You are Bald, Mr Cable

“You are bald, Mister Cable,” the young man said,
“And your skin has become very blue;
“And yet you stand all your beliefs on their head –
“It is hard to believe this is true.”

“In my youth,” Mister Cable explained to his son,
“I thought it might harm my career;
“But now that it’s perfectly clear I have none,
“I might as well settle down here.”

“You are bald” said the youth, “And I’ll say it again,

"And your attitude seems very lax;
“You claim to be evenly sharing the pain
“But seem quite disinclined to raise tax.”

“In my youth,” mumbled Vince, as he shook his bald head,
“I kept all of my ideals intact.
“But the use of this snake oil – kills scruples stone dead –
“Has now somewhat altered the fact.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “And your story is weak.
“And you will not acknowledge you blew it.
“Yet the banks still run riot; you’ve been feeble and weak.
“Pray, why in God’s name did you do it?

“In my youth,” said Vince Cable, ”I lived by the law,

“And argued each case on its merit;
“But the balance of power became all that I saw,
“I’ll retire soon. You lot can inherit.”

“You’ve been had,” said the youth, “and it’s hard to see why
“That you still feel inclined to continue.
“Yet you’d balance the books on the back of a lie
“And pursue down a path that will ruin you."

“I have ignored four questions, and that is enough,”

Said Vince Cable; “I don’t have a say.
“Do you really believe I can cope with this stuff?”
Said the youth, “Well, then, Baldy. Good day.”

Martin Morrison

March 9^th 2012

From a Privatised Railway Carriage

Slower than cars and slower than horses
Ground to a standstill by free market forces.
And as they reduce our society to rubble
We give them exorbitant sums for their trouble.
Shareholders prefer to travel by plane.
They aren’t so daft as to travel by train.
And ever again, in the blink of an eye,
Businessmen carefully carve up the pie.

Here’s a director demanding a pay hike
He and his friends take exactly what they like.
Here is a passenger who stands at the station,
Waiting and waiting for some explanation.
There goes a banker with somebody’s cash.
There goes a country which died in a crash.
And there’s what we had and there’s where we stood.
If we don’t wake up soon, we’ll lose it for good.

M.E.Morrison, March 2012

The Evil Twin of Gunga Din

You may talk o' your fair share

When you're quartered safe out there,

An’ you send for more champagne an’ pension pot it.

But when it comes to money,

We no longer find it funny

When you take the bleedin’ shirt off us that’s got it.

Now, in Blighty’s rainy clime,

Where we now all spend our time

A bailin’ out 'Er Majesty the Queen,

Of all them smug-faced crew,

The vilest man I knew,

Was that mercenary scoundrel Fred Goodwin.

Hungry? Eat the rich

Crivvens, verily and foresooth, Fred Goodwin's been stripped of his knighthood. We might as well go home, lads. The revolution’s over and the good guys won. That £14 million pension pot and guaranteed, index-linked £340K a year for life will be scant recompense for his being addressed as Mister by the few people who like him; the rest of us already had a suitable title for him, one in the vernacular idiom, and he's keeping it but he’ll never have to stand in a dole queue with us.

Of course, the very idea that the man should have been accorded any enhanced status by endorsement of the state as proxy of the crown - or vice versa; these things are never clear - given what we now know of his record over the piece, offends most sensibilities, but in a country where traditions of state ceremony are as fiercely protected as they are here, this compulsion must surely be consistent if nothing else. The prime function of the ceremonial state is to define and maintain its structures; evenhandedness is more than just an imperative, it is its very purpose. Surely in a country as fond of pomp as these sceptred isles there should be protocol for such eventualities?

So long as there exists a suitable reciprocal procedure in event of the dishonouring of a title, one which is accorded equal status with the original investiture, I‘m all in favour of the honours system (with some essential modifications and redefinition of what constitutes outstandingly honourable deeds, naturally) Ordinary citizens on minimal incomes who work for£20 cash undeclared can expect to have their benefits stopped and to be vilified in the press and pub. The disabled know better than to venture outside at all, as the presence of a pulse is now considered clear evidence of fraud of the sort the tabloids and their readership salivate over.