The SKWAWKBOX would like to wish all its readers a wonderful Christmas and a healthy, happy and prosperous 2017. Sadly, under this government, all too many of us will not enjoy either of those things.
Record numbers of people in this country, including over 120,000 children, will have no home of their own this evening to wait for Father Christmas. Disabled people are preparing for a £1500 cut to their income, imposed by a Tory government happy to spend hundreds of millions on refurbishing Buckingham Palace.
Many people in work are struggling because of low hours and poor wages, demonised for claiming benefits in spite of working hard to try to make ends meet, while in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and many other places, children go to bed each night – if they’re lucky enough to have a bed – not knowing whether the house will be blown apart on top of them. Those escape the war-zones arrive to be vilified and kept in camps, treated as – and called – vermin.
So here’s a Christmas carol for the country and world we live in, written by Andrew Weeks, a consultant at a cash-strapped, understaffed Liverpool hospital. I hope it doesn’t apply to you as you read it – except for the last verse, which needs to apply to all of us.
Silent night, holy night!
Sleeps the world, hid from sight.
Homeless laid in alleyways bare
Rich men pass, full of Christmas fare
To sleep in uneasy peace,
Sleep in uneasy peaceSilent night, holy night!
Children cower, cold with fright
Scared of all that the darkness might bring
Bombs, or conflict, or beatings that sting
Where’s the heavenly peace?
Where is the heavenly peace?Silent night, holy night!
Comes the morn, warming light
Rouse in us transformative zeal
With resolve to truly make real
Justice this Christmas time!
Peace at this Christmas timeJustice this Christmas time!
Peace at this Christmas time
May the heads of those responsible rest uneasy on their pillows tonight. For the rest of you, God bless you and may the new year bring better.
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God rest ye Tory gentlemen
Let Corbyn you dismay
Remember that your heroine
Was born on Halloween
To subjugate us to Satan’s power
As we had gone astray
O tidings of cold misery,
Cold misery
O tidings of cold misery!
Absolutely true, sadly, as is the poem. Alas we live in an increasingly selfish country and world that the likes of the UK and USA seem hell-bent on Protectionism and Isolationism, which is detrimental to the wider world. The year did end on a high, though, with the EU telling Israel what needed to be said for a very very long time. Thanks for your info; it’s valuable to somebody like me who is almost housebound but, thankfully, I am still mentally aware. Happy Christmas to you and everybody reading my comment, and let’s hope the New Year brings a change, albeit not expected, in the political wind. Joe
A merry Christmas to you too, and a happy and fruitful new year.
still oaks
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev’rywhere you go;
Take a look at the foodbank queue, people soaked right through,
With the homeless dying in the snow.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,
Strikes in every town,
NHS fit to burst, as the Tories do their very worst,
To bring the Country down.
Shoes that aren’t in bits, and a jacket that fits,
Is the wish of Barney and Ben,
Feeling warm in bed and getting well fed
Is the hope of Janice and Jen
And Mum and Dad can hardly wait, to eat themselves again.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev’rywhere you go;
Down at the DWP, there’s a sanction for you and me,
As more people to the streets they throw.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Our MPs looking well fed
While making light, of our poverty plight,
And turning a blind eye to the dead.
its looking alot like chrismas
our governments chasing their
troops to court stand and deliver
was the message from ministers
inline for their payrise
its looking alot like chrismas
Reblogged this on MAL's MURMURINGS.
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
The MP’s were feasting on subsidised grouse.
Their expenses claims hung, by the chimney with care
knowing the taxpayer would pay for their fayre.
Outside the poor were frozen, even in bed
While visions of food and heating, danced in their head.
Their children with rickets, malnourished, no bread
For them Christmas, another day of going unfed.
Dad has been sanctioned, Mum has TB
The New Year she will not see.
No NHS, no money for treatment or care
They place their last hopes, in silent prayer.
The Wonga collectors bang on their door
The children lie quiet and still on the floor.
Dad borrowed money he can no longer pay
The landlord says they can no longer stay.
49 Thousand dead from the cold
In the 11th richest nation in the world.
Thousands more dead from austerity measures
At the hands of the never elected oppressors.
Don’t give money to beggars, the charities say
We decide who gets what this Christmas day.
Our CEO’s first, then fund-raising next up
If any is left then the poor can sup.
The rich say cull the poor is what we must do
The last penny from them, we must screw.
Euthanise the elderly, take their houses away
For the buy to rent landlords they must make way.
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the land
The rich drank champagne and danced with the band.
Sorry forgot the title…
“A Message From The Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come”