MY GOVERNMENT WILL LEGISLATE…(weekly poem)

MY GOVERNMENT WILL LEGISLATE…

(The Queen’s Speech to Parliament)

My Government will legislate,

To raise the basic wage

By 20p per week in the

First incremental stage,

Which from my own experience

Should just about assuage,

The lower orders and their sham,

Austerity-led rage.

In this my Sovereign island realm,

This true democracy;

My subjects are all equal in,

The right to be quite free.

In fact they’ve almost got the right,

To be the same as me,

If it weren’t for that small elite

Topped by the monarchy!

They’re free to choose the boss by whom,

They’ll sometime be employed;

And free to choose the Job Centre,

When their career’s destroyed.

And free to join the millions,

Of long-term unemployed;

And free to treat depression by,

The methods used by Freud.

They’re free to cast their hard-won vote,

Once every five long years;

But have no say from day to day,

Unlike M.P.’s and Peers,

Who are, of course, unlucky when,

The market interferes,

And wonder why their best-laid plans,

At all times end in tears!

© Richard Layton