Do I exist in the modern world

Does anybody

When so many people want to boil me down

To my essence.

‘Explain yourself in five words’

Demand to be given an answer

Without invoking a reason

I never carry cash

Even though it is dangerous

To allow ourselves to drift into a cashless society

I worry about buskers and the homeless

Who will be forced to buy a little white square thing

Open a bank account without an address

Will they ask to be paid

In crypto-currency?

What is it about people who take an idea

Which has little to recommend it

Other than it removes the necessity

For human contact

And promoting it as the future

As they rake in the proceeds.

Who benefits from bitcoin?

Other than druglords and Elon Musk

I worry about Britain’s place in the world

When so many people forget time and context

Blame me for the sins of my father

Call out a country for what its forebears did

Hold them to account, stick it to them

For leaving the EU or joining it for that matter

Being rightly concerned by callus bureaucracy

The Windrush debacle

Prince bloody Andrew…

Not all people conform to national stereotypes

Do sociological engineers use biological tools

To measure the human condition?

Tightening belts is always a term used by politicians

Who never seem to lose weight

Margaret Thatcher didn’t believe in ‘society’

This begs the question

Why not go to live on an island by yourself?

A strange attitude for somebody

Who didn’t have to pay for an education

Which like health services

Should be free at the point of delivery

Of course to some people and Americans

That smacks of socialism

But to me, it is just a fundamental right.

Prime Minister

Harold Wilson once said that devaluation

Would not affect the pound in your pocket

I don’t think that was really true

But he read economics so perhaps

He knew something about counting

To nineteen shillings and sixpence,

Oh, let’s call it a pound for old time’s sake,

Before rattling his sabre at the white separatists

In Southern Rhodesia

Which was always Zimbabwe in my book

Nothing is perfect

Even the taxman

Change is inevitable, time is not a constant

The only sure thing is getting older

Unless you die

At which point you become fixed

As the modern world

Without having wit,

Moves on.