Nothing changes.
Fifty years on they’ve got their snouts further into the troughs. Inequality rules. Exploitation is rife!!
Want a PPE contract??
Piggies (Remastered 2009) – YouTube
Poetry – I’m not a player
I’m not a player
I’m a Mah-jong counter
A piece upon the board
Pushed back and forth
By those who can afford.
They move me here.
They move me there,
As is their desire.
I have no say in anything
They buy the guns for hire.
They fit me with the blindfold
The earplugs and the gag.
And when the game is over
I’m back inside the bag.
Opher 28.10.2018
There are big forces at work in the world shaping our destinies. They are the major players. Sometimes my impotency becomes so obvious.
How did they get there? What is their aim?
Do I agree with what they are doing?
No I don’t.
It’s just money and power.
It’s a game.
I dream of being a pawn! If only. I can’t even get on the board.
Poetry – Spoils and Plunder
Spoils and Plunder
The spoils of war and plunder
Are not just evident in statues;
Also in institutions, estates and mansions
And enterprise without virtue.
Slavery was not restricted
To race and places.
It was evident in factories,
Mills and mines with familiar faces.
Those same plunderers
Profiteers and warmongers
Now sit on boards, and in government
A wicked bunch of bunglers.
In a range of institutes
Exerting privilege and power
Robber Barons in suits
Getting richer by the hour.
Opher – 18.6.2020
Poetry – The Honours list – Gongs – a poem of anger at the injustice.
Gongs
The honours list has been leaked – a long list of arrogant elitism, as a series of people are rewarded for their ‘service to the public’. The honours list is a gift of the Prime Minister.
Day in and day out for decade after decade dedicated workers serve their community.
People search down motorways to gather the body parts, crawl through sewers to remove blockages, frantically use their skills to staunch blood and save lives in A&Es, knock on doors to offer support, use their skills to save children from abuse, face down dangerous drunks with only the strength of their experience, man phones to assist the disturbed, tramp the streets picking up garbage, put their arms round those in distress, thoroughly clean wards to prevent disease, cheerfully answer phones, wade through shit in sewage farms, teach recalcitrant children to give them a future, Climbing up ladders into the flames, drive and drive and drive to put food on the table for their kids, clean endless bottoms for the elderly and infirm, provide the smiles and cheer, arrest the criminals, look after the dangerous mentally disturbed, comfort the bereaved, talk down the suicides, track down the psychopaths, study the porn to hunt and arrest the abusers, help and give and give and give.
Week in, week out, over decades, ordinary people give of themselves ceaselessly and go that extra mile, stay behind to give above and beyond. Year after year they wearily go home drained and traumatised by their experience, in tears, having given their all.
Holding the dying child’s hand, volunteering for that extra hour, giving of themselves for others, doing all the dirty, smelly work that nobody else wants to do; bravely doing the dangerous work that nobody else would do.
Forty years of ceaseless giving, caring, and contributing to the community for little pay and little recognition.
Yet it is the well-paid politicians, the donors and undeserving who receive the honours.
The selfless, ordinary people who burn themselves out through decades are retired with a lousy pension. Who watch silently while the hair-stylist receives their reward.
Gongs
Thirty nine years in service to the community
Where’s my gong? My MBE?
Where are the teachers, the nurses
Or the refuse collectors
In this honours list?
The police, the social workers
The sewage workers –
Don’t they exist?
Knighthoods and dames
For hair stylists and friends;
The donors and sycophants
And those who buck the trends.
But the real workers
Are all passed by,
In favour of supporters
Rewarded for catching the PM’s eye.
Opher – 1.8.2016
Democracy – The long and often bloody fight for freedom – The Tolpuddle Martyrs
Poetry – To be a famous celebrity – A poem about arrogance, elitism and avarice.
To be a famous celebrity
Every now and then I catch a glimpse of Strictly Come Dancing, The Voice or Britain’s Got Talent and I am sickened all over again. Forty years ago I was sickened when the Americans squealed and went mental at dross. I thought it could not happen here. We were more discerning, more reserved.
But we are not.
The celebrity culture, support of trash, and desire for wealth is more pernicious than even.
Back in the sixties we thought we were actually building a better future based on values, where wealth, fame and elitism were banished. We thought we’d dispensed with the superficial and were looking for something deeper – friendship, spirituality, coexistence with nature, respect for difference, fun, enjoyment, relationship, music, dance, art, culture, equality, freedom…………………..
We recognised that fame and wealth does not bring happiness; that this mad rush for personal wealth and power (always at the expense of others) was no recipe for fulfilment. Life is not a race, it’s a sharing of spirit.
No lessons were learnt.
The game is played by a tiny minority who cream off the wealth and power, buy off the politicians, own the media and fool us all into slaving for their prosperity.
Nobody ‘earns’ a million pounds – let alone a billion or two. They accrue that by exploiting others.
The inequality of the world, the environmental destruction, war, poverty and desperation are the direct result of policies created by those who benefit!
We are fed pap in order to keep us quiet. We have carrots dangled so that we feel we can become one of them.
We buy lottery tickets and work like hell to join the ‘In Set’. We want to be on TV and be elevated.
I watched the Apprentice with its naked avarice and back-stabbing desire to claw their way to the top, to bend every rule and – WIN!!!
It’s disgusting, empty, vacuous and utterly destructive.
I do not want to live my life at the expense of every other living person and creature on this planet. I’m not worth it! Nobody is!
To be a famous celebrity
To be a famous celebrity –
Nothing less will do for me!
I crave for a penthouse suite,
A huge yacht,
And all that you’ve got!
I yearn for the fame and luxury –
Nothing less will do for me!
To get all that
I’ll rob the poor and even my old mum
And put a tariff on my bum.
I desire to join the Jet-set crew –
For me, nothing less will do!
I don’t care if millions starve and die!
As long As I’m not forced
To wonder why.
Wealth and fame for me is due –
For me, nothing less will do!
It doesn’t worry me
If we kill everything –
Every damn last tree!
Nothing less will do for me!
You know I’m worth it!
You know!
I deserve it!
More than you!
Nothing else will do!
Opher 2.1.2016