The Bell Tolls

The Bell Tolls

With Parliament eschewing us
We failed to see those screwing us
Or sense the Press attuning us
To the forces that would ruin us

New technologies amazed us
As AI, unchecked, erased us
The objects of our cravings
Had been making us their playthings

All judgement proved erroneous
Votes electing the felonious
Global corporations owning us
And our children all bemoaning us

Unchallenged by contrarians
Self-serving sedentarians
And pseudo-proletarians
Ousted selfless parliamentarians

We swallowed demagoguery
Lapped up lame Rees-Moggery
Traduced by the antediluvian
Mock Tudor anti-EUvian

Johnsonian hypocrisy
Termited our democracy
Adrift without a Socrates
Or elders who would plant the trees

Our pleasant lands were not retained
So HS2 was not de-trained
All motorways quadruple-laned
So quality of merchants was not strained

Commercial climate-change denial
Mocked our tears as crocodile
And mixed with fetid, septic bile
Put paid to Shakespeare’s sceptred isle