Joseph stared in the mirror. He inspected his chin and rubbed it, before finishing up with a towel. He shook his head and reorganised his thoughts.

He sat at the table and brought up the paper. There were only the 13th to the 17th questions left. Just the 5. He tapped the finger against the wood and thought hard. The mechanical hands of the clock never ceased their movement.

He rubbed his face. "Maybe I'm thinking too hard on it."

He pulled out a pen and drew a bold line across his earliest scribblings. Instant regret. "Damn it."

He took out a new piece of parchment and wrote some more. His jaw unclenched, his shoulders loosened, the creases on his forehead ceased to be. It's good to take a break once in a while.

"Okay." He breathed. "I think that's good enough." He checked the clock. 10 minutes left. He paced around the room for a while, feeling his feet thud on carpeted floor. A sudden melachony mood struck him. Ideals and philosphy have to be backed with actual strength. It would be good if he read up on law for a bit. Read up on economics for a bit. Read up on history for a bit. Understand how to increase efficiency.

"5 minutes to start, Mr. President." Lawson grinned. "You might want to freshen up a bit more before it begins again."

Joseph breathed in. "Very well."

The livestream begun again. With renewed rigour, Joseph answered the questions. "Okay, the 13th question. Even if the app to report domestic abuse works, what do we do to the offenders and the victims? For the offenders, we should deal with them according to the law. For the victims, however, we would need to seperate them between those who can fend for themselves and those that can. We would need to have housing and/or caretakers for those that cannot. While we can put them in the same place that we will be building for the homeless, caretakers are another issue. We need to ensure that the caretakers are reliable. I would like to forward this idea to the fine people of the government. Could we think of a way to ensure that the caretakers we find would be reliable? You don't have to answer me now. I'll ask around after a few weeks. We still need to decide on the jobs for the mentally and physically disabled, after all.

The 14th question is a tricky matter. The government has already built several rehabilitation centres in the past. Yet there are still quite a few people who succumb to their addictions and end up homeless. First, we would need to cross-refer the places with rehabilitation centres and the places where there are homeless that end up that way due to addiction. The places that have high numbers of addicted homeless and no rehabilitation centres should have them built in. We should fund studies to understand why that there are still high numbers of addicted homeless in places with rehabilitation centres. Or perhaps, if there are those that lose their homes due to their addiction, we should make it mandatory to send them to rehabilitation centres. Or at the very least, make the services as cheap as possible, or even free."

"Wait, what do you mean by 'we should make it mandatory to send them to rehabilitation centres'?"

"Oh, it was just an idea. It's not fully fleshed out yet. It went something along the lines of 'if they lose their homes and it is found out that it was because of an addiction it should be mandatory that they go to a rehabilitation centre'. But I don't think there's a good way to articulate that in clear terms in law. Furthermore, how would one investigate if an addiction is tied to losing the house? And that's why it's still an idea. Any more questions?"

There are no other questions on this matter.

"I would like to move the 15th question to the end of this stream. Let's go to the 16th and 17th question." Joseph takes a deep breath.

"Indeed we have a lot of money as the government, but I am afraid that we don't have enough money as needed to do all of my proposed reforms. The only way to succeed is to do them all at once, but I can see all of your concerns. We can delay the invitation, but we will do it. I will set the specific timing soon.

Honestly, in hindsight, the 17th question is easy to answer. If the scientists we have can already live properly and research properly with the funding we give them, then just taking away the funding for the weapons research will still give them enough money for living healthily."

Joseph waits for any reaction. A moment passes.

His shoulders wobble slightly. "Okay, then, let's dicuss the terms for the Brexit deal."

That discussion went on to the night. There was a dinner break. Only when the moon had usurped the sun and the light of the metropolis twinkled like stars in the night did the discussion end.