Of kids with no water stood in long queues
Holding their plastic cans and waiting their turns
For ten litres of water whilst the sun, overhead, burns.
We all tut, "how dreadful" and "it's such a shame"
Yet moan that our government sends cash to them in our name.
"Why are we paying them when we need it here instead?"
Demand well-fed citizens snuggling in a warm comfy bed.
"We're only a poor country" is one of our laments
Whilst planning our Summer holidays for kids and parents.
Meanwhile, across the globe in many hundred places
Families starve and children thirst, despair etched in their faces.
Not for them a comfy bed or latte on demand,
Not for them an education and career to be planned;
A place to live and grow without the fear of bombs
And air strikes turning their homes into simple tombs.
A carefree childhood, a happy life, to many is denied,
Whilst aid agencies and peace protesters are derided.
By creating hunger, pestilence or war
Big business and state exploitation is going way too far.
Yet still we sip our lattes in our homes with central heating,
Whilst far away some dissidents endure yet another beating:
Their crime is asking just for basic human rights,
For speaking out against abuse they face most days and nights.
Religions, states and corporations all must take some blame
For treating people badly, have they no shame?
But are we any better when we constantly complain
About the cost of foreign aid that helps to ease their pain?
Would it be so very bad if we had a fraction less
So others who have nothing can be helped out from that mess?
Do we need ten pairs of shoes when some women have one?
Do we need the latest iPhone when some folks don't have one?
Do we need a gas barbecue or a big double oven
When some must cook on open fires beneath a searing sun?
Do we need that Netflix sub or Sky Sports on the box?
Or could we help our fellow humans eradicate smallpox?
Are power hungry electricals really such a need?
If we each cut back our consumption then would it help to feed
Those hungry refugees in camps where they have fled
In fear of enslavement, or rape or their deathbed;
To get away from air-strikes, bombs and shells
That turned their previous lives into living hells.
Our government caused their misery and pain
Yet we say, "Not giving cash or refuge to them again."
Despite wrecking their homelands for political reasons
We refuse them safe harbour as if they committed the treasons.
We created most of the problems the world faces
And we benefited from them throughout the ages.
Yet when those who are suffering ask for some aid
We look quite affronted or sorely afraid.
That by helping out those with the biggest needs
It will weaken our hearts and make us into weeds.
That simply by showing humanity and compassion
Our nation will be overrun in storm-trooper fashion
By millions of immigrants "all on the make"
Who will claim all our benefits and eat all our cake.
They'll rape all our women and some of the men
And sell into slavery all of our children.
They'll bring all their weird customs, their rites, and their wrongs
And bury us in cous cous and surround us with bongs.
"They don't have our standards" we say to each other
Whilst sipping our lattes and watching Big Brother.
"They come over here and take all of jobs,
"And claim all our benefits - what rotten knobs."
"Use all our roads, our schools and our NHS,
"And leave nought for us born here, oh what a mess."
If we stopped up our borders so no more can invade
And choose with which places we want to do trade,
Then the overseas aid that our government "wastes"
Will help us to prosper and improve our tastes,
And those of us left here will be able to claim
That we're native English and proud of the name.
All six of us, and the cat...
This poem came about after weeks of reading endless scaremongering and bigotry written in the #EU #Referendum campaign but was finally brought forth after today's article in The Independent about the lack of water supply in Palestine during Ramadan...
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Attributed to Edmund Burke 1729 - 1797
