An Eternal Drain

Close your eyes, give them our cash,
Do you see output falling, do you understand?
Do you feel the same, am I only dreaming?
Is this churning an eternal drain?

I believe we're going to bleed,
For the profits of bastards, we are asked not to see
Do you feel the same, am I only dreaming
Or is this gurning an eternal drain?

We don't face the pain and hide inside from the rain
A game so broken, that we don't even have a name
I don't want to lose our future

Oh

Embrace the pain, sun shines through the rain
Make the c*nts who caused it face up to the pain
I don't want to lose this feeling

Close your eyes and give me your hand
Do you feel my heart beating, do you understand?
Do you feel the same, am I only dreaming
Or are we learning that we need a new game?

Is this burning an eternal drain?

An eternal drain?

Theme: failure of deregulation

So we have the second great crisis of deregulation embodied by the phone-hacking scandal, on the back of the (still continuing, no matter what they try to tell you) financial crisis.

In the 1980s businesses all over the world, but especially in the UK, successfully lobbied for deregulation and privatisation on the grounds of efficiency gains. After 20-30 years of this it has been conclusively proved to be a failure - unrestrained and so called self-regulating markets do not self-regulate, not even in their own self-interest.

Banks and Newspapers (and energy companies, supermarkets etc) need to be regulated by the state on a number of key grounds:
Honesty / Transparency
Viability / Probity
Serving the public interest

If any of these tests are failed (at a strategic, not a one-off tactical level) then the businesses should be nationalised or at the very least all the management replaced with NO compensation.

We need change in our society. Huge corporations who shape our world must be made genuinely accountable to society - if this can't work then they should be forcibly split apart and restructured so that they do so.

Perdit spolia principi pecuniarum?

To the south, tyrants know
That it's time for them to go;
The cracks are starting to show:
An end to exploitation?
Reassertion of the nations
Against the
Against the
Against the selfish rule of the corporations?

In the north, trouble brews
As inequality lights the fuse
Angered by the bankers' abuse
The people start to realise
That growth is based on real lies
They can see
They can see
They can see the truth with real eyes

In our hearts we can see
Violence is our reality
You can watch it on TV
Sold arms to corrupt regimes
It's exactly what it seems
We caused these
We caused these
We caused these unpleasant scenes

Strategic priorities
Inconvenient realities
It's people that feel the squeeze
Of greed and morals
Of their rulers' quarrels
Liberals rest
Liberals rest
Liberals rest on their illiberal laurels

The United States understands
Genuinely democratic Muslim lands
Will be no friend of Uncle Sam's
Remove troops from our soil
From Israeli aid recoil
Get your hands
Get your hands
Get your hands off our oil

Greed is manufactured in the world-factory to maintain the new caste system

To desire
Is, we are told, what makes us real
To consume
and to submit, for the nation's weal
Wherefore
Wherefore
Can we not just be?
And do, and love, and think and feel?

The cancer that
Gnaws on the hearts and minds of men
Is our desire
To have, to own, to keep, when
All we need
All we need
Is simply made and grown
And the reason for our lust is beyond our ken

The machine
That we all feed, it makes for to desire
So that we
Will spend our lives and blood in fire
Otherwise
Otherwise
Why should we live like this?
Working to enrich those whose wants will never tire

The illusion
Is one that serves some more than the poor
The deceit
Of democracy, is what we're working for
Not for love
Not for love
But for the profit of the few
So that they may feel that they are worth so much more

No wonder
We lose our faith, in god, in Blair, in Brown
For if it is all a lie
Why should the Queen retain her crown?
Starving child
Starving child
Is there nothing more we could do
But protest, donate and wear a guilty frown?

A factory for
The rich, is what our green world has become
Toiling to
Keep our own chains, and maintain the slums
Fairness
Fairness
Is deep within our souls
For our consciences are not so dumb

Time for change
And not just tinkering, but wholesale overthrow
Of the puppets of the rich
And the corporations in their greedy rows
Corruption
Corruption
Not just of this green world
But of our minds, and hearts, I suppose