As you watch the news night after night,

the small tremble of fear they put in the voice of the ageing reporter

as they present their slant on the events,

that make us read their sister papers in grim earnest over

a badly presented cup of coffee, foaming

at the mouth as the headline is designed to irk, cajole

and inwardly terrify…

 

That the news, the encompassing truth, run by the moral guardians

who defend their freedom of speech

but who will gladly come knocking

with their size nine hob nail boots,

whilst wearing a badge of solidarity

on their starch white shirts and perfectly made hair

and matching microphone, with the intent of manipulating your facts…

 

Till it’s run as facts that comes off an internet search engine

and genuine accuracy reports that people don’t go to Birmingham

because they all speak in a secret language that only they understand

and that the Newscaster in his infinite wisdom

urges his president, suited , booted and despised by half

his own country for wearing a tie wrong and having an intelligent wife,

that he takes the chance to declare war for having weapons of mass destruction…

 

But not since, it turns out, Dennis Mortimer lifted the European Cup.

The canals are really secret access tunnels to an underground

Militia outpost in which leads all of Birmingham to safety

should the worst happen and Selly Park declare that Washington

is a dangerous corrupt state  and that a state of war existed

in the minds of very stupid men who would believe

that the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale for a knock down price…

 

Oh please. It’s worse than seeing a person taken in and corrupted

by the button that says, “You won’t believe what happens next”,

or by the more terrifying and squalid disservice to education

that history gets strangled everyday and that free thought,

that bastion of legends past,

says, that I don’t like you being stupid…

but I will defend to the death your right to be so…

…Even at the cost of misquoting Evelyn Beatrice Hall.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015.