We be rioting

Cause nothing be changing

Police be wholesale abusin’

Left unchecked to get on with it

They say, the IPC be investigating

IPC: bunch of toffs paid to think up excuses

No more council housin’

Media be naming and shaming,

Public be melting down call-in ‘phone lines!

Asking po-lice to blaze out water cannons ‘n’ shoot brothers ‘n’ sisters who be lootin’, on sight

And they be calling us ‘the mob'(!)

Motha fucka – this is our version of striking!

Civil disobedience!

At government cut-backs & societal neglect!

‘Don’t mess about, son’, a copper says ‘no one will give you a job’

Isn’t that the point, though?

You gave us teachers who couldn’t teach,

So, we turned en-mas to idolatry-

To those we thought gave a damn; searched for meaning in lyrics, and taught ourselves (and each other) as best we could!

While filling our heads with unrealistic aspirations & dreams!

Suggesting an idyllic life was there for all to reach ‘n’ achieve:

When the odds of actually doing it (like the lottery) are 14 million to one!

They said we could be proud, now you’re saying:

That ain’t so, ’cause you ain’t got nothing to be proud about!

Yes, we are the disenfranchised, lost generation,

An over saturation of people chasing a buck-

Meaking out a penny or living, just hand-to-mouth,

We was born after your erstwhile Empire,

Previous generations frigging wipedout the economy, by draining all the bling in the treasury!

Now, we be in the trough, cause you been having your fill ‘n’ then sum!

Did we loot chicken shops? No- ’cause that’s all we can afford to eat (four chicken wings for a pa-nd)

So- we be sleepwalking into multiple heart attacks in our middle ages!

Will there be a free NHS, when we’ll be needing it though?

Or, will we just be falling dead on the pavement, yo?

The streets of inner cities will be crowded with corpses brov,

With folks just falling dead like flies in a sudden cold spell,

In any case, there ain’t no point working:

If you make it to a decent bracket of income, they’ll tax 40% of what you make,

State pensionable age will be 80 odd by the time we’re up,

Darn it kids, they’ll have to wire it straight to the hospital or the fucking funeral home!

May be they’ll pile up all the destitute dead, dying or aged in all them dilapidated derelict tower blocks,

Then napalm the fuck out of it to celebrate the Monarch’s second jubilee!

It’ll be another whitewash!

One rule for the rich, well-positioned (with better jobs and a range of options to choose) and another (the breadcrumbs, with no choice) for the rest of us,

The bare minimum,

For us to fight, kill & die over!

For your sheer entertainment value-

To their wild manic applause, like the gladiatorial pit of the Colosseum at the height of Rome!

A crime most foul, with the complicity of the better off & the affluent!

Hasn’t it, though, been forever thus?