The First Rule Of SERCO Fight Club Is...

On Saturday night, I found myself watching a film called fight club.

Not, you understand, the seminal millenial anti-materialist hyper-masculinist blockbuster ... but rather, a slightly smaller-budget home-grown Kiwiana production.

Courtesy of Black Power, and the fine folks at SERCO Mt Eden.

Of course, we all know the first two rules of Fight Club.

You do not talk about Fight Club.

Now, I would have assumed that filming your fight club before uploading it to send on to the media implicitly counts as "talking" about it to virtually anybody who would listen.

But then, we've all got to move with the times; and so I felt a strategic re-right of Fight Club's rules for a SERCO institution was required.

As a man who's already found himself *far too close* to operating under the auspices of SERCO's tender mercies (whether as a beneficiary or during the course of my recent brush with the law) ... who better to take a crack at it:

Rule 1: You do not talk about how badly SERCO has messed up running our prisons.
Rule 2: You do NOT TALK about how badly SERCO has messed up running other countries' prisons.
Rule 3: If somebody says "stop" by filming what's going on in Mt Eden, that doesn't mean SERCO's running of our prisons is over.
Rule 4: Only 2 staff per 50 prisoners to a fight.
Rule 5: Up to 3 Ministerial Reviews into how SERCO runs our prisons at a time.
Rule 6: No shirts, no shoes ... doesn't mean no sim-cards and no spliffs.
Rule 7: SERCO's Reign of Error will go on as long as it has to.
Rule 8: If you're a formerly state-run service ... you MUST be privatized!

Oh, and by way of comparison; here's the original rules:

"The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: someone yells "stop!", goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: No shirts, no shoes. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight."
[My thanks to Andrew Paul Wood for his help with this piece]