Good morning, all. Welcome to the second instalment of The Weekly Hat, or our “sophomore effort” as the yanks might try to put it. This week, we’re so ceaselessly topical that our lead feature is covering a tube strike that’s been over for quite some time, in Choose Your Own Adventure style. (As seen in books, about ten years ago.)

Plus a couple of returning features from last time, and some news. Basically, it looks a little like this:

• Main feature: Find out if YOU would really have done anything all that differently in the tube strike negotiations.
• And now sports: Painfully ignorant sports coverage from someone who knows nothing and cares even less.
• Media and stuff: The banality of Krod Mandoon! The impotence of Australian controversy! The utter pointlessness of Facebook usernames!
• Behatted Photo Of The Week: Another famous figure gets all the respect they deserve.
• And yet so far: Some ideas that didn’t quite make it into this week’s Weekly Hat.
• Next week: After our 0% success rate last week, another stab at predicting the future.

Sound good? No?

Main feature:

Choose Your Own Industrial Action: RMT edition

This week the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers threw a tantrum strike, and condemned we Londoners to three days of nightmarish transport, waiting for buses and the like, while they sat at home, drinking Stella. I’m not bitter, as I don’t get the tube, but do think they may have over-played the strike hand somewhat and risk losing what little public sympathy they ever had. For those of you frustrated by tube delays, this is probably a good time to listen to the London Underground song.

But for tube drivers and so forth, it’s a good day, at home with their Stella, in their string vests, etc. I can see how you might want this lifestyle for yourself. So, we at The Weekly Hat are proud to present a guide to negotiating your working conditions, RMT STYLE. Much like the Choose Your Own Adventures books that you surely read as a child, just follow the numbers, or click the links. I would have included instructions for how to use a dice with this, but that just seemed too damn geeky.

Start with number ONE, obviously.

ONE

You are at work, doing your thing, when suddenly it hits you: I COULD BE EARNING MORE. There is money out there you have not yet been presented with. Sure, it’s the middle of a recession, you could argue that there are poor people out there who need the money more, but that kind of thinking is for liberals and schizophrenics.

If you get on the phone to your union rep, go to THREE.

If you accost your employer in his office with an automatic weapon and a list of demands, go to FOUR.

If you forget about it and get back to work, go to TWO.

TWO

You return to work, filing, tunnelling, pounding or whatever it is you do. Occasionally you feel a twinge of dis-satisfaction, but you recognise that these things are a natural part of life, and that wanting to either earn more or die is just part and parcel of having a job.

If you don’t think you’d do anything else then go to NINE.

If you realise that, actually, your earlier choice was stupid, then there’s still time. Go back to ONE and start again.

THREE

You get on the horn to your union chap (let’s call him Rob Hoe) and he’s very sympathetic.  He recognises that you have valid concerns. He sees a real opportunity here to get himself in the newspapers do something for the workers, and asks if you’d vote in favour of a strike for a improbable twenty-six percent pay increase if he proposed it to your employers.

If you tell him “Yes, I would; in fact, let’s make it twenty-seven!”, then go to FIVE.

If you say, with a twinge of regret, “Actually, Rob, I believe that to be stupid and all my friends would laugh at me,” then go to TWO.

FOUR

You charge into your boss’ armpits, sweat dripping from your terrified brow, waving a gun around and screaming that you want, nay, demand more money. He looks up irritably and asks what your justification for this lunacy might be. You explain, tersely, that he has money, therefore should give it to you. He explains that armed threats are not a recognised negotiation technique, and the police have already been called. He advises that next time, once you get out of prison, you try going through the unions.

If you start shooting people at random, before finally blowing your own brains out, then, um, you lose. Sorry.

If you nod and wait calmly for the police to arrive and take you away, go to SEVEN.

FIVE

Rob seems positively over-joyed by this. The grease dripping off his head is even obvious over the telephone. He calls a union meeting for that evening, and all the boys turn up to vote resoundingly in favour of pushing for a twenty-seven percent payrise and not turn up to work for 24 hours, for some strange, unknowable reason.

If you still think this is the best idea ever, and sit back and wait for strike day, go to EIGHT.

If you start to feel small doubts that this is entirely reasonable, go to TEN.

SIX

The next day, as the strike nears, you telephone Rob and say that you just can’t do this anymore. Your heart isn’t in it. Your family have disowned you, and people are walking their dogs past your house just so that they can crap on the doorstep. He nods understandingly and says that, yes, he understands your position, but you’ve committed now. This isn’t just about you anymore. This is about the workers. The principle.  The amount of times he can appear on television grand sacrifice.

If you’re convinced by his spiel, then you return home to await the glorious day of the strike, and in doing so, you go to ELEVEN.

