Hand in hand

The couple ran

From the rain,

No hands to spare

For an umbrella,

Because with their spare hands

They were texting each other!

This is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer

by cash for questions, rushed privatizations,

jobs for the boys, money for peerages,

public enquiries of limited scope,

getting into bed with media moguls to get the dope,

on the dope, who without the support of newspapers

doesn’t have a hope.

Made glorious by covert actions,

arming allies and opposition,

selling guns to terrorists

and freedom fighters alike,

to anyone who can pay

or defer pay day, or pay

in kind, in oil, in frankincense, in influence.

Made glorious by twin towers,

ordinary kidnapping and extraordinary rendition,

water boards and military courts – in the act.

Sexed-up dossiers, special powers,

weapons of mass distraction,

that cover up head hunting and

routine regimen change.

Made glorious by MPs expenses,

members who benefit from the benefit of the doubt,

without loss of benefit, despite convictions and conviction,

and those who drive too fast,

busy, but without due care,

whose wives accept the points, while hubby makes a point

about being green and responsible.

Made glorious by MPs who lawyer up, to cover up

and hide beneath the blanket of privilege.

Who expect respect without responsibility,

who do nothing wrong, but are victims

of circumstance, and moral stance

who cannot be blamed, named or shamed,

as now the newspapers are tamed.

Made glorious by the greed that spawned the credit crunch,

government-sponsored banker’s bonuses,

bail-out packages like pay packets in pockets on Friday night,

while the plebs are left with the unholy hangover,

on Saturday morning,

mourning lost jobs, homes

hopes and lives.

Made glorious by police bribes,

diatribes from bribers and bribed,

the police complaints authority,

who have permission to navel stare,

deny, reveal, retract, truth modify,

exonerate, accept, regret and prosecute,

recommending suspended sentences and upended justice.

Made glorious by retirement without prosecution

Because of “ill health” with full benefits and pension rights,

by stamping on the rights and wrongs of G8 protestors,

collateral damage -murder on candid camera,

“robust” policing, heads-bust policing,

lock-‘em-up and let-‘em-out plea bargaining,

and lawyers on double-time, double talking.

Made glorious by this royal wedding,

This media fawning, speculating without a speculum,

The realization that everything changes but nothing does

That privilege begets privileges,

That a volatile royal recipe of

Sour Krauts and Greeks yoghurts

Substitutes for tea and crumpets!

Made glorious by the lance corporal general public,

who don’t think young life is worth less than burned out cars,

or on-sale retail suits, off the rails and out of reach,

but say it anyway, in a knee jerk frenzy

when door-stepped by pretty face-for-TV girls,

whose questions are written by drama students

and reports edited by sound-bite sign writers.

Made glorious by paying “the debt”

“so our children will have a future”

while we carbon trade like international fly-tippers,

tolerating whale assassins for science,

burning assets like rioters burn tyres,

to make a pretty hot future

for our off spring, sprung from oil.

Made glorious by press leaks, pipeline leaks,

radioactive leeks and weeks and weeks of lies

and lawyers telling us “the fifth”

in fifty long-winded ways, because

the whys and wherefores are too complicated

for our little brains

and its nobodies fault, on a planet with so many faults.

Made glorious by an unhealthy population in a postcode lottery,

where not-so NICE pick the bonus-ball drugs,

from the drug company catalogue of cure-alls,

“we want to cure all”, “yes, but what can you afford?”

“Who is worth saving M’lord?”

Is it better to expire from ward neglect on wards,

or want to die and not be able to get an assist?

Made glorious by unsafe private trains,

on and off, not-for-profit rails,

petrol prices up when oil prices down,

gas flow down – bills up, gas flow up – bills up,

leaky water pipes spilling profits, while hoards of boards

of executive, honorary, non-executive and chief exec’ -

directors, cash eye-watering salary cheques.

Made glorious by “moral” newspapers, crusading media,

campaigners of the high ground, brought down

by the feral journalists, headline writers turned makers,

phone hackers, victims friends and uncles,

who like paedophiles sit at the family tables, looking for an “in!”

All paid for by “not-responsible!” “did-not-know!”

“not my fault!” bosses and their broods.

Made glorious by the playing fields of Eton,

sportsmanship, performance enhancement,

fooling or intimidating referees,

cheating within and the rules,

while corrupt officials pick venues,

for Olympic and football games,

all made possible because we play along.

