NationStates Jolt Archive

As my country's population nears 500 Million I decided to get started on a new issue. Anyone who has suggestions to fix this up, please tell me. And for those who have played Mech Warrior 2 you might remember where I got the title for this.

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The Xerxes Broadcasting Corporation, the nations largest television broadcasting company in the has started working on a new TV Show they call “Trials of Grievance” and now ask for government permission to start it.

[option] “This will give a chance for convicted felons to fight for their freedom without those ridiculously slow trials.” Says XBC CEO @@RANDOMNAME@@. “Not only that but our TV ratings will sky rocket giving our economy a boost. All we need is government permission and we can pit one-on-one fights between felons in our arenas. The loser will die, but who cares? This is business!”
[stats] Convicted felons regularly fight for a chance to be set free, while the loser in dies a horrible death for TV viewing pleasure.
[effect] civil rights decrease, economy increases, crime increases

[option] “That’s all good, but we need to go a step further than that!” Says NRA Representative @@RANDOMNAMED@@. “We should have all-out death matches between as many as 10 felon, as well as allow our soldiers to enter these competitions to gain real combat experience. Sure the felons have a really low chance at winning against our trained soldiers, but look on the bright side: we can recruit them! Our soldiers will be the best in the land AND the TV ratings will be even higher!”
[stats] Trained soldiers are regularly seen on TV slaying convicted felons who rarely survive the fighting and those who do are recruited into the military.
[effect] civil rights decrease significantly, economy increases significantly, military spending increases, crime increases slightly

[option] However, Civil Rights Activist @@RANDOMNAME@@ says, “We can’t allow this! Felons may have done something wrong in their lives, but we are better people than that. We should increases funding for rehab centers and create government jobs exclusively for felons so that they can have a trade when their sentences are over.”
[effect] Rehabilitation and work centers for felons are sprouting all over the country.
[stats] civil rights increases, taxes increase, crime decreases slightly

Looks pretty interesting. :)

A few snags with the format though:

You're using slanting quotation marks (“) when it should be straight ones (").

You've got the meanings of [effect] and [stats] mixed up in the first two options.

Your [effect] lines have capital letters at the beginning and full stops at the end. Also your first one has a comma in it. We can't have any punctuation in the [effect] lines 'cos it makes it hard to read fluidly.

Asides of grammar and such things it does look pretty interesting. Could do with some tidying up here and there, but hey, what's an editor for? :P

Hey thanks for the Help. And just so you know the slanting quotation marks (“) I used were from MS Word. I just copied and pasted. The others I fixed already in Word and I'll hang on it until I get to 500 Million.

Somewhat clumsy and overcomplicated effects.
Boil it down to the soundbite version, please...