We compare coats
wear imitations on our feet
and borrow sympathetic voices
for sideshows
until insight is a stranger
and tomorrow but an echo
Sideshow
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Category Archives: Poetry
Oversold
Opportunities are not results,
So do not oversell,
For the leverage of your theories
Are as nowt without the actual clout
And where there are made winners,
Are more losers made, as well.
***
”Not enough attention is paid to a similar cliff edge on the other side of the English Channel” – Institute for Government
”Home Affairs Committee raises serious concerns about the Government’s contingency planning for post-Brexit customs operations” – UK Parliament
”It is the UK which is choosing to leave the single market and customs union and that means, by definition, creating a border” – Chris Grey
Excellent reality check: ’A beginners’ guide to trade negotiations’ – UK Trade Forum
***
Lull me a lullaby
Sand in my eyes
Buy me a mockingbird
Give me the sky
Betcha by golly
Wow, build me a folly
Bring me some Kool Aid
Let’s fill up the trolley
Sprinkle the pixie dust
Set up a blind trust
Go short of a picnic
And cut off the crusts
Pipe me a loony tune
Red, white and blue my shoes
Kansas is dying
Jump over the moon
[December 2017]
Political incorrectness gone mad
When meaningful is meaningless
And meaningless is meaningful,
Political incorrectness has gone mad;
When the Government is synonymous
With conquering ignoramuses
Why are these Brexits still so fucking sad?
***
‘David Davis is still denying MPs a “meaningful vote” on Brexit’ – “Things can only get bitter.”
Why are Brexits so unhappy? They won. Scrutiny and accountability are fundamental to Sovereignty and Democracy. Well, it might be rather late in the Brexit day but that is exactly what is happening. Brexits said they were fighting to take back control but they are busily trying to give it away with no discernment, whatsoever. And they say it is the remoaners who are not patriotic…
Other words for people doing their jobs:
Saboteurs
Enemies of the people
Mutineers (£)
On Twitter, @ LeaveEUOfficial even précis a link to a ‘Westmonster’ post, today (I won’t dignify it with a direct link), with “The 15 Tory MPs who voted against enshrining the Brexit date into UK law are the cancer within their party and traitors to their country. Total disregard for the people’s democratic choice”
It’s that kind of crazy-arsed paranoia that started all this catastrophic crap.
The value in the tale
In pride of place
That cut your nose to spite your face
And say you did not recognise it, anyway
Of all the scapegoats in your myth
Did make yourselves its greatest gift
Of value in the tale
***
”At the heart of all this is the political irony that defines our times: that the very thing so many places voted for makes any attempt at their area’s revival even less likely.” – John Harris (Guardian)
”So having advised investors to remove their money from the UK, the Rt. Hon. John [Brexiteer] Redwood told the UK government to go for ‘hard Brexit’”. – Frances Coppola (Forbes)
Brexiteer James Dyson says he wants to make it “easier to hire and fire” people and for the government to scrap corporation tax (Metro) – Then “warns government not to cut farm subsidies”, his total farming estate – Beeswax Dyson Farming – is the biggest in the UK (Farmers Weekly)
[”100 reasons why Brexit was a good thing” (Telegraph)] 🤷🏻♀️
People get upset
Britain, right now, is a little bit shit
And most of the news is so grim
But people of humour do relish their wit
And relieve themselves quipping on things
They’re clever and silly with memes and fresh banter
So wry in contempt, it can get rather mean
But just look at the farce of the national cantor
And wonder no more that they’re letting off steam
The Bexiteer Right and the humourless Left
Hate the refuge of weaponised humour
But this is the British way civic life checks
Against rumours and bloomers and tumours
Here’s The Increasingly Batshit Story That Eventually Led To Priti Patel’s Resignation
Is this the night of the living dead? No, it’s Britain’s Brexit team
The joke’s over – how Boris Johnson is damaging Britain’s global stature
howls of latent despair
Fair is foul, and foul is fair
Neither fish nor chlorinated fowl
Nor maize nor daffodil be spared
”Nothing has changed”
But howls of latent despair
Share decreasing dissonance
Brexit exemption sought for Grimsby seafood trade
What is wrong with chlorinated chicken?
Eye-roll and sigh…
The way the Tories roll
The principle that’s principal
Is risible
Dirigible
The higher ones invisible
The way the Tories roll
Integrity neglected
Law and ethics disrespected
Fact and fiction self-selective
That’s the way the Tories roll
The gap in credibility
Is sizeable
Revisable
And utterly derivable
The way the Tories roll
Logic magic’ly fragmented
Half the party looks demented
Even sound as though they meant it
It’s a leading Tory role
Can’t tell their elbows from their arses
All hot air and whoopsie farces
Sinister, the stink that passes
Whereabouts the Tories roll
Crony ring of tooth and claw
Surviving on revolving doors
And carousels of dizzy poor
Sees Tories on a roll
With patronising platitudes
And breathtaking ineptitude
They then expect our gratitude
Oh, how the Tories roll!
Avoiding liability
Financial incivility
So hostile to humility
There’s no deniability
That Tory heads must roll
For the slope of plausibility
Grows slippery
With trickery
And, trip! There goes fuckwittery
How fast can Tories roll?
[November, 2015 – plus ça change…]
Well done, Homespun
Well done, Homespun
You won
In tongues:
Forked-puns
Unhealthy sums
Ten times the burden on our young
Top-table crumbs
Fair-weather chums
New depths to plumb
The right to be somebody else’s never-setting Sun
No actual benefit – zip, nada, none
No fun
No fun
No fun beneath
Your unopposable thumb.
Mr Opportunity
You who think themselves hunted by witches; who
need their empathy spoon-fed: you really cannot tell
if you have abused your power or pushed your luck?
You don’t understand where her boundaries are, anymore?
Why, poor lamb, they are where they have always been,
if you would only
stop getting your clues and taking your cues
from a world of patriarchal design.
Stop looking up for her. Stop looking down at her. She is
right here. Meet her eyes: she knows
you are both in a prison of Fathers’ makings
and there is a limit to how much she can keep saving you.
Heartifice
A Brexit-deep state of mind:
Heartifice, by design.
Truth be told, a waste of time
When fiddled faith says
”This is fine.”
juxtaposed 