The Ice Bucket Challenge.

Fundraising for motor neurone disease,
the ice bucket challenge. A bucketful
of water that’s freezing cold, if you please,
over the head and shoulders. Splash it all.

Done in good spirit and for a good cause.
And sight posted on the web and facebook.
Courage admired, a laugh, some applause.
All sorts who know, expect will take a look.

Realise, as I write this, the posture.
Head presented for the water at speed.
Strange the gesture, the victim to endure.
Mimics beheading. Thank God, not, indeed.

See, in Gaza, where bombed sites the trouble,
the plenty, used for water, is rubble.

‘Revolution’.

It really should be more accessible,
The vibrant message of revolution.
With minimum violence, best of all.
Change for good, and better, the solution.

Away with all the old tory toe-rags.
Apologists, protectors, and givers
of privileges and amounts in stacks.
To the wealthy and feudal, delivers.

Sustain some efforts for equality.
Anarchy! Useful a means as any.
Massive disaffection voiced properly.
Street protest. Contest all territory.

The Sixties lot eventually won.
It is time this generation begun.

Who the State is Run For!

Starting point is, who the State is run for.
Not its people. That’s the cover story.
If ‘greater good’, why so many dirt poor?
Not in reality for you and me.

Operates for the rich and powerful;
corporate business; feudal landowners.
Protects this dominance from change at all.
Politics paid for by private donors.

And, Labour ‘for the people’, chimera.
Now, an alternative Statist party.
Basis: Status Quo. Us, inferior.
Crony Capitalism remains key.

Presented as immutable, except
at margins; and to it, People adapt.

The Politics and its Effects..

Ours a dysfunctional society,
obviously, see the mental ill-health.
Craziness, much more in entirety.
All for an economy based on wealth.

Truly damaged our distorted culture.
Look at the suicides, each one tragic.
It’s as if an abscess or an ulcer.
All for a system made fit for the rich.

‘ Rest of us … , also-rans, assumed losers,
whilst the corporate abusers prosper.
Bullying, roughness, from state accusers.
Decency …, democracy …, imposters.

Individuals loaded with the blame.
The real greedy guilty, full of disdain.

‘Private’ Data.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden talked of
people not knowing any privacy.
On the State record, their lives on the log.
Populations in their entirety.

Spied on through phone and internet searches.
Added; financial, ownership, info.;
And whatever’s found that shows that exists.
Sexual and political, will know.

And, from comments, personal minutae
to be accessed if want to examine.
May catch out in a lie. May add a lie.
To correct what’s wrong, no one clammering.

Say, “just be yourself, if nothing to hide”,
as distort the lives of all on whom spied.

Contrived Debt. Tax Not Paid.

They neither pay tax as individuals
or as profitable corporations.
Moral duty to pay; resist it all.
Act as though they are sovereign nations.

A foreign sandpit for exploitation.
Nothing to stop them doing whatever.
Contrived transactions, at instigation,
so  the real proceeds, to pay on, never.

Debt, the result of distorted contract
with disguised entity, deemed separate,
but really themselves, has desired impact.
Nothing earned so nothing due in home State.

Debt financing done to avoid paying.
Robbing the rest of us, game they’re playing.

Unequal to the Task.

Discarded, Labour’s historic mission,
to bring about greater equality.
Its leaders make minimal decisions,
so unachieved in the economy.

“Labour’s only marginally better”,
is the mantra it should really proclaim.
Capital, wealth, business, will not fetter.
Unequal. On the gap, the State restrained.

Labour’s remedy, three, feebly applied.
Employment, with living wages, sustained.
On increased prosperity, though, relied.
Taxation! But for rich, their gains retained.

Beat Poverty!, but Welfare State hands tied.
Not the end product, when so much implied.

Clay.

Clay that’s dry, hard and unmalleable.
The State shaped to deliver for the rich.
Despite obfuscation, it’s tangible.
The pitcher, with plenty, that knows its pitch.

So inflexibly pours for ruling class,
anarchists think abandon or avoid,
protest against, or shatter it like glass.
The prospects it brings of promise, devoid.

Socialists believe they can change its shape,
with organised labour there supporting.
But needs more than they’re prepared to create
if current flow’s to end, and resorting

to pour for the masses the nation’s wealth.
Lack of commitment means clay’s its old self.

Litany of the Blair Brown Years.

On reflection and consideration,
it amounted to tory government
under Labour flag, for incubation.
Socialists and workers, impediments.

Refused to raise income tax on the rich.
Loopholes aplenty to avoid paying.
Imposed bills on the poor, without a hitch.
Hostility to their needs, kept baying.

Missed all targets to end child poverty.
Whilst hedge funds, the national interest.
Did not even start with fuel poverty.
Banks let loose. To us, then, their massive mess.

Secure care for frail old, not put in place.
All of this, and war, was morally base.

Delusional God.

Human Beings, if get the chance, play God.
With means and power, think entitled to.
Animal experiment, just the job.
Control; hardly need invitation to.

Act as God-like, and can be merciless.
Decisive, determining the one way.
Enforce it. An affront if meet reverse.
‘ Has to be their show. What they want, displayed.

Omnipotence, without humility.
It soon becomes authoritarian.
If same-minded there in proximity,
conflict. May become a barbarian.

God that’s invincible, immutable.
Hand of history, undisputable.

Labour Conditions.

Inefficient, and teeming with hatred,
the state of employment conditions here.
It is Victoriana, outdated.
To the grindstone with a great deal of fear.

Underpaid, but expected to do more.
Bullied, and can be dispensed with at will.
Wage not enough, so family kept poor.
But lose it and for them, then, there’s less still.

Zero hours contracts means may get paid work,
or not, but have to be available.
Any consistency would be a perk
Permanent, full-time, … less attainable.

Alienated labour with the stress.
Not fair exchange. Its replacement, duress.