Leaves turn red

Tired of working for cruel, intransigent boss;
Leaves turn red. It is not their loss
Of profit, sucking their lives dry
In the service of corpulent, bloated guy
For in this world, its nearly always men
Who profit from cheap labour, then
Swan off to convenient tax haven
Suck up souls of those who slave in
Modern day workhouses, pump and sweat
Leaves gather sunlight, yet
Get no reward for their toil
Our labour earns his profitable spoil.
Learn from leaves. In protest, cut
Gordian knot that binds us shut.
Join a union, organise and fight
For what should be ours by right.
Let the broken stump of capitalism wither
We cannot afford to dither.
Let us build and spring anew,
Let this autumn be our last,
Let the working class hold fast
Consign slavery to the past.
We cannot baulk at radical change
Socialist ideas, no longer strange.

 

If you have enjoyed my poetry on this blog, my new collection, “Little Green Poetry” is now available from Lulu – – £4+P&P (paperback) or £2.50 (for e-book readers)

You can still order copies of my first collection, “Little Red Poetry” from http://www.leftbooks.co.uk or http://www.lulu.com – again for £4 (pb) or £2.50 (as a pdf for e-readers).

I hope you enjoy reading my poems, and, as always, all proceeds will go to help build the fightback against corporate political parties, to build a voice for the millions, not the millionaires.

To find out more about my politics, visit the website of the Committee For A Workers’ International, which is engaged in struggle in around 50 countries worldwide.

Hospital Closures: Campaigning and Winning

So important to join up campaigns against cuts to public services, our NHS is being privatised, and cut to the bone, our schools are being turned into academies and libraries are being closed. We all use and need decent public services; if the Tories and the Blairites have their way, these will be handed over as cash cows to the private sector.

Thoughts of a Leicester Socialist

Not a day goes by when our NHS is not under attack from the government. This explains why our Junior Doctors have been forced into planning further strike actions to prevent further dangerous ‘reforms’ to facilitate the mismanagement of our health services.

In recent months I have been campaigning alongside many others in fighting to stop the closure of the Glenfield Heart Unit in Leicester, but we are also demanding that no heart units should be shut down in other parts of the country too.

With a £22 billion funding gap in the NHS, it is little wonder that the government is pushing through dangerous closures, and in Leicester we have just been informed that plans are on the table to close down A&E services at the Leicester Royal Infirmary.

So today I travelled to Grantham and joined over a thousand other people in marching through the rain with our…

View original post 272 more words

We need to keep our E C M O

Tories, closing our heart units down;
I said, Tories, they’re making us frown.
I said, Tories, vested interests abound.
We need to get very angry!

Children, born with holes in their hearts,
Fragile babies, who need the best start.
You can go there, and I’m sure you will find
Surgeons with skills to repair you.

We need to keep our E C M O
We need to keep our E C M O
Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygen,
It can help save your life.

We need to keep our E C M O
We need to keep our E C M O
It can help you to breathe, pump your blood all around,
It can help save your life.

Families, stay with their loved ones,
I said, families, we were all young once.
I said, families, with support and love,
We need to be there for one another.

No man, does it all by himself.
Don’t let Tories, put our hearts on the shelf,
We can go there, to the Glenfield Hospital.
I’m sure they can help you today.

We need to keep our E C M O
We need to keep our E C M O
It can help you to breathe, pump your blood all around,
It can help save your life.

We need to keep our E C M O
We need to keep our E C M O
It can help you to breathe, pump your blood all around,
It can help save your life.

Tories – when they make you feel blue
I said, Tories, pick yourself off the ground,
They don’t care, that children are kept alive
Their hypocrisy is so jive…

That’s why, we need our NHS Trusts,
We say, no more privatisation and cuts.
We have technology, called the E C M O
That can start you back on your way.

E C M O, we need to keep our E C M O
It can help you to breathe, pump your blood all around,
It can help save your life.

