Obama’s Broken Promises
Oh Bama baby, oh drama maybe
You’ve lost your way, dropped the ball
Mislaid your marbles, hit your wall.
You over-estimate our surprise
At your recent admissions of political demise
For we remember all your previous positions
Your frank and honest new conditions
We remember you said that power wouldn’t change you
That the dreams we all shared
You promised to force through
That you pledged to keep faith with the grassiest roots
Not be corrupted by schemers in suits
Guantanamo Bay? Remember that pledge?
How did that priority get pushed off the ledge?
And what about an end to those unjust wars
To the broken boys and unsettled scores?
Don’t you remember that you promised us more?
That we will not forget the lies you ignore
Or the twisted words of those we deplore
Want my support for the next time round?
Yeah, right.
Like this:
UK Election 2010 Demo-n-Crazy
by Carey Lenehan
Change We Can Believe in, or More of the Same… you choose?
“And we’ll give you permission to own a shiny new car you can’t afford…”
So in a matter of hours, the direction of ‘Great Britain’ for the next five years – or at least until October…(it’s complicated) – will be decided by the fair and impartial (sic) British Electoral miracle of our ‘first past the post’ style democracy where we don’t actually get to choose who leads us, or even who doesn’t… the Media (and one ‘Gillian Duffy’ from Rochdale) does…
So ‘who cares’, if only 55% of people actually bother to vote and, ‘so what’, if the next PM gets to rule on the basis of a popularity contest within his own party and pushed on us whether we like him or not, on the say-so of less than 20% of the population? Who cares? Well everyone it seems, except the politicians who like things just the way they are, stacked to keep the status entirely quo-ed.
I am one of the 3 out of 4 people who will probably once again be more or less un-represented by my nation’s political spectrum, because I want ridiculous things like no more waging war on third world countries, no more exploiting poor coffee growers in Ghana or diamond miners in South Africa… universal health care and equal rights for EVERYONE, not just white men and blonde women, fair pay for a fair days work, you know, stupid shit like that, oh, and trips to the beach for every kid who doesn’t own a pair of Converses… that’s a definite must…
Of course I won’t see the change I want and so, as ever, will wonder why I bothered caring at all, why I got excited, why I watched to debates or ever gave a damn about the election…. and then I will look out of my front door and be glad that I don’t have to live there any more…
I am an optimist at heart and have even dallied (if briefly) with the idea briefly of going back to live in the UK if things changed for the more reasonable and less capitalistically obsessed, but throughout the last five weeks I listened and listened and all I heard was waffle… Lib Dem, Tory, Labour, it didn’t blahblahI’mreallyrichblahblahblahIhavelovelysuitsblahblahblahI’mamillionairsowhyshouldIcareblahblahwaffleblah…
Repeat relentlessly and leave to set.
So we have suffered endless painful TV hours of the same meaningless minute-filling waffle. Not one of them appeared to possess so much as a teeny pair of balls although there was one chap actually called Ed balls but he was sweaty and didn’t appear to have any at all, nor principles it seems yet he got voted back in, so I guess he must be good at spinning himself up the ladder at least…
So all that choice and still no one worthy, nothing, de nada, rien de tout, that could be considered voteable. And now it’s done. It’s a mess. And I’m still predicting a Cameron seated on the British Political throne by Monday morning. Unless he isn’t. And that is that…
Sorry Gordon. Should have kept your mouth shut or your mike switched off, don’t you think?
So who to vote for? Gosh, I dunno, the one with the best waffle? The nicest suit? The cutest smile?
R.I.P
Well at least it’s food for poetic pondering. Of course, shutting the polling stations before everyone has cast their vote is a good way of making sure the undecided who could sway things and who often wait til the last minute to make up their minds, never get a look in…
So with that in mind, try this…
Demo-n-crazy
by Carey Lenehan
no chance for a genuine change of direction,
The sycophant wheedlers require our affection,
Democracy, does it again.
And so to the dance, by design, not by chance,
spin the doublespeak players who seek to advance.
These slayers, betrayers, smile-all-dayers,
chanting their tacky fortune-wheel prayers,
bang the skins of identical political drums,
singing identical policy songs
to the beat of many matching feet.
slot in a coin, watch the cherries fly
because, cherries are all that lurk inside,
even though those who float at the top,
might look a bit like pears.
Aristocracy found itself legless, headless, trashed into deadness
by the will of the discontent masses
so outraged by the gap between classes
who wanted righteous leaders not pompous deceivers,
depravity and bottomless taxes
that power should rest with men of good merit
One person, one vote, one majority voice
All completely agreed on the best man to lead,
all sharing the profits of choice
Yet now we are back where we started,
with good sense and democracy parted
Shared leadership a concept, too tarnished and dull
for the new pseudo-royals of our day
Touched with power by fate, they all want to be ‘great’,
Not listen and do things our way
so recklessly wielded and bound to contort,
Who among men can resist her,
can briefly possess and dismiss her,
can turn from the light so blindingly shone,
as if it were honour they sought?
