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.

Mistake is Mistaken

The clichéd own goal, that’s a real mistake,

As is trusting a sunny day without

A rain coat, and glibly suspending doubt

While listening to a politician’s take

On almost any issue. Alongside

Lottery tickets being the route to wealth,

That inebriation’s concealed by stealth

Arriving home late at night. Try to hide,

Though, with apologies and thin regrets,

The deliberate launching of missiles

At an aid convoy, must defy the wiles

Of those who’re in command and sent the jets.

A claim to mere error is to forsake

Any real meaning of the word, mistake.

D. A.

On ‘The Westminster Hour’ (Radio 4, 31st March 2024) it was reported that extensive polling indicated the forthcoming general election could well be a Labour landslide. The Conservative Party might well be reduced to fewer than 100 MPs.

Dramatic changes of government are nothing new. 1979 saw the emergence of the Thatcher regime and all the misery that entailed. The Conservatives clung onto power, via the Major government until 1997. The emergence of New Labour was hailed as, ‘…things can only get better’.

The economic problems of 2007/8 saw the Blair/Brown governments blamed for what was another instalment of capitalisms periodic crises. 2010 brought the general election and the Tory led coalition and austerity.

That phase of administration, with its various changes of Conservative leadership seems likely to end at some point this year. Labour will again assume office promising all manner of improvements. Yet, capitalism will once more continue its profit greedy way unhindered, while services are curtailed, food banks seems to open more branches than actual banks.

The common theme since before and after 1979 is that the needs of capitalism will prevail at the expense of the electorate for as long as their Xs are placed in favour of candidates representing parties who will not, and cannot, make capitalism benefit the wider community.

Even if candidates are genuine in wishing to make their constituents better off they cannot do so. That would require a shift in wealth capitalism can’t not tolerate.

Only when the electorate collectively decide to use their votes as part of the wider process of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism can things change.

Otherwise it will be more of the same whichever of the parties hold the majority of seats.

D. A.