Made glorious by education, education, education,

lowered bars, raised fees, school leavers who

can’t read won’t read, can’t count don’t count,

will never amount – to nothing,

while private schools, cash cheques and mould genius

from family trees, “the result of breeding”

cream clots, artificially pushed to the top.

Made glorious by economic belt tightening for the poor obese,

closed youth clubs, closed libraries, closed care homes,

shut back-offices, shorter front lines and longer queues,

snaking down roads of repossessed houses that were homes,

while MPs dance to a street tune, singing

“I remember when this was a community”

and hand out bus passes, having cancelled the buses.

Made glorious by old people, who live too long,

on paid-for pensions and heating allowance,

made mean by means testing and bitter by indifference,

made weak because they are vulnerable,

and frightened because they are deserted,

made poor by needing care

and grateful if they do not.

Made glorious by tax cuts for the rich,

pay freezes for the public sector,

shrinking pensions, benefit cuts for fraudsters,

and a pat on the back for exemplar ‘entrepreneurs’,

dragons who avoid paying the revenue,

and hoover up other peoples else’s ideas,

remodelling inventors as wage slaves.

Made glorious by these burning streets and looted shops,

part-time parents, disengaged mobile-phone, anti-social networkers,

criminal masterminds with no O Levels, who tell kids with “A” stars,

where to go and what to steal, to keep it real

and where to kick to bring down the glass ceilings

on Churchill’s Mohican stone head, which bled paint,

that’s good for covering the cracks!

Made glorious by “wild” animals, in inner-city mazes

and Napoleonic foreign shopkeepers;

economic migrants who come to England

and assume blame, like a coat with a yellow star,

because nobody “English” wants to pay the piper,

who pipes up with a nationalistic ditty

on how this country “once was pretty”, in your dreams!

Made glorious by a capitalist uprising,

economic riots, consumer looters,

lectured to by

“you-have-to earn-it” politicians,

born with silver spoons in their mouths

and private-dentist, golden-toothed smiles, that beam across

the gulf between the elected and their constituents.

Made glorious by this “too-poor-to-live”,

“save-for-your-future”, “invest-in-a-pension”,

“live-with-your-mum”, minimum wage,

and “paid-for-results” bosses, tempted by golden handshakes,

rewarded for failure and dismissed gently,

under golden parachutes that ease them

on to king-sized, feather-bed pensions.

Made glorious by banks of stock market gamblers,

elbows touching matey elbows round flickering boards

like a really big game of electronic monopoly,

with other people’s real money,

where the last to blink

wins the prize

and devastates millions of lives.

Made glorious by government-sponsored arms deals

and civil service bribes,

paying lip-service to being civil-ized.

Asset stripping “helpful” nations, supporting diplomatically,

a “strong and stable government”

that sees people’s protests and revolution hope

go up in smoke, as the revolution comes full circle.

Made glorious by the Arab spring,

Norwegian summer camp

British riots,

signs of cause and defect,

actions in isolation,

it is no fault of the nation

that the nation is wrecked.

Made glorious is England, a broken big society, part of a unified dissolution,

a member of the European Community within a community,

on the board of the G8, G20, G Whizz!

Central in the gone West, influencing the far out East,

a key member of the discordant United Nations,

a fast broadband adopter of the World Wide Web,

England, where the lights blaze all day and all night.

Why riot? We are what you made us,

you have sown and now we reap,

a crop of all the promises that you failed to keep.

As children and citizens our future is bleak,

we were not spoiled, we are not lucky and we certainly are not blessed,

because the guardians and caretakers

have set fire to our nest.

Let the public school boys have it!

The playing fields are theirs

It’s time for them to suck up

To demanding billionaires

Let the Public schoolboys have it,

They’ve been tutored how to rule,

Because their parents spent a fortune

On exclusive public schools.

Let the public Schoolboys have it,

And please do not take fright

Blue blood and education

Means they always get it right.

Let the public schoolboys have it,

Now here’s another thought,

They’re already on the rich list

So surely they can’t be bought?

Let the public schoolboys have it,

But please do not forget

They’re not in it just for glory

They want all they can get.

Let the public school boys have it,

They’re versed in doublespeak and cant

They believe in “British” fair play,

Unless you’re an immigrant.

Let the public schoolboys have it,

Because it’s universally true,

They’ll look after their own

And bugger me and you.

Let the public schoolboys have it!

Let’s heed their battle call,

Heard them all together

Put their backs against a wall, and…