Ian Brown
Talks vaccines down
Noel Gallagher’s
A mask-less passenger
Van Morrison
Denied “freedom”
Writes a protest song
And nobody joins in the chorus
Category: poetry
The Rule of Six
Your mum, your dad, your aunt, your nan,
The man who drives the Yodel van,
Your uncle Bob and his mate, Stan
And Hassan who’s from Pakistan
Are banned
You understand?
That gatherings of your loved ones
Are limited to six persons
The seventh and eighth don’t get to come
Unless they’re carrying a gun
So, Hassan who’s from Pakistan
Your uncle Bob and his mate, Stan
The man who drives the Yodel van
Your mum, your dad, your aunt and your nan
Are all off to a grouse shoot, man.
Tofu Bats and Tofu Pangolins
No, I don’t believe in god she says
But I do believe in pestilence and plague
You’ve just got to look around these days
To see this shit’s man-made
There ain’t much left round here that Jesus could save
Not while the boom bust cycle of suffer and recover
Is long on the suffer and short on recover
And the government is just a machine
To turn public money into private greed
Disaster capital’s here to stay, it seems
And I don’t bang on about the furry little fuckers
But here’s where I get my angle in
‘Cos no one ever made themselves sick
Eating tofu bats
And tofu pangolins
No, I don’t believe in god she says
‘Cos I don’t understand a Tory who prays
Then goes to work to be the best he can
At the very expense of his fellow man
Clapping for the NHS on his Facebook page
While the boom bust cycle of suffer and recover
Is strong on the suffer and weak on the recover
And the government is just a means
Of giving the public purse a squeeze
Into offshore tax-free banking schemes
And I don’t bang on about the furry little fuckers
But here’s where I get my angle in
‘Cos no one ever made themselves ill
Eating tofu bats
And tofu pangolins
Ferrari’s Furlough Fraudsters
He’s dog-whistling up the news
The favourite sport of the populist columnist
From The Currant Bun to The News of the Screws
The chance to scapegoat’s rarely missed
So, ring the show, grass up your neighbours
Hold fast the fruits of your own labours
Pull up the ladder, lock up your daughters
Here come Ferrari’s Furlough Fraudsters
Untitled (7th September 2020)
If you want one of our world-beating tests
Then mate, you’d better have access to a car
While Hancock’s still spouting they’re the best
I’ll tell ya, you’re gonna have to travel far
My mate in north London got Leicester
A fella in Manchester got Dundee
At least my mate went to his (200-mile round trip)
Manchester’s waiting for a better slot to be released
You could, of course, go postal
Wait for the swab kit to hit your mat
There’s limited numbers of those, mind you
So, y’know, good luck with that
The expert said that he’s alarmed
3000 cases and the graph’s contour
The health secretary remained calm
Says work and school is COVID secure (yeah, right)
A busy pub with a Perspex screen
The floor stickers wearing thin (and pretty much ignored)
You can’t mask up when you eat and drink
What’s gonna happen d’you think?
Should I Be Wearing a Mask? Part Six
Your mum, your dad, your aunt, your nan,
The man who drives the Yodel van,
Your uncle Bob and his mate, Stan
And Hassan who’s from Pakistan
All understand
That they shouldn’t have to ask
Their neighbour to put on a mask
Indoors, in shops, or on the train,
In the sunshine or the rain,
In a taxi or a plane
Even if it is a pain,
Even if it feels disposed to smother,
Your face cover
Shows love and respect for one another.
So, don’t be like the deniers,
The conspiracy theory plyers,
The David Icke’s book buyers,
The BUF flag flyers.
Be kind and understand
Like Hassan who’s from Pakistan
Your uncle Bob and his mate, Stan
The man who drives the Yodel van
Your mum, your dad, your aunt and your nan.
Last Night of the Proms
“Patriotic songs matter” said the petition.
It’s this morning’s All Lives Matter edition.
Even if you don’t know all the words
And are der-der-der-ing by the second verse
Your life will be somehow diminished
If the Beeb change the way that The Proms are finished.
“They’re simply rousing British songs”
Not a catalogue of colonialism’s wrongs
Which are many, and the foundation
Of much of the wealth of this nation.
But we don’t want to talk about that
While we’re waving our plastic union jack.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
What’s the connection
Between the new head of the National Institute of Health Protection
(Set up in the middle of fighting the infection)
And the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care?
Is there something of which we should be aware?
Well, he’s MP for Newmarket and his campaign was endowed
With lots of money from the horseracing crowd,
While she’s on the board of the Jockey Club
And, ay, there’s the rub,
The Cheltenham Festival
Which you might recall
Went ahead when cancellation was the call
And infected a load of people.
And as head of app-less Test and Trace
(Which isn’t in world-beating first place)
Gave ten billion quid of public dough
To Serco, whose CEO
Is Rupert Soames
From one of the country’s most famous homes
And whose brother Nick, I quote
“Is a main investor in the Tote”.
While Randox, who sponsor Aintree,
Are another company
Awarded considerable public money
With very little scrutiny.
A hundred and thirty-three million pounds, in fact,
Is the value of their contract
For testing kits that didn’t work,
And worse
They pay an eight grand a month fee
For consultancy
To another Tory MP.
At Talk Talk she won the wooden spoon,
Which is coming to Dido’s Test and Trace soon
And she’s head of NHS Improvement as well
As this new role, can you hear the death knell?
Because her husband is on the board of 1828
Who called for PHE to meet its fate
And are advocates for a change in Britain
To an insurance-based healthcare system.
So who’s looking after your health today?
Because this lot shoot horses, don’t they?
They Is
They is.
They is, the talking point.
They is, the grammatical counterpoint.
They is finding a voice for themself
In a language of such wealth
Of turn of phrase, of evocation
Of the tapestry of an evolving nation.
So it’s sad when some would influence
Opinion of the form’s mellifluence
While they is struggling to identify
The difference between living and getting by
Because surely everybody knows
That language lives, adapts and grows.
It’s less transphobic, admittedly
Than mere linguistic pendantry
But if for you they is a step too far
Then they is still comfortable with they are.
Local Lockdowns, Part One
Go back to your northern powerhouse homes
Unless you are going to the pub, which you should visit alone,
Or work, which you must not shirk.
No visiting family or friends
Unless, we guess, you work with them
But we say again:
No socialising in houses or gardens
No if’s or but’s or beg your pardon’s,
But if you’re one of the shielding folk
Your rights to help have been revoked
And you should come out, your race is run,
Just try not to come into contact with anyone.
Because Hancock, a politician
At home with confusion and contradiction
Accuses you of a lack of compliance
With his social distancing guidance
And has identified some high-risk zones
So go back to your northern powerhouse homes.
Steve White & The Protest Family 