odourofdevonviolet.com
The Scent That Captures That "1930s Moment"!
All material copyrighted to odourofdevonviolet.com © 2014
or to the various credited sources © 2014
XVII
The last thing any Britishers want in these straitened DEVON
VIOLET days are more Johnny Foreigners coming over here
For a spot of “benefit tourism” –time to tighten up
Entitlements until the quips peak; Frank ‘Not In My Back’ Field
MP seems as if he needs a dose of smelling salts to soothe
His intolerance to free movement of labour, some DEVON
VIOLET smelling salts, to fumigate his sinuses –“flexibility
Of labour” is perfectly acceptable in minds of politicians
And employers, but not free movement (except violet scents),
That’s now taboo –and the Poverty Tsar has done the maths:
Our cramped asthmatic coffers need to vent themselves
Of further clogging, we must vet more, no more spent on
Peripatetic opportunists from the Continent trying
To better themselves in our sovereign realm –only venture
Capitalists may venture about, tycoons and bankers have
That special privilege, to move their investments, detour
Their taxes via offshore havens of cash-stashed archipelagos,
Or threaten liquidising their assets at the merest roaring mouse
Of Regulation… Close up our Borders-by-the-sea, draw up
The ramparts, haul up the drawbridge –put up those DEVON
VIOLET hoardings over Dawlish’s terracotta escarpments
And Dover’s chalky white-knuckled cliffs –this golfing green
And peasant land, playground of the rich, apartheid for
The poor, must reassert itself, un-cuff its fists –time to
Announce that BRITAIN IS OPEN FOR PREJUDICE…
XVIII
Of course, during times of economic crisis –contrapuntal
To the necessary rumour of ‘Scroungerology’ to cajole
The proletariat into projecting their gilt-edged dearth of credit
Into the shadows of a "sponging" lumpenproletariat,
And distract the cash-strapped masses from the true ‘culprits’
Of their economic misery, also Austerity's ‘parasites’
(The ‘so-called “wealth-creators”’)– conspiracy theories
Are ripe for percolation, though rarely reach epidemic
Proportions, courtesy of a public more copiously
Spoon-fed on the violet tropes of red-tops than the less
Redacted evidence of their own optics… But there are those,
Nonetheless –mostly dreadlocked Trotskyists, Tofu-munching
Tub-thumpers, Museli Lefties, tin-pot revolutionaries, pop-
Up protestors, and other middle-class ‘radicals’, who’ve never
Done a decent pay’s work in their lives, except in their heads– ...
...Who would seriously have us, the British Public, believe
Austerity has been politically manufactured, concocted
By dastardly Doctors of Credit, Speculators and Hedge-
Betters, to make nations atone for years of Buy-To-Let
Plenty (soon to be resuscitated through the artifical
Stimulus of another housing bubble inflated by the ‘Help-
To-Buy-To-Bet’ Baronet, ‘aristocratic’ Chancellor -these
Peasants don't even know the difference between blue and
Aurple blood!- in pursuit of, not so much his grocer’s daughter
Idol’s “property-owning democracy”, as a ‘property-
Letting plutocracy’)! This is as paranoid as it can get!
XIX
So, according to these anarchistic crusties, the entire
Establishment (in league, of course, with the Markets and Troika)
Is unnecessarily inflicting mass austerity –and, get this:
Mostly only on those who weren’t invited to the party,
Who are not part of some mythic ‘Elect’, yet who are ‘expected
To clean up after them’… And they’ll brandish their workshy
Fists at makeshift lecterns, rant on about the dismantling
Of the Welfare State, the Attlee Settlement (which was, in any
Case, never actually settled in the first place), and last ditch
Ramparts of ‘compassionate’ politics, and some phoney ‘post-
War consensus’, soon to be gauchely replaced with skeleton
Auspices of honeycombed “Mutualism”, the Trussell Trust’s
Charitable food banks, which they ungratefully disparage
As State-outsourced ‘alfresco socialism’… And that all this
Is some sort of incremental pincer-movement around
The nation’s poorest –on whose behalf they appoint themselves
To speak without having bothered to ask them –the surplus,
Or residuum– for their permissions! O, and so they say,
The unemployed and homeless are all shovelled up from city
Precincts and gentrified high streets (protocols hyperbolised
As “social cleansing”!), into dosshouses, night shelters, or
Expedient accommodations of prison cells, B&Bs at Her
Majesty’s Pleasure (but at Our expense!); or, for those more
Fortunate, mere exile to the “doughtnut” ghettoes out of town;
Or out in the sticks, for those more intrepid, to kick against
The pricks, pitch up tents as Occupiers of empty spaces,
Pick-up-sticks and pitchforks like the Diggers, split-levellers:
From urban rent evictees to pastoral trespassers –Someone
Has to pick up the tab for these mud-slumming reprobates,
These squatting degenerates: and that’s invariably the putupon
Taxpayer, who has to stump up compensation, on behalf
Of the absentee landowner, for all the rubbish left behind
After public occupation of unoccupied private space,
Via the auspices of the State, as well as shelving out silvers,
Thirty a piece, as insurance to strangle-off charges
Of manslaughter-by-taser brought against our vigilant Police…