E C M O, we need to keep our E C M O
It can help you to breathe, pump your blood all around,
It can help save your life.

E C M O, we need to keep our E C M O
Tories, they come in both blue and red.
I said, Tories, they don’t care if we’re dead.

E C M O, we need to keep our E C M O
Young child, young child, you didn’t have a good start,
Young child, young child, with a hole in your heart.

There’s a petition, you can find it online,
A petition, it won’t take you much time:
To MPs, although they are mostly scum,
But it might, just, get something done.

Sign the official Parliamentary petition here for a review into the closure of Children’s Heart Units, at the Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, in Manchester and at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London.

 

 

 

Save Our Heart Units

http://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=160455

This is the map of a petition, which is calling for a review into the proposed closure of Glenfield Children’s Heart Centre in Leicester. There is a large number of signatures from Leicester and the surrounding areas, but the unit serves the whole of the East Midlands.

Also, this is not the only unit under threat – similar facilities in Manchester and in London are also being axed, if the government get their way. I would like to see similar blobs of support around these cities too!

This is a nationwide issue, as five other hospitals have been told to stop doing simpler operations on children’s hearts. Children will not stop being born with congenital defects, such as a “hole in the heart” – and we need local services in order to protect people, so anxious families do not have to travel hundreds of miles to the nearest unit. More information can be found here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-36737265

The NHS was founded to be a universal, comprehensive health service, to meet people’s needs, from “cradle to grave” – not to be cut back, fragmented and broken up, so profitable parts can be handed over to private companies.

Please sign the petition , and get involved in campaigns to save our NHS.

 

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, while playing Pokemon Go and trying to catch Quilladin on August 2, 2016

 

A score of years have passed since your release

Childish nostalgia; games we once enjoyed.

Gameboy, Dreamcast, Nintendo 64

Amidst the console scrap-heap in the sky

Clouds scud across, sweet summer's zephyr.

Yet I care not. I'm in pursuit mode – hot

On heels of rare Quilladin green and brown;

Chestnut bred with hedgehog, strange beast indeed.

If only I could find reception in midst

Of landscape serene, these green hills and crags

These beauteous plots, hedgerows, fields – Nature

All around - why focus on tiny screen?

At this wide wilderness, I barely glance

Entranced by tiny pixels as they dance

Enticingly away from futile tries

To entrap Snorlax in my virtual grasp.

Whilst I leap to find elusive signal,

I lose my footing, tumble into tarn

My precious iphone dowsed in mountain stream

Screen smashed, game irretrievably lost.

My eyes open then to Nature's beauty,

Not augmentations of reality.

I fix my gaze on real, not Google Earth;

Take in each second, value every breath.

If Wordsworth were around to see this day,

Playing Pokemon would ruin his poetry.

Hands off our precious libraries

Hands off our precious libraries!
Hands off our treasured books!
Free computers boot up;
Any query we can look up.

Let’s defend our jobs and services
From all you neo-liberal crooks
So hands off our precious libraries
Hands off our treasured books!

Let stressed commuters rush about,
Inside we whisper, no need to shout.
Community space, for every race,
Sanctuary in the centre of our city.

We must save our precious libraries,
Books enrich our vocabularies;
Fire imaginations off to far-distant realms.
A world of words inspires, overwhelms.

Tories preach austerity, all we ask is parity:
A chance for all to share and have a look.
Keep our libraries open, a place where we can pop in
To savour the pleasure of a good book.

Keep our precious libraries,
Keep our treasured books.
Part of a collective history,
Not a puzzle or a mystery

If you take away our library
Society will much poorer be.
So let’s all strike back and organise
Shelves into Dewey decimals.

It may sound quite contrarian
But we need to keep our local librarian,
A guide to all the crannies and the nooks –
Hands off our precious libraries and books!

 

Sign the online petition to save Coventry’s libraries.

Thanks to Vicky Cowell, staunch defender of Coventry’s libraries and avid bookworm, for kicking this off with the first verse, and for much inspiration. For more information – see this report from the Coventry Telegraph and a recent Coventry Against The Cuts protest.

