What Choice to Be Had?

Conservatives are the honest party

As it’s not their intention to deceive,

But make a virtue from what they believe:

Capitalism’s the best that can be.

Labour, meanwhile, has carefully nursed

A leftish image when it arranges

Sops and reforms, although little changes,

That can be quickly and easily reversed.

Neither will hinder private wealth taking,

While pursuing general prosperity

Via perpetual austerity

For all those who must work at wealth making.

Whichever party might suffer defeat,

The choice will be between con or de ceit.

D. A.

General Election

The prime minister’s been to the palace,

As the royal prerogative’s involved,

The monarch declared parliament dissolved.

And then there began the unseemly chase

For votes; promises made that can’t be kept

To enhance general prosperity,

While maintaining stringent austerity;

Just mark your cross and passively accept.

Even the best of intentions must fail,

Left, right or centre put on a good show,

But whoever wins most certainly knows

Capital’s priorities will prevail.

Then, when a new government’s been arranged,

Whether red, yellow or blue, nothing’s changed.

D. A.

Water’s Utility

‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any

Drop to drink.’ Rain falls freely to earth,

Yet water is not free; so what is it worth?

A fortune to a water company,

Feeling free to pollute rivers and lakes

With sewage in all its variety,

Product of our effluent society.

Consumers pay the bill, while capital takes

The dividends. So, what nature provides

Becomes a commodity by and by,

To profit those who’ll control the supply

As long as capitalism abides.

‘Nor any drop to drink’ safe to say

Unless the drinker can afford to pay.

D. A.

Free School Meals

Empty bellies leave young minds malnourished,

A famine of learning that’s all too rife,

Starving children of their chances for life,

Who might well, properly fed, have flourished.

Free school meals then? Except, nothing is free

For this world in which all necessities

Have a price, and hunger is a dis-ease

Caused not by a lack of food, but money.

Capital, driven by insatiable greed,

Will not, shall not finance gratuitous fare

If it can’t claw back the cost from elsewhere,

Driven to meet profit’s demands, not need.

For now, only air is an oddity,

Not made and sold as a commodity.

D. A.

Cross Purposes

Polling stations are closed, ballot boxes

Collected, votes totalled, winners declared.

Capitalism has again been spared

Serious challenge as suffrage locks us

Once more into the status quo. The cross

Has been the mark of illiterates,

Also the spot where buried treasure waits

To be revealed. Votes are precious because

Potentially they could well change the way

The world is now to what it could become,

Fashioned for the benefit of all, not just some.

That’ll be a red-letter election day,

When all the old parties of left and right

Are voted down as the workers unite.

D. A.

Following the mayoral and local elections,

capitalism remains in power!

Crossing the Floor

Divided, it seems, by just two sword lengths

Are green benched Capulets and Montagues,

Who, in vitriolic rivalry stew

As vexed ambition flexes its strength.

Whether feeling neglected, rejected

Or some bitter sense of injured pride,

One crosses the floor to the other side,

Where greater rewards might be expected.

This act of principle or betrayal

Is mitigated by the growing sense

That it makes little or no difference,

As every Commons cause is doomed to fail.

No matter what the rivals do or say,

Capital profits, and must have its way.

D. A.

Human Relations

All the hot air in parliament inflates

Small boats wallowing over the Channel

Into problems, fetching those who might steal

Low paid jobs from Saint George and his mates,

Foreign fathers and mothers recklessly

Risking drowning their children to evade

Regulations. So, a stand must be made

To staunch this dire influx, especially

If there are votes to be quite cheaply won

By cultivating old prejudices,

Any visceral view that dismisses

Common humanity, once reason’s gone.

Should heated rhetoric be deflated,

Revelation! We are all related.

D. A.

Clerical Errors

Clerical men, lest God be offended

By a young woman’s misplaced scarf, allowed

Her beating to death. Repeatedly vowed

Righteous destruction will not be blunted,

But visited on the chosen people

Of the very same God, who in their turn

Have striven hard to dispossess and burn

Their Abrahamic neighbours. They cripple

Their people’s thinking with holy fallacies,

Flags and lines drawn on maps. While, without qualms,

Nominal Christendom supplies the arms,

With political consciences at ease.

By and for benefit of humankind,

A very different world must be divined.

D. A.

On Benefits

The magistrates of Speenhamland decreed

No one should be too poor to eat, instead

A working wage too deficient for bread

Must be subsidised to meet that need.

Since then, two centuries and more have passed,

Yet pay and prices still remain mismatched,

Requiring governments to have hatched

All manner of benefits, such a vast

Complex web of doles, those magistrates

At the Pelican Inn would look askance

To see how little has been the advance

Of society, how progress abates

For however long workers delay

Rejecting reforms and seizing the day.

D. A.