Tag Archives: politics

Political Limericks and Other Poems

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Warning, this post may include tedium. This is particularly true for overseas readers who may not recognise any of the names.

I was intending to write some political limericks last week, but haven’t been firing on all cylinders after being ill. A limerick, with five lines, two rhymes (AABBA) and anapestic meter is trickier than it looks. Even when my brain is replete with fish and purring like a sardine-stuffed cat, questions of metre have a tendency to take the shine off my day.

The answer I adopted, in line with my normal policy of lowering standards to match results, is to cut out all the difficult bits. That would suggest a clerihew, a form often used to make fun of famous figures. The rhymes are easy (AABB) and it has a sensibly easy-going view of line length and metre.

Theresa May

Gave a poll lead away

She lost her majority

and offended her sorority

or

Jeremy Corbyn

Rhymes with next to nothin’

A beardy, weirdy smarty

Who leads the Labour party

To be fair, I’m not sure how smart he is. As long as it isn’t libellous (and I’m pretty sure that accusing politicians of intelligence is not defamatory) I think I’m in the clear as accuracy doesn’t seem too important in clerihews.

Nicola Salmon

Has a tendency to bang on

About places north of the border

That sound a bit like Mordor

Other parties are available, but I can’t remember the names of any of the leaders.

I then had a look at senryu. They are like haiku but without the rules –  no cutting words, no season words and no nature. Seventeen syllables or less. You can include humour and human foibles. They are almost the limerick of Japanese poetry and, apart from throwing a selection of words on the table to see what happens, there can’t be many easier ways to write a poem.

Ripples of applause

A political speech

The sound of lyres

Sorry, it’s a cheap shot but I couldn’t resist.

As for my comment on throwing a selection of words on the table, there is a poet who does that at workshops. I forget her name but she was on Radio Four a couple of weeks ago when it was National Poetry Day. She travels the world with a big bag of words running poetry workshops in a career that makes professional cuddler look almost mainstream.

 

 

 

 

Going into Politics

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In the UK anyone can stand for Parliament providing they meet certain criteria. Details are available here. You also need to put up a deposit of £500, which will be returned if you obtain 5% of the votes.

I am over 18 (by a considerable margin), a UK citizen and neither in prison or unlawfully at large, so I’m good to go. There are a few other stipulations but, as far as I can see, nothing to say you have to be sane or intelligent.  Anyone who has observed Parliament over the years will not be surprised by this.

We have a fine tradition of joke candidates in the UK, mainly from the Monster Raving Loony Party, who have been about longer than some of the more serious parties. We also had Mr Fish Finger this year, and Lord Buckethead made another appearence.

Of course, the Americans do this sort of thing much better – the one time they had a joke candidate they elected him President.

So, with Donald Trump as my inspiration, I am seriously thinking of going into politics.

Now all I need are some policies. I’m sure I can rely on my readers to come up with some, but here are three to start.

Appoint a Minister for Books 

You know it makes sense. The world would be a better place with more books. There are many things you can do with books apart from reading them. You can build roads with them, you can use them in craft projects or you can let your imagination run riot.

Personally I would translate books and drop copies into world troublespots. After an intensive course of Paddington or Wind in the Willows I can’t see anyone feeling like committing acts of violence.

Legalise Drugs

According to a paper I’ve just been reading, if you legalise drugs you could raise £3.4 billion to £6.4 billion per annum, even after setting up and running Offdrug to supervise things.

There may be a problem persuading people that we ought to legalise drugs, and I appreciate it will be a hard sell, but just think what £3 billion will do for the NHS.

As another benefit, if we make drugs legal it’s likely that teenagers will stop taking them as it won’t upset their parents.

Regularise the legal position regarding longbows

Since the twelfth century there have been laws on providing weapons to defend the realm (Assize of Arms 1181), and laws to enforce the pracice of archery continued until at least 1541 when King Henry VIII passed  An Act for the Maintenance of Artillery, and debarring unlawful Games.

It would appear from the Internet that there is some doubt as to whether this has ever been repealed, so just to be on the safe side I would reinstate the old laws and have everyone between the ages of 14 and 60 providing their own bows and practicing for at least two hours a week. That’s everyone including women, as we have moved on from the days when only men were included.

