Snce I won, along with Bill Greenwell and Bazza (an hon mensh for Jerome Betts) I actually bought the thing for £3.50, and, do you know, it wasn't anything like as bad as I remember it? Maybe I should write to them and say so. The new competition is at the bottom.
Interesting that my entry failed in a similar Speccie Comp a couple of years ago. It shows, I think, that political satire is only funny if it plays to the reader's prejudices.
NS Competition 4172
Set by Leonora Casement
"The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse" is still the only book in print devoted to political poetry, though there is now a "Conservative Verse" website, which started in 2008. We asked for political poems for a new volume ofverse from a political party or direction of your choice.
This week's winners
A popular competition, although standards were variable. And we were surprised to have an entryfor a Book of Communist Verse! £25 to the winners, with a £5 book token going to Adrian Fry. An hon
rnensh to Jerome Betts for his Green entry. The Tesco vouchers go, in addition, to John Whitworth
Hail Roast Beef
I'd rather have roast beef to carve
Than swallow sauerkraut,
Or meet a Magyar or a Slav
With goulash on his snout.
I'd rather starve than greet a Pole
Who tastes of pickled gherkin:
Bring me a plain old Dover sole
A furlong and a firkin.
A Croat does not rhyme with groat:
Bring me a English florin,
Avoirdupois as well. Please note
At least it isn't foreign:
So let our land be independent
For every pudding-fed descendant.
Bill Greenwell
Blue Anthem
Join the Tories' march to glory,
Bold and blue and tried and true!
Slash taxation, save the nation,
You and you and you and you!
See our hit-list scare them shitless:
Social scroungers, Europhiles,
Foreign muggers, lefty buggers,
Reoffending juveniles!
Marxist error flees in terror;
Middle England shows her teeth;
Ring the bells in Tunbridge Wells,
Go light the lamps on Bexleyheath,
Save our sainted grammar schools,
Bring back hanging! Maggie rules!
John Whitworth
Remission of Failure
It is time for the remission of failure,
for the necktied monoglot hero, the diagnostician
with instruments seeking the original heart of the nation,
the gardening, dog-loving, reticent one
calling to thousands now,
loud as a mountain storm,
time for the rational overthrow of the armchairs.
Electricity flickers in the rue des Bouchers,
where the tense, salivating bureaucrat
is expertly fed at no personal cost.
His words have no meaning,
the restaurant is hygienically suspect,
and the idea of pan-Europe hopelessly winces
like a sad nervous complaint.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Channelling Stalin
Stalin! You should be living at this hour.
The world has need of you, the Man of Steel
Who brought the rabid fascist dog to heel
And made the boss class tremble at his power.
Now greedy global capital is king,
To rob and starve and mystify the poor
And harvest monster profits and wage war
And reify mankind into a thing.
Let Stalin's mighty spirit be the flame
That lights the workers' path to liberty;
Fulfilling their historic destiny,
And once more let the Red Flag be unfurled
That true progressives may, in Stalin's name,
Bring justice, peace and freedom to the world.
GMDavis
The New Coalition Collection
We are a Tory government, and it cuts us to the quick,
To have to share our power with the likes of Vince and Nick,
But we're "Bullingdons" from Oxford, where we learned to play the game,
So whenever things go badly, we get Nick to take the blame.
We are a Tory government, we know we are the best;
It's our patriotic duty that we rule at your behest,
So while cutting back on benefits,we'll slash the welfare state,
To leave the rich man richer, and the poorest to their fate.
We are a Tory government, it is our right to rule,
We learnt it at our nanny's breast,and when we went to school.
And now that we're in power, we are passing down the buck,
To you - the big society -'cause we don't give a fuck.
The hand of history's on us, you can sense it in the air,
The touch of smaller government, the whiff of "laissez-faire"!
Gordon Watson
Adlestrop?
Yes, I remember Adlestrop,
He fagged for me at School.
So yes, I'll give the chap a job:
That's how we Tories rule.
Adrian Fry
The next challenge
No 4175 Set by Leonora Casement
We want a (philosophical?) novel containing the following words or phrases: accident, particular,
begging the question, brain, extension, matter, synthetic, substance, will, essence, vat, zombie, efficient, objective, naturalistic and intuition.
Max 125 words by 28 April
comp@newstatesman.co.uk