XV

Put to one side any philanthropic scruples as to today’s

Appearance of moral probation imposed on the unemployed,

Symbolic chain-gangs lining figurative roads in luminous

Tabards, like so many linked buoys –better to peel away

Any layers of hairshirt ethics you might have as to helping

Others, ditch any utopian notions as to any of us being in

It for anything other than ourselves; and, most of all, rinse

Out any stubborn stains of numinous phantasms –for today

Is for the practicable and frugal: it’s back to decapitating

Beveridge’s Five-Headed Hydra of Giant Evils; state

Assistance based on contribution, not pure need, otherwise,

Those who really need it would have an automatic claim –

Plus immigrants, travellers and foreigners would be eligible

For benefits –So spout those O so sensible Orange Liberals,

‘Red’ Tories and ‘Blue’-Rinse Labourites: put the working

Back into working class, along with cloth caps and whippets,

Whip up brouhaha of moral panic about Bulgarians,

Romanians and Roma (courtesy of Rothmans-and-Spitfire

Man of the bygone moment and resurgent yesterdays,

Frog-faced laughing Farage, going rebbit rebbit at the sight

Of any immigrant –that jocund pint-propper, the amiable,

Pub-flushed, Real Ale, saloon bar xenophobe) -it’s a beer-mat

And slippery sloping elbow from quixotic notions of English

Village greens, willow-clopping Winchester cricket grounds,

Tepid beer and Jubilees, blimpish limps back to mothballed

British Imperialism (after all, the Empire's sun never set, but

Was packed up and dismantled spontaneously, while the Raj

Was melted down into outsourced pools of cheap rupees,

Diverted calls, sweatshop factories and post-colonial

Corner-shop outposts), pitching Jacks back on pink maps

In “bongo-bong-lands” a la Mr Bloom’s Emporium

Of Politically Incorrect Tropes, Dysphemisms and Other

Choicest Snippets, Parochial, Patriotic and Protectionist

Polemical Assortments tripping off his Werther’s Original-

Polished tongue, lozenges coined by August Storck…