A basic football essential of gathering to abuse a gigantic LED screen

The Fiver expects the Human Rights World Cup to be the guiltiest of pleasures. On the one hand, the World Cup stimulates the happy child in even the most bereft tea-time email; on the other, the human rights bit triggers the adult in us who frankly doesn’t need any additional triggering. And now there’s a new reason to despair about Qatar 2022, because millions of football fans are at risk of being denied the most basic tournament essential of all: Tin.

This is nothing to do with whether you’re allowed to swig flamboyantly from a bottle of Liver Compromiser in the centre of Doha. We’re talking about the pubs and clubs of England, where fans traditionally gather during the World Cup to abuse a gigantic LED screen. Workers at GXO, a company which delivers around 40% of the nation’s Tin, will be on strike for five days at the end of October and the start of November, with more scheduled if the issue is not resolved. The dispute is over a 5% pay offer, which GXO workers have rejected as it is well below the real inflation rate, and you couldn’t possibly care less about the details could you.

The Unite union, zeroing in on the essentials, said this would “impede the ability of pubs and other venues to replenish their cellars prior to the [Human Rights] World Cup”. Short of a temporary Bring Your Own Bottle policy – and what could possibegbie go wrong with that – there is every chance the World Cup experience will be compromised even more than the health of those intending to spend a month in the boozer. Of course, as The Fiver’s relentlessly irritating nephew, Herbal Vegan Wellness Trope Fiver, keeps telling us, it’s not essential to watch football games in a state of abject disrepair. You can still go the pub and watch the