Official News page 4

FROM THE POSTBAG

by Hazed

The first question we have received for a long time in the Fed2 Star office has plopped onto my desk. Well, that's not actually true - we often get questions that we can't base a news story on, such as "Why are your newsdroids so rubbish" (answer: you just can't get the staff), "How can I become a newsdroid and start to lead the glamorous life of interstellar journalism" (answer: depends if you're rubbish or not), "Can I have a signed picture of Hazed" (answer: send one slithy tove and we'll let you have the pic) and "Is it true that Ming is not really dead, but is flipping burgers in Fedruckers on Castillo" (answer: oh, I just can't be bothered to respond to this tired old conspiracy theory).

So this week, a letter that actually makes sense and has the minimum of typos, and isn't written in purple crayon or carved into the skin of a dead marsrat. What a relief! Here's the question:

Since there are no factories allowed in Sol, how come all the Sol planets have a approval rating of satisfactory?

We all know that on planets outside of Sol, the approval rating, or disaffection level, depends on a number of things but one of the most significant is the employment level provided by factories built on the planet. However, in the Solar System, approval does not depend on independent factory owners providing jobs, but on a whole other set of factors, which include:

• The Galactic Administration is a huge bureaucracy providing employment opportunities for all
• There is a higher standard of living on Sol planets than anywhere else in the galaxy
• Nobody has to do manual labor in fields or down mines in Sol - only frontier planets in newly-discovered systems require such hard physical work from its citizens
• Finally, everyone living here has a smug belief that Sol is the best of all possible systems so who would ever want to live anywhere else?

All these things mean that, on the whole, the citizens of Sol are a contended lot. You only have to look back at the despotic reign of Ming to see that it took years of brutal oppression before they even started to grumble, let along threaten to rise up in revolution!

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