How tempting a treat, this political beat,
this jewelled, voracious whore,
A siren of such irresistible force,
luring the wary to waters contrary
where ordinary men can, in no way,
keep their trousers buttoned before her?
All ideals and principles draining away,
blowing the myth that demo-rule isn’t reign,
but conceded in steady rotation
to posh wadded dudes with old-boy educations.
Demofashion dictates that our choices equate,
to a life of taxation and rolling inflation
to politics lead by stealth and deception
because freedom is dead and aggression uncivilised,
so instead we’ll be ruled by negation?
massage the gripes of those immigrant classes,
deny them the vote, keep up the pretence,
shoot them, uproot them, deem them sub-human.
Just make them get off the fence.
Stimey their questions with bland platitudes,
just remember to keep it light.
No specifics, no details, nothing to defend,
dissenters are no one you need fear offend,
the wrong colour, the wrong sex,
the wrong heart, the wrong mind,
You can’t please those people any of the time
in these demo-n-crazic days
of hand-me-down Empires and TV fools,
penny-a-dozen do-gooders more foolish than shrewd
Who might cost us our homes,
but it’s ‘for our own good!’,
who are we to complain anyway?
Modern democracy dodges all law
and the moral ideals we should stand before,
Because the ordinary men who lead us today
don’t wish to be ordinary any more,
and the masses must never, no, not never-ever,
really have freedom to choose,
just allowed to believe that they do.
NEMA
XXC
The Great British Government Expenses Fraud
British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Maclean Darling, a politician with a name so ill-fitting you wonder how anyone ever took him seriously and if that might be the reason why he seems so driven to condescend, has repaid his immoral expenses claim but will face no charges because ‘he didn’t really do anything wrong’.
So, why pay it back? If the rules said he could have it, what’s the problem?
After all, it was only a few hundred pounds, nothing much, barely a microbe in the pond where cleaning your moat or damp-proofing your boyfriend’s house for thousands was also ‘within the rules’, but it is still a sad indictment of the kind of people we elect to represent us, and although he is the most high profile, he is still just one in a myriad of venerable souls who all thought that they were above standard definitions of morality and entitled to fiddle the public purse as they pleased.
Dozens of them.
All elected and paid for by the average British working taxpayer.
Benefit fraud….? I suspect we’ll never know but it looks that way from where I’m standing… Outrageous? No doubt. Unacceptable? Well… you would have thought so, wouldn’t you?
Except that we will accept it, we will swallow it down like a hunk of rotting beef rather than go hungry or take action to find fresh, uncorrupted meat for the future.
After all, deep down, if ever we get the chance, wouldn’t we all do the same thing? Aren’t the trappings of wealth what we should all be aspiring too? The moat, the bespoke duckhouse, the gilt monogrammed well cover…. aren’t these all things that everyone who is rich should have?
So why don’t we all have them?
Why are we still living in a world of can-have-will-haves and can’t-haves?
What went wrong with the ‘trickle down’ economics about which we were all so optimistic/dubious, but also powerless to prevent?
Sadly I’m forced, once again, to wonder just how many of the world’s outwardly respectable leadership are no more than petty thieves and liars troughing at the bucket for anything they can get, damn their principles and their constituent voters.
After all, we, the masses, are simply too stupid, too easily led, to blind and too deluded by wealth to expect better, aren’t we?
Perhaps it’s time we read the barn wall and realised that the writing up there has changed. The sheep might bleat, ‘four legs good, two legs better’, but they would be wrong, a pig is still a pig no matter how much single malt it drinks….
All our hopes for a world built on integrity and excellence slip further into the capitalist mire by the day. One can only shrug one’s shoulders and wonder if there is anyone left to blame…..
Trickle Down Blame in the Church of the Poisoned Kind by Carey Lenehan
In the midst of ephemeral recession,
each must ask themselves why….
why is how,
for against better reason, one thing is clear;
It is we, the working classes who,
with exquisite mediocrity,
during the rampant rule of
triumphant exploitative principle,
fail to grasp the generous opportunity afforded us
by the wealthy,
to improve our impoverishment
and catch the trickles we were fed
when wealth became too great,
for the rich to hold in their hands.
Had we worked harder,
sold our souls more readily,
cast aside morality
and valued wealth over life,
as they have so long done,
some paltry portion of their richesse
would have come to us
as a faltering drip,
like phlegm from a hayfevered nose,
a taste of the other,
a glimpse of utopia,
flat screen TV’s,
greener grass to gaze at and wish fervently for
but
because value has so corrupted
and in these days of quantitive easing,
where 1 + 1 equals 5,
on a derivative scale,
instead of trickled down wealth,
we have only to receive
the trickled down blame
from the venerable sermonisers
of the Church of the Poisoned Kind.
