Inspired by Strummerville

Performing at Strummerville didn't only induce me to write about evil spaniels, it also got me writing some more political fare, a follow-up to this one. Audio version here.

Social surgery II

I’ve got a criminal mind but not criminal intent
and the sorts of convictions that’ll never be spent
on sucking up to bosses just to pay the rent
‘cos my sharply worded mockery’s sincerely meant.

When the law becomes a gag it’s our duty to defy,
shout out official secrets, broadcast far and wide,
expose the Selfservatives, the ConDems’ lies,
they only represent themselves, we’ve no reason to comply.

So, I fought the law and the lawman threatened,
winked at a crony and then a second,
there was no-one watching they must have reckoned
but their truncheons went limp when YouTube beckoned.

The powers-that-be, they like to throttle
out the life from dissent until they’ve got all
of us cowed, so whack ‘em with a champagne bottle,
a posh cosh to show that not all

Magnums are the same – ice creams, Dirty Harry,
Guy Fawkes in the Bullingdon, clubbing all the barri-
caded toffs, Moet on cranium,
crowds gather round, mushrooming like uranium

clouds – dark skies over Eton,
larval future ministers lie buggered up and beaten
by a black-masked man like Michael Keaton,
but not the sort of batman they expected to be meeting,

doesn’t care about the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler
when there’s bricks to be lobbed at smarmy cufflink-fiddlers
like Hugo Boss ads made flesh in the middle of
Whitehall, soul-less suits who should consider a

change of career, break their drone-programming
like Red Dwarf’s Kryten, Ed Snowden, Bradley Manning,
pick up a spray-can, get culture-jamming,
give the world something more than fake orange tanning

and TV – reality’s much better
than game-shows and Noel Edmonds’ sweaters,
so don’t worry about whether ‘they’ will let us,
permission’s not required, and they are not our betters.