COMMISSIONS (back to list)

53 Quid A Week

Here come’s austerity’s suffragette
With blue blood, toil, tears and sweat
It’s Ian Duncan Antoinette
On 53 quid a week

Dressed head to toe in condescension
Alarm-clock Britain’s Mr Pension
Regrets - he’ll have too few to mention
On 53 quid a week

Down the dole in his strawberry cords
Hanging out with the unwashed hordes
Yes all of us can live like Lords
On 53 quid a week

The hoi polloi are on the fiddle
Farewell welfare hey diddle diddle
Let them buy their cake at Lidl
On 53 quid a week

They all want more like Oliver Twist
Something for nothing - it’s Trotskyist
Roman Abramovich could subsist
On 53 quid a week

Breadline Britain? Don’t be facetious
The spongers are as rich as Croesus
Turn water into wine like Jesus
On 53 quid a week

Rent a council palace in Versailles
Feed your family pie in the sky
In cloud-cuckoo land the pigs all fly
On 53 quid a week

Smith’s out in the cold on easy street
Wrapped up warm in his self-conceit
“Does Aldi’s sell Chateau Lafite?
One’s on 53 quid a week”

Talk of poverty’s tongue-in-cheek
The outlook’s really not that bleak
It’s “Nouveau Pauvre” - terribly chic
On 53 quid a week

Everybody’s starving nowadays
And scurvy’s such a common malaise
Hypothermia’s the latest craze
On 53 quid a week

Drowning in debt? Then give us a wave
Sell yourself on eBay. Try to save
Dance as you dig your own pauper’s grave
On 53 quid a week

copyright elvis mcgonagall
for bbc world service “weekend”, 2013