We have been harmonized

 Put out the recycling

Pay your housing tax

Don't forget to walk on the pavement

If you want your taxes back

Give well to government

Give well to charities

Always deduct the tax

Gift aid, gift aid

Is automatic

I didn't know you didn't want that

Where are the options?

Click on and click off

Who ever said that human decision making

Turned out better it was easier and at low cost?

We have become the new China

Our citizens are more compliant 

And docile

In this mid-winter domicile

The cold water in the blood is vile

Everything and everybody

Moves so slowly it's disgusting

It's like we're all jellyfish in the mid-atlantic ocean

 I can't be bothered not to get trapped

In that plastic bag-rubbish island

I might as well drift into that

As float off into the horizon

What a state Britain is in

Yes we all at least follow the rules

Or we are too proud to admit we cut corners

And cheat and that makes us all lying fools

I have no sympathy for recklessness

It gives its just desserts 

And if you think you should wreck the fence

That brought all these Brexit results

Then why can't you see we are animals

Just a field of sheep to be led

What has democracy got with our morals?

Why not leave it all up to some eggheads?

I think that We live in a prison

But that we are most comfortable here

It is a locked greenhouse of our own devising

And there is nothing worth saving in there

Go and get on your own ship-island

If you are not happy on this one

There are screams which come from the child in the street

But they are not always where you would hear them

Back home

 Oh potatoes rotting

And this western town

Asses swaying and cussed pockets

The slamming of car doors rubber and metal

A humming 

That probably a good thing to do when its not a very nice day

No I am not saying that there is an Egyptian living down stairs

But she sure worships that dog man

Dogman or mandog,

I am not even sure if he isn't a doggod

 God dog it, I mean dagnam it or man dag it

She has got all men out of her life except Him

And the tree next door is in blossom, well it is hanging its fruits

It is near mid July

And the pollen is high 

and its scent wafts through my window

The sun is long in the sky 

and hangs there mellow

Like it is sad to go down

And put an end to all this beauty

this summer of loving

Oh now I'm getting carried away in sentiment

The runner jogs on 

Another car passes

The martial arts combatants leave for the evening

After beating themselves up and each other

In the gym

In the dance hall of horrors

So much like a timeless

Beating box 

that is incessantly drummed with the

pounding and tapping of feet - little and large

the footprints stay there.

This is the third age of man

The forties

I am back on home turf,

Although not totally home

It is now quickly becoming my home

I am sinking back into British life

and it is absorbing me

It is beautiful this time of year

The pigeons or crows flap in the boughs

And rearrange their positions I suppose

 

Pub talk

 Here's to Shepton

It's on its knees

Won't the government lower

The tax on alcohol please!

Give the pubs the upper hand over

Supermarket sleaze

They're destroying our culture

With their lower price freeze

We buy our beer in bulk

Bring it back home to drink

Like the incredible hulk

shipwrecked into bed we sink

In a sulk

For we've not met new friends

Only drank til we've caulked

And whitened and paled and netflixed out

And it could be the ale or speciality stout

But in fact it's the lack

of the life we're about

 Just go down the pub

You'll feel better no doubt!

This culture is dying

But it's not what you think

Britain was founded on

A strong liking for drink

If you consider the heroes

The brave and the true

You'll find they all loved

To partake of the brew

We come together in clubs

And in teams

We drink to our fellows

And we drink to our wins

But drink too to your losses

As well as your gains

Because as the penny tosses

So fall the rains

And mercy can fall equal

On Kings as on peasants

But just mind how you say it

When plucking a pheasant!

I think we were better back in 1981

When we drank through unemployment

And likewise we drank to have fun

But you've got to enjoy it

With friends and in good company

It's like music to my ears

And it's the mark of being free

So this is England

So this is England

Walking down the High Street of a Somerset town

Shops are closing down

Or shut up already,

Walking with a dry mouth, parched

But The pub at the end

It hearkens no laugh

The bar is a dark place

The bar stools stand

Empty as a pocket

In an empty land

So this is England

I hear you say

What I had come to love

Has soon been blown away

In a wind of change

As across the motorway

The dust of dry fields

The corn storks decay

But this is Autumn, the voice of reason calls

And anyway what's the season, we

Still have the market stalls

And Artists crying treason

Writing written on the walls

Who's sold off this lovely land

The politicians or the fools?

Who voted for them in the first place?

