It would work well in Music Hall or Panto as the singalong.

I suddenly had a vision of of some imaginary variety turn, Arthur Cockles, an amiable Gor Blimey Cockney singing it to a G & S style melody.

(I must get out more...)

The other Herbert wrote extensively for the musical theatre.

Walden says such a view of Britain is "gone beyond recall" eh? Of course by accepting the enemy meta-context it becomes a truism that one cannot imagine anything being different to the ways things are now.

So refuse to accept the axioms, the 'adjudicated facts', the underpinning assumptions. You will be called unrealistic, a crackpot and (worst of all in Britain) an idealist... but no one wins a war if all you ever do is fight every battle on ground of the enemy's choosing. Say the unthinkable and gore the sacred cows.

Perry,

In other words, fight your own battles. One should always choose ground that is unfamiliar to the enemy if possible.

Not sure that's happening at the moment in our present political environment...

Julius Seizer

PJ O'Rourke said it more succinctly:

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

For what it's worth . . .

For my penny's worth I'm with the (unattributed) quotation that,

Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.

My only modification to that statement would be to substitute 'disposal' for 'changing' . . .

Of course no-one "gives" money to the government, it is extorted by threat of force. It always annoys me when political weasels such as LibDums say they will "ask" people to pay more tax. What sort of question is it when the "wrong" answer gets you jail time?

Of course even in 1890 people who wanted a smaller government were very much on the defensive, indeed it was a couple of years later that Gladstone was forced out (with a lot of false tears at the cabinet meeting from that swine Harcourt).

One has to go back to 1874 to find an election where the Liberals were campaigning to reduce taxation. Although government was so small in those days that "reducing taxation" meant getting rid of income tax entirely.

On the general conflict today:

We have the great advantage of truth.

Certainly the statists control the "education system" and much of the media, but what they say is not true.

More government spending of taxpayers money and more regulations will not make X, Y, Z, things better.

One day most people may (if we work hard to draw it to their attention) notice this fact, and turn away from thinking "If only we had Mr B. rather than Mr A. as Prime Minister" or "if only we had businessmen [or nonbusinessmen] running the N.H.S." to looking for an alternative to violence (taxes and regulations) to organise human activities.

Voluntary (civil) cooperation (whether "for profit" or not) is not dead and it can make a come back.