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…]

Field of (Dis-eased) Wheat

If you build it, they will come
The optics dropping, one by one
The British Dream undone

John Crace: ”Opera heroines have died a less public, less agonising, death” – though it seems almost cruel to say any more…

A party that…

For as long as neither Labour nor the Conservatives speak for me and are unlikely to, any time soon and, since no politicians I like seem about to join the Liberal Democrats, I think I’d rather like to see a new party emerge. Not easy to pull off, certainly but exciting to think about, nonetheless.

A party that attracts from all existing parties and beyond. A party that grasps the best of both Left and Right philosophies because it is intelligent enough to recognise merit and unafraid to support it. A party that is capable of putting its country and her citizens above and before itself. A party that understands how stupidly catastrophic Brexit is. A Remain party, obviously.

A party that believes public service to be noble and high office to be a privilege. A party that values both the liberty of individuals and the strength of the collective. Not a party of naive romantics and incompetent utopians but a party of imaginative thinkers with moderate dispositions. Not a party that is so pragmatic as to border on cruelty and authoritarianism but a party that employs practical wisdom in the pursuit of commonly discerned ideals. A party that respects Law, Constitution and Democracy and understands that all are of more import than as expedient vehicles for narrow ideologies.

A party whose worldview is not small and petty but humane and intellectually curious. A party that leads its country, not as a pompous, self-entitled yappy dog but as already being part of a global family, ever seeking positive, progressive and honourable relationships. A party that considers its nearest geographic neighbours as well-matched members of that family. A party that reveres our planet and respects its finite resources and our environmental impact on its integrity. A party that does not reach for success through exploitation, neither at the expense of its own citizens nor those of other nations.

A party that does not promote holier-than-thou messaging; that does not induce paranoia nor polarise and oppress with lazy scapegoating and policies that further segregation. A party that does not look to inhibit or advance demographic status according to popular whim and its own ideological contempt. A party that can make the local comfortable and sustainable within the pressures and opportunities of modern global connectivity. A party that understands how much stronger a country’s economy is when its citizens are healthy, secure and well-educated; autonomous rather than automated. A party that believes that an economy should work for its Society, not the other way around. A party that recognises how Brexit imperils any such model. A party that understands how Life needs to be worth living and endeavours to not be an agent of indignity, misery and hardship. And completely unnecessary risks. Like Brexit.

Call it “centrist” if you must‬. Or “liberal”. “Patriotic”, even…😉

A shadow of things

God’s got a direct line
to Downing Street
by a covenant of equivocation
and hellfire in a field of wheat;
a billion sly indulgences that wryly speak
“out-toried”, sit inglorious upon the mercy seat.
A shadow of things to come.

 

Conservatives agree pact with DUP to support May government

What Britons want is anybody’s guess

What Britons want
is anybody’s guess.
Do not ask me, for
I am only one;
I did not seek this mess:
not for my gain
not in my name,
was Brexit’s pain begun.

I did not seek this source of stress
that stalks my country,
walks her backwards,
makes her people less
with less.

I did not seek a council of
emboldened third-rate jesters
nor the laissez-disconnect
from fact and intellect that festers;
sends attacks across
my patriotic bows and, even now,
undaunted by reality, does will
a march of muddled expectations.

No, nobody knows
what Britons want,
beyond humiliation
as a glaring guarantee
while glowing Pride
befalls a nation.

needs must

”The Poor”
How easily the classification slips
Through mind to lips, definitive,
Beyond regret and sorrow
Resignation
For ye have the poor with you always
Here endeth the lesson:
Today’s fact of life; tomorrow’s imperative
Yesterday was inevitable
And needs must when
Whole industries have been created to sustain
A spectator sport. Entry fee: hand-wringing
As the meek shall inherit
It was written

take hold

Love and despair
creep up, seep in
take hold
our days and nights
without end
save our souls
weep and serve
all witnesses
together making do
sharing mercies
and all manner of tears
marching on in the shortness of forever
hold the line hold your nerve
fix and mend
start again

How many times can the heart break?

Ergot ergo…

Greased slopes
Long rope
Peak poise: ergot
And enough is enough, right?
Vote human, not bot.

queen of cracks

Raise an eyebrow
Ask an obvious question
Lean in slightly and she folds
Susceptive of suggestion

May be told
When moths of right and left
Expose her warp; her weft
Undone
More holes in her control
Than summed in any round
An orange golfer says he’s won

And the sterner she becomes
The more the brittle can be seen
She is the queen of cracks
And bending back and all her
Narcissistic hacks will shit a cat
When European Power tells her
What she can and cannot “mean”

So if this vexed election
Doesn’t lead to her collapse
You can bet your bottom fiat that
The EU and her Bulldog Blighty Brexit
Is the straw that makes her snap.

with great responsibility came humility

I always believed that with great responsibility came humility. I am so naive. I thought that to serve in public office was both noble and an honour; that to be in the Government, bestowed with making laws and policies that determine the quality of life of the millions of one’s country’s people, was such an enormous privilege that one would be devoted to justifying it. I thought it required integrity and reasonable measures of wisdom and competence. Even more naively, I actually assumed that, simply by mere virtue of achieving and holding such a privileged position, on a personal level – the generous income, the security of an ample pension, the opportunity of network – it meant that they would have a persistent, collective sense of “there but for the grace of…” and act on it.