Ralph Windle

Public Privateers

 

It seems that virtue has, of late,

Not seven deadly sins but eight

To vanquish and eliminate

    In search of heaven’s nectar;

The most pernicious on the list,

Our Guardians of the Good insist,

Is one the moralists had missed –

    The evil Public Sector!

 

But none, more wickedly than this,

Brings virtue to the great abyss,

And poisons with its vampire kiss,

    Our economic vitals;

Nor prompts the Righteous and the Wise

To exorcise the Evil Eyes,

With fervent cries of ‘privatise’

    At gung-ho hymn recitals.

 

This high morality contains

But little to engage the brains,

Yet unflinchingly maintains

    The ethic it’s pursuing;

Whereby its druids blithely sell

The public bits performing well,

Thus freeing devotees to yell

    How bad the worse are doing.

 

Such fevered, self-fulfilling views –

That heads they win and tails we lose –

Are calculated to confuse

    The morally deficient;

Who, in their innocence, request

Why can’t the public keep the best

And sell the market all the rest

    To make them more efficient?

 

But gods, the Delphic priesthood says,

Move always in mysterious ways,

And privatising that which pays

    Is in the holy verses;

While that which runneth at a loss

The Central Office omphalos

Decrees its devotees should toss

    To the public purses.

 

And so, to meet this Holy Writ,

We saw the branch on which we sit,

Or amputate the better bit

    With sacrificial axes;

Fulfilling, as the priest intones,

The message written in the stones –

That all the public ever owns

    Are burdens on the taxes!