Loads of Odes

'So Gingrich, so ***gingpoor'

Newt Gingrich worries presidentially that per capita

US living standards fall. He’s therefore had a King-like dream,

How hardship to abate: Each poor child in America needs to redeem.

His sin of poverty by working … as an assistant janitor!

He claims that this philosophy was what made the US great.

Now, me, I lack a Newt’s brain, am conversely rather dim,

But even I can understand such thinking’s born in hate –

And even I can see how newt ***gingpoor that ***gingpoor thought makes him!

I hope it’s some small comfort to those who live outdoors,

That though they may be homeless, they’re not that newt ***gingpoor.

Thoughts about the BBC's decision on ‘The Frozen Planet’

Like most of the sane world, I have long been an idolatrous fan of the work of Sir David Attenborough and his backroom teams. The winter episode of ‘The Frozen Planet’ will, I feel sure, be to the history of television what ‘Twelfth Night’ is for the theatre or ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’ is for music: if not the zenith of the art, so close as to make no difference. Without the least reservation I salute the contributors to that masterpiece, their stoicism, their determination and their courage.
I understand the last show in the series will be centred on global warming. I also understand that the BBC executives in charge of sales have decided to exclude the programme from the sales’ package, in order to improve the possibility of sales.

This is a tragedy at so many levels.

But it does exemplify the point that I first made in my book ‘Man of the New Millennium’ and will continue to make: that the significant war at the moment in which mankind is involved is not the War on Terror, it is the war between the lie and the truth. A failure to tell people the truth (by, for instance, not offering them the choice whether or not to watch a programme on global warming) is as much a lie as a direct fabrication. There is indeed in the world today considerably more deception of this type – this economic and/or mercantile censorship – than there is by overt lying.

Indeed it brings into question the idea that we even live in a democracy – the reason so often cited for our bellicose actions abroad. If facts are hidden from us for economic considerations (or any other reason, come to that), facts which might alter how we vote, how can such a society claim to be democratic?

I don’t know what appals me most: the BBC’s decision or whether, at an economic level, it may be the right one. Whichever way it is appalling. Because, whichever way, it is an appalling decision for mankind, for even the semblance of civilisation.

I am writing a book at the moment, ‘The Ten Mae Wests’. It is a suggestion of the ten courses of action mankind needs to make in order for civilisation (if not, the species) to continue. The most important of those life-jackets is that we are told the truth.
The consequences else are that not only will programmes not be made about global warming, but nor will those like the rest of ‘The Frozen Planet’ series.

What an indictment of a newly started century that the most pressing demand we need to make of those who claim to lead us is that they tell us the truth.

The only cheering thing is that these days so many of us are aware that they are not.

The liars must be punished.
The truth must no longer be controlled.

If not … See your arse? Well, give it a cheery wave. You’ll soon be kissing it goodbye.

(Anthony Giddens serves as Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics. His work insists that there is no alternative to capitalism. His theories supplied Mr Blair and Mr Brown with the academic authority for New Labour’s espousal of the ‘third way’.)

Listen to the audio version of this poem.

Watch the Video verson.

Read the Text

Oh dear, what can the matter be?
It’s now gone, the clout of the LSE,
Famous now for just mediocrity –
Since Baron Giddens was there.

Academe, its function is to ask and to ask again,
To question and probe without fear and with acumen;
But not so th’ academy once so prestigious when
Giddens took over its chair.

Capitalism was God, there was no earthly alternative,
The third way was an economic superlative;
“Globalisation is good?” He replied in th’ affirmative,
“Everything else is hot air.

“Other theories around are intellectual vermin.
To eradicate thought I am wholly determined –
To thank me for which I’ve been given the ermine
By that wonderful man, Tony Blair.”

So, parents beware and advise all your progeny
Never enter the portals of the once hallowed LSE,
’Cos failing to question’s a philistine recipe
To propagate all that’s unfair.

Oh dear, it’s so sad, for the now humbled LSE,
This erstwhile so vaunted, respected academy,
It now has no doctors, well, not of philosophy ...
Doctors just now of the doctrinaire.

PS:
In 2011, it’s clear that the LSE
Embodies what’s wrong with the global economy:
That greed’s all that matters; as for justice and probity
’Bout those things it just doesn’t care.

A North African colonel paid to the LSE
Via his son a large, blood-drenched gratuity;
And thus Giddens, as all in the world can see,
Kissed the arch-terrorist – just like Blair.

Oh dear, ever poorer th’ impoverished LSE
For Judasly kissing, for receiving this gore-tuity:
It should mayhap be called the LS Gadaf-E
In honour of such trade savoir-faire.

It’s now only commerce, academe and academy:
And so truth has become just an arcade commodity
To be sold off at auction to further a policy
Designed further to enrich billionaires.

We have to remove it from the liars of industry
The quest for the truth in schools like the LSE;
We must fight for that truth, else it’s now crystal clear to me
Soon that truth will no longer be there.

‘The Frozen Truth Planet’

There is Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’; on stage
There is the ‘ … Dream’; Beethoven’s ‘Pathetique’
In music; architecture’s Taj Mahal:
Works so sublime they elevate mankind’s morale;
Works that are so near perfection’s sun-glossed peak
There’s basically no difference there to gauge.
‘The Frozen Planet’' fits that class in television terms:
Shows which the excellence of Attenborough unequivocally affirms.

The last film in the series is one announced to be
About global warming: presumably the threat this makes
To these frozen wastes. It’s felt by the executive
Of the BBC this could have a consecutive
Drop in sales; and thus for profit’s sakes
It’s better to exclude this show from the property
It puts on sale. A warning about global warming
That is economically culled, that is misinforming

The warmer world’s citizens. They’re being gulled
Over and over and over again by such untruths of omission:
It’s a Ponzi scam of information, accruing a debt
That bankrupts all our souls; more fraudulent yet
Than Madoff; a war of bellicose attrition
Where truth and hope and civilisation all find themselves annulled.
The real war today, as I continually cry,
Is not that ’gainst the ‘terror’, but that twixt truth and lie.

If you were evil incarnate you could not better plan it,
’Cos it’s the lie, not terror most threatens this, our planet.
And if rather than truth it’s the lie mankind has chosen
Then in its entirety our planet will be frozen.