[Muanet] Introducing SerfChoices

[Chris Latham]

Hi members
 
The article below is from Wednesday's Sydney Morning Herald. Its not very historically accurate but it is pretty funny.
 
Chris
 
Introducing SerfChoices
October 19, 2005
http://www.smh.com.au/news/heckler/introducing-serfchoices/2005/10/18/1129401251669.html <javascript:ol('http://www.smh.com.au/news/heckler/introducing-serfchoices/2005/10/18/1129401251669.html');> 

New work laws offer a brave olde worlde, writes
Charles Purcell.

The Government is proud to unveil its new industrial
relations program - SerfChoices. You may have seen the
ads for it already: smiling peasants plough the fields
while soothing mandolin music plays. You wouldn't
believe how hard it was to find peasants with full
sets of teeth for those ads, this being the Middle
Ages and all. Or ones that remembered how to smile.
But I digress.

SerfChoices features exciting changes to the way your
lord handles your employment. In the past, there were
many ways you and your lord negotiated. Some lords
liked to beat their serfs with maces; some cudgels;
some preferred the rack. The Government is pleased to
announce there will now be one standard method for
beating peasants with large sticks, making it a
simpler and fairer system.

SerfChoices also changes the way you, the peasant,
negotiate your weekly payment of turnips.

In the past, you negotiated your turnip ration in the
presence of your lord and the Government's official
torturer, Dagmar the Terrible. The Government is
pleased to announce it has eliminated third parties
such as Dagmar. Now your lord will beat and torture
you directly as you beg for scraps. Once negotiated,
your contract will be cast in iron. You can't get much
more cast-iron than manacles.
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SerfChoices guarantees that many of your employment
conditions remain unchanged. As a peasant, you're not
entitled to holidays, so there's no change there. Your
medical benefits remain intact - when you pass out in
the fields from exhaustion, you will be left until you
recover or the wolves take you.

The Government has made it illegal for your lord not
to beat you because of race, colour, sex or age.
Everyone will be given the same number of beatings,
making it a better system for all.

The maximum number of working hours a day will be
fixed at 23. One hour is permitted for sleeping,
smoking noxious weed from the West Indies, and turnip
consumption. Casual peasants will earn a quarter of a
turnip and a piece of weevil-infested bread for each
hour they work over 23.

Your protection from unfair dismissal will depend on
your individual bargaining power - that is, whether or
not you can talk your lord out of shooting you with
his crossbow. Yet another way the Government is
rewarding individual talent.

Thanks to SerfChoices, Sunday will no longer be a day
of worship, but of work. Your lord is your living god
- you may worship him whenever you please. Collective
bargaining - otherwise known as peasant rebellions -
will be treated in the usual manner, with the king's
horses using the dissenters for speed bumps until they
drop their demands.

Over time you may notice that your daily turnip ration
goes down. That's because peasants in Upper Saxony and
Timbuktu are willing to work for less. SerfChoices
will allow us to build foundations for a stronger,
more prosperous kingdom. If we don't act now, soon
there'll be no turnips for your children and your
children's children. And no one wants that.

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