Poland, but will keep haunting us.


We have a similar belief regarding Ireland 😛 I suppose I could ask the same question about ONE. With their total domination recently many people got bored. What challenges do you think ONE has left to achieve?
I really believed wiping USA would be a bigger challenge and more fun for all, but we went through them like a hot knife through butter. Now we have to secure our resources and wait until Eden/Terra regroup, which they are doing astonishingly good in the last weeks.

What relationship do you think the proONE countries will have with ONE in the future?
We have experienced some major quarrels recently, but i believe it's a successful concept and we should continue to accept new countries into the family.

I suppose it’s inevitable for me to ask, but what do you think about the UK as an old enemy and recent ally?
Well, i never really had anything against the UK and the recent joint operations prove that we can work together.

What do you think can be done to make our alliance into a real friendship?
Since we have a border it's inevitable that our relations will continue to become better, which was never as bad as some people would like people to believe. Other than the occasional "Junior" or "Poland cant into space". 🙂

Do you have any ambitions or plans for the future?
I'm already TOP20 experience wise(even with all the foreigners) and among TOP20 fighters(only Poles) and will strive to grow. Also a small country would be nice. 😃 Hope they introduce Africa soon. 🙂

Add Jamaica! Any closing comments for my readers?
Hail ONE! Hail world domination! And don't take the game too seriously.

haha 😛 I hope not 🙂 Thanks for the interview

Hope you enjoyed it too! Sub for more stuff in future, and vote it up so others will see 🙂




Theme music

As a quick update following on from my hugely popular article released yesterday, Snowderblazer has since admitted that he multi-accounted and has requested for his account to be deleted. Credit to Sir Humphry Appleby, Margaret H Thatcher, Steve Steinbeck and Darkmantle for supporting his banning from the forums, especially Mantle who eventually gave the damning evidence that got him banned.

In other news a second member of UKRP lap12345 was suspended from the party yesterday after changing his avatar to a racist image in an attempt to insult one of our members. I’m glad to see UKRP are cracking down, but UKRP member Leo Cordis and UKRP Congressman Arthur Wellesley, both of whom have made racist remarks, go unpunished by their party. Arthur has apparently since apologised, but that doesn’t change the fact that the highest voted congressman in UKRP seemed to think it was ok to insult other members because of the race of their family. I am again glad though that highlighting their idiocy has provoked them to apologise and reign in their members worst excesses.

When I got in from work this evening, I was pleased to see that TUP’s membership had decided to give me a huge mandate for the cleanup work. At this stage I have 85% of the vote, and there are more votes still to come in. I can only hope that I will live up to your expectations and that together we can work to bring back the glory days.

Our mission now is to get our message across to the UK:

NO to elitism
NO to behind-closed doors deals and backhanders
NO to corruption and vote buying
YES to supporting young players

To those in the UK who still believe in our values of honesty, fair play and supporting one another as a community, TUP has its doors open to you.

Iain