COLD COMFORT

                        It’s Cold Comfort, when the bitch makes you wait,

                        Just shrugs you aside, when your Giro is late.

                        You’ve no cash for the rent and the kids need their bread.

                        But you need condescension like a hole in the head.

                        She tells you you’ll have to re-take the Means Test:

                        While she’s dripping in gold, on her hands and her chest.

                        And she fucks you off quickly so she can regain,

                        The thoughts she was having of her fortnight in Spain

                        And the marvellous folk on the Costa del Sole,

                        Who’re superior by far from the scum on the Dole.

                        It’s Cold Comfort when the arrogant twat,

                        On the desk at the hostel reminds you that:

                        You can’t have a bed if you’re twenty pence shy

                        Of the two pounds you need for a bed in the sty.

                        He’s no time for grovelling;  cajoling or pleas,

                        As he fiddles about with his new Volvo’s keys,

                        And fucks you off quickly so he can go home,

                        To his semi-detached and his new mobile phone

                        And his pretty young wife who just can’t understand,

                        Why there’s so many homeless in Cardboard Box land.

                        It’s Cold Comfort, when you’re watching the telly,

                        You don’t have a licence or food in your belly.

                        Then a well-fed rock singer starts singing a ditty

                        About Children in Need, or the tough inner-city.

                        He’s chock full of shite about helping the needy,

                        And although he’s got millions he’s so bloody greedy,

                        That to fuck off abroad’s his contingency measure,

                        In case Labour gets in and curtail all his pleasure.

                        Then he’d get in his Learjet and head for the sun.

                        And he’ll try to forget about his roots in the slum.

                        It’s Cold Comfort, when you’re trying so hard

                        And Society seems to be marking your card.

                        You can’t get ahead, no one seems to encourage,

                        The dregs of the System, we’ll never flourish.

                        Though what would the owners of Water or Gas

                        Do if ten million poor put a kick up their arse,

                        And claimed what was theirs from the wealth of the Nation,

                        A decent existence and pride in their station

                        And a chance to aspire to a place in sun,

                        And to stop eating shite while the Fat Cats have fun.

What the fuck is happening to the world?

What the fuck is happening to the world?  I walked down into Mexborough yesterday, something I won't be doing again for a while.  What has the place become?  First you have to negotiate the piles of dogshit that line the route up Doncaster Road and into town.  Loads of it.  Then, after walking past the raft of pizza/kebab/shite shops (yes, the same ones that insist on posting loads of leaflets through your letterbox, even though you are never going to eat any of the noxious crap), you come to town.

Litter and fag ends coat the roads.  Hordes of kids roam round, that are obviously of school age. The 18 year old mothers, fill up with pasties and sausage rolls from Gregg's, then waddle back to the pushchair (where the baby has no shoes and socks on, even though it is freezing and mam is wearing three coats ), she goes straight into baby's gob with the Gregg's Dummy or sausage roll as it is known.

Let's look at Typical Mummy.  She is nineteen years and stone. She has three kids by three different Dad's who all left because the kids were 'doin his ead in'. One is brown.  She has greasy hair in a ponytail; fatlass joggers (or jimjams and dressing gown, at times) that show her arse antler tattoo. Improbably high heels that her arse causes to overbalances, (well, it is the size of Cleethorpes).  She has a fag on and a steak bake half eaten in her hand.  She has kids called Jaden; Jordan and Jastra and she wants to be a pop star... She looks towards the light of her life and the father of her next Giro Booster - Ratboy!!!

Ratboy, well what can you say?  thin and pasty, with dirty trainers; dirty joggers; dirty baseball cap and can of Special Brew in hand and fag on. Ratboy is seventeen. He hasn't been to school since year nine because it 'did is ead in'. He cannot read or write to any great extent and has never had a job.  He has rotten teeth and one at the front is missing. As well as having Fatlass up the duff he already has one 'up Swinton' that he has never seen; 'well, she worra slag wa'nt she?' He has several large and poorly done tattoos and two hundred quid a time and an air of slightly menacing dullness.  He calls softly to his beloved, 'Gerra fuckin move on yer fat cow am fuckin freezin, it's doin me ead in'. She bows her head, stuffs the rest of the steak bake into her gob, past the bad teeth and follows him.

There are 52 pairs of Fatlass and Ratboys in the High Street.

Move on past the Bull, where Skint Eastwood holds court in all his Wild West glory, then past the Cheap Shops; charity shops; cash converters; pawnbrokers; market stalls full of tat; amusement arcades and bookies. This is the Great British High Street we are meant to be preserving...  A smell of dope wafts from the tattoo place and a teenager who should be at school wheelies through the crowd, followed by his gran, with her dyed scarlet hair, fag on and driving an invalid motor erratically along the street.

A cry lingers through the balmy morning, it is the cry of the stupid and the feckless; of the lost and the dull: "GEREER JADEN YER DOIN ME FUCKIN EAD IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"