You bleeding dole queue scroungers,
We struggle while you thrive,
You say you need more money,
Yet all you do is skive.
Your kids have malnutrition?
Why, that’s a bloody cheek,
My Mummy says that she
Could make a hambone last a week.
Instead of feeling hungry,
And sorry for yourselves,
Why don’t you dig some ditches,
Or go and fill some shelves?
There’s lots of jobs want doing,
You’ve no excuse to shirk,
So get up off your arses,
And find yourselves some work.
Where is the country going?
To pieces with your ilk!
Three cheers for Mummy’s bright idea
Of cutting off school milk.
She knows too how to handle
The likes of Arthur S;
It really is a scandal,
That one man makes such a mess.
But those days are long over
Because the NUM,
(Like all the other unions),
Can cause no more mayhem.
They’ve had it far too cushy,
Free coal and every perk,
Like you: get off your arses,
And find yourselves some work.
What now, the bloody teachers?
They’ve got no right to strike.
Mum won’t give in to blackmail,
So fellas, on yer bike!
This is a different order,
Cos Maggie isn’t Ted,
She knows, my Mummy, how to deal
With every classroom red.
And me, I’m right behind her,
And so too is my Dad;
We are birds of a feather:
The boozer and the cad.
There’s want and deprivation
Round every corner lurk?
Then get up off your arses,
And find yourselves some work.
[I should have binned the above piece of rubbish but it has a special significance for me. I once performed this poem live, and it went down like a lead balloon. Me with it. I was really shattered and decided that I would never again attempt to “make it” as a performing poet. I’ve made one tiny alteration; originally, the last line of the third verse read “One man makes such a mess.” On reading it through I’m not so sure that it couldn’t be put to music, Flanders and Swann fashion. Bad though it is, one young lady liked it; she was unemployed at the time, although shortly she became a civil servant.]
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