Sunday 29 January 2012

Poem: 'Big Society'



BIG SOCIETY/
With Apologies To John Sladek,
Who Should Not Be Held Responsible

please select your preferred Big Society from the following checklist:
Big Society as the new Boy Band winners of X-Factor,
Big Society as a warm puppy with a wet nose,
Big Society through whole-grain organic 7-A-Day health,
Big Society sharing the trickle-down wealth,
Big Society living in fear but sharing the pain,
the fully-interactive red-button e-Big iSociety,
the free enterprise privatise ignobly-savaged Big Society,
the brand awareness celebrity-endorsed Big Society franchise,
the welfare-dependent austerity Inner-City Big Society
on an estate between the flyovers (no care-in-this-community),
the orgone energy Super-Hero Big Society in 3D
from ‘Cocaigne’ to cocaine in the ‘Land Of The Blessed’,
Big Society through meditation, breast-augmentation,
reincarnation, good-vibration revelation pipe-dreams,
the global multi-cultural casino capitalism Big Society,
Big Society as Law & Order, Firm but Fair,
Big Society, the seven-fold path,
Big Society as the dictatorship of the proletariat,
the caring Big Society coalition, with tasers,
Big Society in the hands of a jealous god,
Big Society as the radiant city on the hill, in Narnia,
in the Euro-Big Society, in the lost city utopia,
in the mythic castles in the air, the Happy Valley Big Society,
the El Dorado, Erewhon, aspirational nirvana Big Society,
the genetically-modified heavenly earthly-paradise Big Society,
the post-apocalypse post-millennial special relationship Big Society,
the conclave of immortals Big Society,
the ‘less is more’ the ‘yes we can’ Big Society,
Big Society imposed by sentient extraterrestrials
from vast UFO motherships concealed on the dark side of the moon,
Big Society as a tax-exempt multi-ethnic non-domiciled
hub of not more than 400 financiers, clean-cut good-looking,
of surpassing wisdom & in direct contact with the deity
through their intermediary at number 10…

(radically adapted from
‘The Communicants: An Adventure In Management’
by John Sladek, 1969)

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