[John Whitworth]

I couldn't get a handle on the Round Robin thing at all, but I'll have a punt at this one as I am sure will you all. What rhymes with Luton? Darn tootin'.

No. 2784: Come, friendly bombs

You are invited to rewrite John Betjeman’s poem ‘Slough’, substituting the target of your choice (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 6 February.

[basil ransome-davies]

What rhymes with Luton? Darn tootin'.

Roger Scruton, John, a man surely after your own heart.

[John Whitworth]

Said Roger, the first Baron Scruton,
Relaxed in a whorehouse in Luton,
'At the end of the day
It's as good as a play
Or an afternoon huntin' and shootin'.'

[Mary McLean]

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on France,
where women don’t outgrow their pants
and kids are smarmy sycophants.
Swarm over, Mort!

Or if 'French wisdom' isn’t true,
swarm over, Death, on writers who
propound such piffle. Turn them blue
and rot their corps.

[Nigel Mace]

Here's one I wrote earlier - a lot earlier - but which, without the epigraph, I think I might risk sending.

FALLUJA

(The ‘final’ bombing and assault on Falluja followed on the ‘re-election’ of George Bush and on the Lancet’s report of the deaths of 98,000 Iraqi civilians, mainly women and children, after the illegal invasion of their country by the ‘foreign fighters’ of the US and Britain. This figure for civilian deaths excluded those killed in Falluja during the first assault.)

Come friendly bombs, fall on us now,
As humans, we don’t count somehow,
And SMARTest weapons still allow
Unreckoned death.

Come bombs, and blow to bloody rags
Insurgents garbed as scally-wags,
False youths, false men, false maids, false hags,
Not worth life’s breath.

Bomb and bulldoze Falluja’s town,
Bring minarets, like statues, down -
Their message with munitions drown
And burst our ears.

And smash those folk, from God-knows-where,
Who simply fight and do not care,
But live among us - everywhere -
Till death appears.

Then, ‘blitz’ our homes and lay them low,
Entomb our dead so, at one blow,
As ‘Freedom’ spreads, we’ll learn to know
‘Liberty’s’ knell.

But spare ‘police’ and oil-men too,
Who toil to aid ‘allied’ air-crew,
In heaven-cleaving work they do
Above our Hell.

It’s not their fault they cannot smell
Exploded guts, or even tell
The scream of death from that of shell,
That tears at flesh;

And only think of furloughs free,
In Fort Worth or in Milwaukee,
And don’t look down, slight death to see,
But shower up fresh.

In unbombed homes, with loving wives,
They’ll tease out unentangled lives
For decades, till their turn arrives
To draw last breath.

So - friendly bombs, fall on us now
That, from our dust, may grow somehow,
Inhuman strength, enough to vow
Their choking death.

(With apologies to John Betjeman)

- though I suspect this is not the kind of serious response the Speccie is looking for - more bulldoze East Kilbride or dynamite Milton Keynes. They certainly wont want a call to plough under Chipping Norton - though come to think of it, that is not such a bad idea!

[John Whitworth]

You'll have to cut it to sixteen lines, Nigel.

Yes, you have put your finger on a problem. I thought of rubbing out the whole of Wales. Or Brussels perhaps. Or Islington. That's where Tony Blair's political career began. For which they all should die.

[Terese Coe]

May you all remain free from prosecution!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...urt-hears.html

[John Whitworth]

The law here is an ass, Terese. People habitually say things on blogs which you would have thought would be prosecuted under that stuff about saying racist things. Mind you, the government and the vile EU are working on it. They want to regulate the internet, well of course they do.

[Jerome Betts]

Seems the Torygraph's subs, if there are any, are as bad as the Grauniad's.
He told the judges that the microblogging website, Twitter, had been invented in 2006 and so was not know to Parliament when the Act was drafted.
And the caption to the photograph has (center) instead of (centre)
Shame on the Barclay tweedles.

[Terese Coe]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

The law here is an ass, Terese. People habitually say things on blogs which you would have thought would be prosecuted under that stuff about saying racist things. Mind you, the government and the vile EU are working on it. They want to regulate the internet, well of course they do.

"Regulate" is the euphemism for "profit from" in most cases and it's well under way, John. Internationally too. I can't imagine any place where the law is more addle-brained than here though.

Only one example (as I'm sure you know): Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, where the US Supreme Court decided that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions.

And unions are a mere shadow of their former selves, so the most profitable corporations have become major threats to fair elections.