Libraries and council services are under threat across the country. We need to fight back. Get involved in a local anti-cuts group, or if there isn’t one where you live, set one up yourself!

45 minutes

45 minutes to sex up the dossier,
45 minutes to polish the lie.
45 minutes of cowardice and calumny,
45 minutes, pressed suit and red tie.

2 million marched through Trafalgar Square,
2 million sought refuge from ruined Iraq.
2 million ignored, corruption laid bare,
2 million hopes crushed, prepare for attack.

Zero the weapons of mass destruction,
Zero nuclear warheads, anthrax or napalm.
Zero reasons, zero justification,
Zero warnings of depleted uranium.

Thousands of campaign dollars from Exxon, persuasive
Thousands to white-wash the blackness of death.
Thousands of sound-bites, slick and evasive
Thousands of half-truths that lie on your breath.

One special relationship had to be kept,
One bond with George Bush that held you in thrall.
One soldier Tom Keys, whose family wept,
One aim for the war, to secure yet more oil.

City of Sanctuary

Welcoming hands, and cheerful smiles
Greet us along the Golden Mile
As we make our way to Leicester town
Vibrancy – white, black and brown.
In this peaceful city of sanctuary
We can share basmati and curry.
The people who gave you Jamie Vardy
Join as one, for a great big party
Spiralling out round Victoria Park
We’re underdogs, but we can bark!
Let’s celebrate, laugh, dance and sing
In our step we have a special spring
Flow through the city like the river, soar
Like a wyvern, over a place I adore.

Eeeww!

 

Leaders, we have twenty-eight
Tories all, who simply state
We must cut and privatise
It really isn’t very wise.

We can’t even vote them out
Under Lisbon, we have no clout.
Sorry to be leaving EU
Let’s have democracy!

Look what the Troika did to Greece
Millions of Euros it did fleece.
A pretty penny for Tsiprias
On EU rocks, Syriza smashed.

Mare Nostrum the right say
Over the sea we will have sway
Fleeing refuge, they pass away
Fortress Europe has had its day.

We need to leave so we can say
The working class is here to stay
Smash the Tories, let us fight
For jobs and pay and workers’ rights.

Party like it’s 1975

Whenever I turn on the telly, read a paper, or go on facebook;
I quickly press the off button, don’t give another look.
Nothing but the Euros: no, not the football, the referendum
Right-wingers educated in Eton,  go on and on neverendum.
Debating how many pounds the Troika might lend ’em
At extortionate rates, of course. And on what can we spend ’em?
Expense claims – how can we bend ’em?
PFI contracts – how can we extend ’em?
Immigration – where can we send ’em?

I want to party like its 1975,
When Tony Benn was still alive.
The last time the public had to decide;
He’d never take the bosses’ side.
He’d have told them where to sling their hooks.
We need fighters for ordinary people, not crooks:
Ditch politicians who just want to make a packet
And leave the EU, a privateering racket.

Stand up for the interest of the working class,
Unity with strikers in Brussels and Paris.
No to dictats imposed from above;
No to Farage, Johnson and Gove.
There is an alternative vision
Of Europe, which gets hardly a mention,
A truly socialist sentiment:
Workers’ solidarity across the continent.

If you have enjoyed my poetry on this blog, my new collection, “Little Green Poetry” is now available from Lulu – – £4+P&P (paperback) or £2.50 (for e-book readers)

You can still order copies of my first collection, “Little Red Poetry” from http://www.leftbooks.co.uk or http://www.lulu.com – again for £4 (pb) or £2.50 (as a pdf for e-readers).

I hope you enjoy reading my poems, and, as always, all proceeds will go to help build the fightback against corporate political parties, to build a voice for the millions, not the millionaires.

To find out more about my politics, visit the website of the Committee For A Workers’ International, which is engaged in struggle in around 50 countries worldwide.