In this government of crows

This murdering of Parliament

This place where no hope grows

And yet and yet I hear you say

This is Winter, it goes that way

Perennial seasons, people trying

To reclaim

The name of the rose

So this is England

Dig in your own garden and look after your own lot

Put up notices, beg for pardon

Give whatever you've got

Give as good as you get

And forget to pick forget-me-nots

For suckling bees at flowers

Could not count all of their stock

Store it in piles in larders

Fill up the honeypot

And save for a rainy day

For you know that happens a lot

Though we never spend

Even though today is no day to save

Gather it in at your wedding

Give it away at your grave

Yes this is England,

Hoarding your plot

And marking out the lines 

Where you go

Where you do not

And never throw a stone at a crow

Never break the glass houses

Because we've built them out of stone

And we've tied them on necklaces down blouses

Caught in the cleavage gap

Between two breasts boom and bust

Crying I must, I must, I must improve my bust

Yet leverage of whale bones, never

Moved the beached body off the beach

We saw the mermaids waving in the surf

We gave it a pauper's grave and tears of grief

This great flotilla of what was once our dreams

That came up for air once

But heard only screams

Yelling go back, go back

And warning us of the sand banks

But it was too late as The hull

Hit ground and broke the cranks

Yet this is England

We've landed

This place of our dreams

This isle of forever

Forever down flowing streams

Water, water everywhere, flowing down the sink

Water, water everywhere, and only beer we drink

Rule the British Empire

 Britain Victorious?

All other countries ignore us

We wouldn't know how to rule the world

Or the difference between a penguin and a walrus

God save our has-been

It is a bit thin and mean

Since the last time was seen

And rumble rumble, there goes our motor cars

They work like some worn out stars

Still bringing home the bacon

After the horse has long bolted

Britain never never shall make waves

I think we are particles, but some say its not a quantum world

And a little change here will cause a whirlwind in Japan

Certainly our fashion sucks and have you tried our food? Good Luck!

What we really are good at is producing criminals and we like to fuck

But that is about all

Murder is number one leisure / free time activity

Followed by a cup of tea, then down the Bingo Hall

If you want Variety we have a bunch on our TV

Some of the worst acts in history

And don't mention the state of schools

The thing we do best of all,

Is fail heroically

It is in our DNA to laugh at ourselves

It doesn't really matter who is getting mugged

For their handbag, as long as football thugs are glad

Then the country will succeed

Of course we need a super model, like Jordan with the giant jugs

Or to watch Big brother and see others giving huge hugs

From the safety of our setees

So Britain never, never shall make waves

We might become China's slaves

And be run by Algorithms

But the Royal Family shall be saved

In the form of auto eroticism

And android sheep now roam our hills

Jerusalem was penned upon the back of dollar bills

And who can shake the hand of John Stuart Mills

But Sheik Ali and his company whom we sell our arms

and our grandmother's charms in exchange for crude oil

We are Little Britain

Give me your answer
The bee is buzzing the rings are fastened
To the belt
The bells jingle
Like a thousand questions
That I've already answered before
Such silly dances these folk give
Without wanting to be twee
We British can't make a serious suggestion
Or connection with tradition
Which hasn't already been mocked
Or flogged to death on a debating floor
But over in Europe,
The individual is filled with somekind of power
Invested with some awe
By us British
Except the ones who are trying to rip them off
Make money from their children in summer schools

They have this otherness value that shields them
Like a shawl, a cloak of invisibility
If not of impenetrability
Which means everything they say has this extra weight
Even the everyday utterances
Even some cultural reference to a folk tradition
Is revered
But not in Britain,
Not about British traditions
Now let's be fair we mean the English
Scottish traditions have this cloak of protection
As do the Welsh and don't mention the Irish
But mention the English and it is quaint
Or silly or small and provincial
Though fiercely defended in the village
In the towns and cities they laugh and sneer
At such exhibitions of little england
Those little threads that tie
communities together
if that itself is not a clichéd or kitch concept

Bridgwater in the rain

I remember in bridgwater
road in the rain
All those bloody traffic jams
All those

I remember bridgwater in the rain
And the roads that flowed
Out
The forests on the verge
That never emerge
From the corners
Of your blinkered vision

I remember the turns
And the dips in the road
Of the little old track
That ran
Down past the willows
Down past the the peat centre
And the Marshes that lay
Asleep in our hands

Do they still run,
Do the rivers still flow
The way I remember them in my youth
Do the roads still subside
And dip and dive
Do those same Peat tractors
Still pull their black load?
I suppose
They do

But what if its changed
If the falling rain
Has washed all foot prints away?
What of the people, their voices
Their triumphs
What if their hearts couldn't stay?
What then for my hopes of returning
What then for the time of a life
that's kept burning?
What if the jack knifed
Lorry is blocking the road
And the hearts blood is pumping
Its heavy load
And its blood is black with the peat
That its knowed
And the rain washes all this blackness
Away, away