If you still can’t go through with it, go to NINE.

SEVEN

After a few months in prison for armed threatening, you are released back into society. Your girl/boyfriend doesn’t take you back, but hey, these things happen. You get a new job, lie about your past convictions, and things eventually start to look up. You drink Stella, wear a string vest (yes, even if you’re a girl) and go to work. One day, however, you start to feel the stir of dis-satisfaction once more.

If you think “No, this is how I got into this mess in the first place…”, then go to NINE.

If you just go along with it, dragged along with your emotions like a mad fool, then go to ONE and begin again.

EIGHT

As strike day nears, the public start to turn against you. “No,” they say, “we don’t think you should get a pay rise. We don’t believe you should inconvenience all the people who rely on you. We dislike Stella and think you should stop drinking it. WE DISAPPROVE.” You watch the television and see pundits calling you attention-seeking morons, not to mention the hilarious YouTube videos and incessant internet bitching.

If you begin to harbour doubts as a result of this backlash, go to TEN.

If you continue to just sit at home, merrily counting the hours until strike day and buying new DVDs for the occasion, then go to ELEVEN.

NINE

Congratulations, you have seen the path of reason. You have learnt from your experiences and escaped. You may have come to close to the edge, but you skated across it and then wandered off afterwards, cackling. You win, and everyone else loses. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. As a reward, you can read the rest of The Weekly Hat if you like.

You have no more choices. Hoorah.

TEN

You are wracked by doubt. Is this the right thing to do, you wonder? Is a mere twenty-seven percent pay increase worth the unpopularity? Will your employer take unpleasant reprisals? Confused, you wander along to the last-ditch talks that are taking place to avert the strike, just in time to hear your boss award you the pay rise you wanted. You are ecstatic, but suddenly, Rob Hoe pulls some new demand out of nowhere. He wants chromium-plated staff toilets.

Inexplicably, your employer declines, and negotiations fall apart.

If you think this is all good and proper, and now await your industrial action with renewed vigour, go to ELEVEN.

If you decide to call off your involvement in the whole thing, go to SIX.

If you are so enraged with your boss and his failure to pay you more and provide better crapping facilities that you rush into his office with a gun, go to FOUR.

ELEVEN

Strike day dawns. It seems a sunnier, happier, better day. You get up, stretch, and crack open your first Stella. You don’t go to work. You eat breakfast, still not going to work. As millions of people struggle without whatever crucial service you provide, you go to the toilet, still without any plans to go to work. Finally, you stick the television on, flicking past the many channels of people hating you until you find something you want to watch.

If you watch new fantasy-comedy Krod Mandoon, go to THIRTEEN.

If you watch The West Wing, go to TWELVE.

TWELVE

As you enjoy a top-notch White House political drama, you reflect on how good life is. The telephone rings, perfectly timed to coincide with the ending of the episode. It is Rob Hoe. Your employers have caved in and agreed to a twenty-six percent pay increase. You’re a little disappointed because, you know, you were promised twenty-seven, but hell, this is what you originally wanted.

If you nod and agree to return to work, then the cycle begins anew. Go to ONE, or just go do something else.

If you declare that, yes, that’s all well and good, but you want the rest of your day off, go to FOURTEEN.

THIRTEEN

You have made an unwise choice. Here’s why. Also, you lose.

FOURTEEN

Rob sounds a little put out. It’s all well and good to screw with the establishment, he says, but now they’ve caved in to our demands, we should probably go and do a fractional amount of work. But you remain adamant. Rob sighs and vacates the phone line.

Minutes later, the telephone rings again. It is your employer. Oddly, he appears to see your behaviour as ungrateful, and something about “pushing it too far”. Scarcely have you begun your explanation about liberty, self-determination and the importance of human freedom, when he swears violently, fires you and hangs up.

You realise that, alas, you may have pushed this too far. The game ends, and I suppose you lose?

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And now sports…

In the last week, English sportsmen have been out in force, trying to avoid falling headlong into their usual pits and bear-traps. (I used to watch England football games when I was about ten years younger, so I think that’s all the entitlement to commentate that I need, especially when talking about the sports that are not football.)

First up, young British (well, Scottish*) tennis hope Andy Murray went out of the French Open in the quarter finals, having pulled off some wins that were, apparently, surprising. I wouldn’t know, as I only know about two or three tennis players. And since his opponents were not Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal or himself, my knowledge more or less stops there. But still, going out in the quarter-finals, that’s a rather common British affliction isn’t it? A lesser man might say that maybe we’ve found our level in international sports, and we should just accept that we aren’t semi-final people.