In days of spiralling military costs and increasing wars this will allow us to provide a cost-effective Territorial Army for the 21st century.

Bearing in mind the words of Albert Einstein (“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”) we will, with a nation of trained archers, be well-placed to repel the post-apocalyptic monkey army or take over the remaining world.

Let’s be honest, how many political parties are planning for World War 4? Most of them are just stocking up for WW3.

As a final point, the York by-law allowing people to kill Scots carrying bows and arrows, will definitely be repealed. Unless they decide to leave the Union, in which case we may need a referendum to bring it back.

 

 

 

Politics and Cricket

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If I was more skilled, I would weave together a story about cricket and elections.

Or, to put it another way, an archaic game of complex strategy, which uses words never heard elsewhere, has just come to a conclusion nobody understands using an arcane method that many people find hard to accept.

Yes, England just beat Australia by 40 runs (calculated by the Duckworth Lewis method.

In another example of cricket mirroring life, Afghanistan just handed out a spanking to a more established country, beating the West Indies by 63 runs. I use “country” in the cricketing sense rather than  “a sovereign state and a member of the U.N in its own right.”, as they say on Pointless.

Sadly, I’m not that skilled and that’s as far as it goes.

Really I’d like to add a homilly on  walking, as it’s something some politicians could learn from cricket.

And finally, an off-colour joke about googlies and I’m done…

 

Barn Owls and Peace – an Unlikely Story

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This is an interesting link about Barn Owls. They are traditional thought of as wise birds, though I’ve never seen one on The Chase, and this is the first time I’ve seen them linked to politics and the peace process. I particularly liked the bit about bats at the end of the article.

I used to see Barn Owls regularly cruising the Fens when I lived there, and we had several pairs around the farm, including one that became involved in a synchronised flying display with a Buzzard. I’m still not sure what that was about but the superior manoeuvrability of the owl enabled it to give the Buzzard the slip.

There are links to this sort of behaviour here and here.

On a day  that the UK is gradually learning more yesterday’s terror attack, and a couple of days after the death of Martin McGuinness, I suppose I could go on to discuss peace, but I have nothing useful to say. I’m sure that most people agree that peace is a good thing but violence never seems to go out of fashion.

I’ll just leave you with this.

Price and Predjudice

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I was speaking to someone last week who tells me his brother in law has been ploughing vegetables back in because the supermarkets won’t pay him enough to make it worthwhile to harvest them.

It seems wrong, but where does the fault lie? The farmer has to take the most cost-effective route because he has a business to run. By ploughing he’s also saving the emissions that go with harvesting and he’s also incorporating organic matter into the soil.

The supermarkets? Along with farmers and the European Community they are one of our favourite villains. The French Government has just started to do something about supermarket food waste, but to be fair they are driven by the customers and if the customers want cheap food the supermarkets have to provide it. It’s like the Free Range Egg thing again. There was a time about 25 years ago when around 80% of people said they wanted non-cage eggs because of welfare considerations. Then for years they carried on buying the cheapest (battery) eggs.

So if it’s not the farmer and it’s not the supermarkets who is at fault.?

Looks like it’s me. I like parsnips, and I particularly like cheap parsnips. It suits me to buy a bag for pennies. Having said that, I made a lot of soup last year from the carrots and parsnips we bought for pig food. Those were really cheap and in soup you can’t tell the difference. I was taking them off the stack, by the way, not wrestling the pigs for them!

In other ways I’m quite responsible. Sometimes I look enviously at the more exotic or out of season veg and I admit I do buy sweet potatoes. I do, however, try to avoid Guatemalan asparagus, Kenyan beans and (in summer) Moroccan tomatoes. Although I try to base my buying decisions on air miles and nutrition these days I have previously based decisions on politics and xenophobia (as in refusing to buy French apples) when we had plenty of good apples ourselves.

So, to sum up, I compost, I grow organically and I buy cheap food from supermarkets if it’s reasonably local, seasonal and not politically abhorrent. I’m doing my best on a limited budget, though I’m not entirely logical.

The average politician, it seems to me, isn’t that bothered about sustainability and gets paid a sum roughly equivalent to the riches of the Indies (look up their multiple jobs in the Register of Interests).

No wonder they can’t formulate a logical food policy if it has to be based on me.