Happy Hour is Over

Happy hour is over.

Rachel surveys the thinning crowd from behind the bar of The New Austerity Inn. “I thought it would be better than this,” she says to no one in particular.

The locals have taken to calling her “Rachel the Barmaid”. They don’t think that she’s qualified to run the pub on her own. She might have pinned her certificate to the wall, but she’s still done nothing about the dire offering on tap.

Meanwhile, outside the Wetherspoons, a man in mustard trousers hides a glass of Chablis behind “a pint of your finest ale”, lights a cigarette, and waits.

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President I Told You So

President I Told You So
With Cali-forn-i-a aglow
When fire hydrants didn’t flow
He blamed it on the fish

President I Told You So
A climate change denier, so
With Califor-ni-ay aglow
Really took the piss

I told you so
I told you so
President I Told You So
Is putting on a show

President I Told You So
Said Greenland is the place to go
I’ve got an army, don’t you know
The Dane’s I’ll simply overthrow

And Panama, if you please
It’s being run by the Chinese
So, on your knees, cough up the keys
To the good ol’ US of….oh…..

Hail to the chief
Armed to the teeth
He’s got a beef
With the Chinese, the Mexicans
The Danes and all the rest of ‘em

Hail to the chief
Beyond belief
He’ll smack you with the tariffs
And he’ll smack you in the teeth

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Burn, Baby, Burn

Voices from a dying planet
The future featured on TV
In a world where only rich the folk have it
Fire’s an inevitability

And it’s getting close to the Hollywood sign
While vox pops on the evening news
Say there’s plenty in the ocean
Can’t they just jump in their pools

The President Elect
The President Elect – get this
The President Elect
He’s blaming the fish

Burn, baby, burn
An unwillingness to learn
Burn, baby, burn
An unwillingness to turn

Burn, baby, burn
Burn, baby, burn
Burn, baby, burn

A blazing morning of hope, James said
The next day it’s all gone
James is blaming the liberals
James won’t listen to this song

Drill, baby, drill
Vote for who you will
Burn, baby, burn
An unwillingness to learn

Burn, baby, burn
Burn, baby, burn
Burn, baby, burn

While they’re pulling overnighters
Elon blames the firefighters
Who have said for months
It could all catch fire at once

And it turns out that water
Won’t often flow uphill
It turns out The Wonderful Company
Makes the bitterest pill

It turns out that water
Ain’t in plentiful supply
You might ignore the changes
But the climate’s mighty dry

Burn, baby, burn
An unwillingness to learn
Burn, baby, burn
An unwillingness to turn

Burn, baby, burn
Burn, baby, burn
Burn, baby, burn

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Hold Fast

We turned them back in Walthamstow
Then turned them back again
We turned them back so hard
That we made the News at Ten

So come the Farage Riots
In our thousands, we held fast
In Walthamstow, across the land
We said, they shall not pass

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Hold Fast

She pulls her coat tight against the wind and the rain
Eyes fixed fast on the puddles and the path
Her footsteps the rhythm of the thoughts in her head
What just happened, they said

An uprising in the neighbourhood
Things ain’t like they used to be
It ain’t alright round here no more
There’s some folk should be shown the door

It’s gonna be a rough ride
Some boats will not survive the rising of the tide
But they shall not pass
So, hold fast
Hold fast

She pulls her coat tight, the coming of the storm
Seems inevitable now, since nothing’s changed
The splashing of her footsteps, her raindrop tears
What just happened, why here

An uprising in the neighbourhood
Things ain’t like they used to be
An imaginary village green
A billionaire on a TV screen

It’s gonna be a rough ride
Some boats will not survive the rising of the tide
But they shall not pass
So, hold fast
Hold fast

She pulls her coat tight, like some kinda shield
Could protect her from the coming of the night
Hands searching for her phone
You’ve gotta get wet if you’re gonna get home

An uprising in the neighbourhood
Dirty looks from the poppy parade
There’s never any spoken in the park
It’s no place to be after dark

It’s gonna be a rough ride
Some boats will not survive the rising of the tide
But they shall not pass
So, hold fast
Hold fast

She pulls her coat tight, looks up through the rain
A shaft of sunlight, a ray of hope
More footsteps, increasing in number
Just as she thought she was about to go under

An uprising in the neighbourhood
A voice at her side says, hold fast
A rainbow, standing, solidly cast
United, they shall not pass

It’s gonna be a rough ride
Some boats will not survive the rising of the tide
But they shall not pass
So, hold fast
Hold fast

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Mickey Mouse vs. Elon Musk

(How corporate greed beats ethics every time)

The great replacement got blue ticked
Mickey screwed his courage to the sticking place
Switched off; that’s antisemitic
Elon doubled down with a say it to my face

Donald got elected, Elon’s main squeeze
Now on the populist power track
Easy as baiting with a piece of cheese
Mickey came scurrying back

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Billionaires

Let’s hear it for the billionaires
Let’s hear it for the B-I-L, L-I-O-N
Let’s hear it for the billionaires
Let’s hear it for the planet’s wealthiest men
Let’s hear it for the billionaires
Without whom we’d all be better off
Let’s hear it for the billionaires
Let’s tell them to all fuck off

Elon went to school with an emerald in his pocket
Elon told the world he built his own space rocket
Now Donald is the president, Elon is the heir
‘Cos Elon is a billionaire

Let’s hear it…

Donald got elected and that made us sad
The most celebrated rapist the US ever had
But they’re dropping all the charges and saying fair’s fair
‘Cos Donald is a billionaire

Let’s hear it…

Nigel sucks up to the President’s men
‘Cos Nigel wishes he was one of them
A Mickey Mouse Mosley with Enoch flair
Who wants to be a billionaire

Let’s hear it…

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2024 in Thumbnails

This year saw a song about the floods (there’s going to be more of those, I’m sure), Greene King brewery exposed, Noah as a metaphor for Daily Mail-reading middle-England’s attitude to refugees, the unluckiest street in the UK, a love song based in a factory making weapons being used to destroy Gaza, two new additions to the Put Up Shut Up Britain collection, a song about loss, your actual five-a-day, another in the collection of St. George’s Day songs, another one about your diet, a Protest Family single, kicking out your kitchen fitters, a weather forecast for the east coast, yet another song inspired by Nick Ferrari on LBC, the follow-up to Pricks In Space, Hans Christian Anderson for the modern era, the first protest song to feature Rachel Reeves as Chancellor of the Exchequer, an attempt to expose election fraud by committing election fraud, mousetraps used to try to explain how global asset managers and index funds work, and a song that started life over a failed vegan breakfast in a Wetherspoons in Stourbridge on Remembrance Sunday.

We plan to release a new album next year. Which ones do you reckon will make the cut?

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Mary and Joseph

Mary

She pulled her shawl tighter around her
A mother should never have to outlive her child
Be there at the beginning and the end

She thought about her ex
A gentle man, good with his hands
Who never questioned her unexpected pregnancy
There’s nothing more working class, he’d laughed
Than giving birth in a barn

She pulled her shawl tighter around her
And remembered the starlight
The smell of fresh hay
And the warm comfort of the animals
On the day that he was born

Joseph

I’d have made a better job of that manger
He watched over his new-born son
One day, when he’s older
I’ll teach him to saw straight and to nail true
To value form as much as function
And be the master of his craft

But it wasn’t to be

They couldn’t survive the recriminations
Should they have kept him from the temple?
Who put those revolutionary ideas in his head?

He thought about her in the starlight
The smell of fresh hay
And the warm comfort of the animals
On the day that he was born

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