Meanwhile, the England football team managed to avoid this stigma as they are playing in a qualifying group stage, so there are no quarter-finals for them to lose in. (Yet.) However, they were playing Andorra, and have had a few good wins lately, which opens them up to the other great British sporting affliction: Having an impressive victory against a tricky opponent, then getting knocked out of the tournament unexpectedly by the People’s Republic Of Where-the-hell-is-that-istan.

Fortunately, they won, thus avoiding a depressing week all round. Apparently we may even successfully qualify for the big tournament this time, after the rather embarrassing summer of 2008 where the assembled English pretended they didn’t mind not being in the European Championships, and TV companies watched their reliable ratings spikes dissolve away into the toilet.

* We English are always keen to adopt and cheer on Scottish sportsmen, especially when all of ours have been eliminated already, in the name of “British solidarity”. Oddly, Scottish fans seem to want all English to be utterly thrashed, regardless of any other factors. It’s almost as if we conquered their country or something.

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Media and stuff

• What annoys me about Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire isn’t just that it isn’t very good, it’s the fact I spent an hour watching it, only to discover that the problems with it are exactly what I expected them to be before I watched it. So I could’ve just written this review and skipped the actual viewing. At least my ethics are intact, I suppose.
  Anyway, yes, it’s a bit pantomime really. The characters are fairly straight stereotypes, the innuendo is obnoxious and I’m not sure entirely who it’s aimed at. In fact, if not for the repeated use of jokes from the sex + body parts + comedy homosexuals department, it would slot seamlessly into Children’s BBC. Does anyone know of the market for children’s shows with needless adult content slotted in? (Well, aside from anyone who liked Torchwood, I suppose.)
  Anyway, if you still find yourself wanting to watch it, it’s on iPlayer for a month.
• An Australian comedy show called The Chaser’s War On Everything aired a sketch about dying kids which has apparently triggered a controversy of almost Sachs/Brand proportion over there. You can view the offending broadcast via Youtube if you like, if only to agree with me that it’s… not especially offensive, is it? I’ve seen a lot worse on television, and I’ve most certainly said a lot worse myself.
  I will give them one thing though: It’s at least more offensive than anything Russell Brand has ever said to Andrew Sachs. What a waste of public outcry that was.
• Yesterday (that’s Saturday 13th June 2009 for those of you somehow reading this… in the future), the option was opened up for people to get their own Facebook “username”. I’ve yet to locate a point to this exercise, except for allowing people to go to the web address www.facebook.com/[INSERT USERNAME HERE] and find your profile. Hence, I can now be found at http://www.facebook.com/NickMB, although my account is locked to non-friends and I will be rejecting friend requests from anyone I don’t know/like. So this was a pretty pointless article.
  Indeed, more or less the only reason I wrote it was to link to this comment on TechCrunch, which is downright worrying. This amusing link borrowed from the Twitter account of Paul Carr. Oh, and if you have a Facebook account and want your own pointless username, click on this link and good luck.

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Behatted Photo Of The Week

This week’s Behatted pcture features Andy Murray (human) and Skate (hat), to mark both his defeat in the French Open and his hopeful victory in the final at the Aegon Championship at Queen’s later today.

The Small Print: This photo via y.caradec on Flickr, with Creative Commons Licence governing both my use of his photo and anyone else’s use of mine apparently. Epic win.

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And yet so far

Following the above-described Chaser censorship, I thought I’d offer a small look at some of the items that nearly made it into this week’s Weekly Hat, but were removed at the writing stage.

• An article about the BNP. Because it feels like that was ages ago now when they got into power and we all thought fascism was going to destroy the country, only to later get distracted by more interesting news items. Basically, it was either the BNP or the tube strike, and I thought the tube strike would seem a fraction more topical.
• Multiple jokes about wife-beating. It was the logical next line in that running joke about Stella and string vests in the RMT article, but seemed a shade tasteless somehow. And slightly more libellous than I was aiming for.
• The phrase “and the crowd stood up and ejaculated as one.“ It seemed a lot funnier while I was planning the article in the pub after several beers. I’ll leave it to your imagination where that would originally have appeared, it shouldn’t be too hard to work out.

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Next week

What will be topical next week? Of what shall I speak in seven days time? Well…

• North Korea, after long speculation about its nuclear capabilities, launches a nuclear missile at South Korea. In response, several countries launch nuclear weapons at them. Switzerland remains neutral.
• Following the death of David Carradine, the truth about Van Gogh’s ear comes out: It was cut off as part of an auto-erotic game, in search of full erotic automation. Hence the prostitute.
• Gordon Brown finally steps down as Prime Minister, then steps back up again after 48 hours, once Labour realise none of their potential replacements are anywhere near amusing enough.
• Swine flu is declared a pandemic after its public call for help in last week’s Weekly Hat. It is now planning its follow-up piece, “I bloody well told you so, now die!“.

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