Laws for the rich – laws for the poor. The rich make the laws. The poor take the rap.
Last night the Police broke up parties of people in Birmingham for just letting in the New Year in a traditional manner. The Coronavirus Act 2020 was rushed through parliament and since then we have been living under a dictatorship. That dictatorship has been extended to the police – which have become more like the STASI or the soft arm of the GESTAPO.
By comparison Foxhunting might be banned by law – but continues unopposed. When I was helping to sabotage the Warwickshire hunts in the early eighties I saw a huntsman hit a girl student across the face with his riding-crop. I saw the Chief of Police riding with the hunt. Laws for the rich – laws for the poor. The police rarely intervened, and if they did, it was to take the side of the Hunt.
I wrote this poem following the death of animal activist, Jill Phipps.
A cold start to the year
On the very stroke of midnight the old year popped its clogs, and the new year let itself in as it tore down yule-tide logs Its wind was white with winter and it whistled with a wheeze, as it whipped up wispy windwhirls round the bottoms of the trees. Its wind was white with winter and it wore a winter coat that matched the wintry weather-wear worn by the winter stoat. Its wind was white with winter but it carried something black as it rampaged through the country with death upon its back. At four o'clock that morning the vixens heard a sound, a cloddy crunch of crystals compacting on the ground. It echoed through the tunnel of the foxes' winter earth where only seven moons before the mother-fox gave birth. The litter's one survivor, a barren vixen-pup, lay nestled with her mother, her pointed ears cocked up, she heard the shovel overhead come down with such a smack, loose soil raised up her hackles like death upon her back. At five past four that morning the vixens both took flight, they ran towards the exits and the safety of the night. That night there was no safety for the exits were not there, just tunnels made of sackcloth and filled with rancid air. Perplexed they turned in panic to find the water drain till tearing teeth of terriers turned them back again. In a fraction of a second they were in the dogman's sack and swinging from his shoulders, like death upon his back. At nine o'clock that morning the vixens were hell-bent the hungry pack was thrown the sack to give the hounds the scent. His royal horn set off the Quorn that frosty new year's day and very soon the whole dragoon was on its costly way. He whipped the fox-protectors, he whipped his royal roan, as he himself had once been whipped way back at Gordonstoun. The wind was white with winter but it carried something black as it rampaged through the country with death upon its back. At ten o'clock that morning amid discordant sounds of thunderclaps, and yaps and snaps from sixty half-starved hounds, a horse as white as winter, which whinnied at the dawn had more than cold to whinge about that cold and frosty morn. It gave a snort of frozen mist, a horse's plaintive grunt, pained by the growth upon its back, the master of the hunt, who gave the old, white stallion an apocalyptic crack as it rampaged through the country with death upon its back. At half past ten that morning the mother vixen soared across the white and windswept fields, across the icy ford, with thunderous hooves behind her she thread through thicket thatch crossed the ditch where once an itch had caused the bitch to scratch. She used the wind to fox the hounds and left behind a trail of tiny five-point pentagrams impeding the assail, The fields were white with winter but they carried something black, sixty blood-crazed foxhounds, a wild and hungry pack. At twelve o'clock, right on the stroke, the mother vixen found a former haunt, where nonchalant, she calmly went to ground, while somewhere in the distance the foxhounds had their kill, they chased the barren vixen to the bottom of a hill. fluff-snow, like puffball powder, was spawned into the air, black magic turned it crimson as blood shot everywhere. From the saddle watched a butcher and he wore a bright red coat that matched the scarlet scarf of flesh torn from the foxcub's throat. His horse was white with winter, but it carried something black, a red-backed shrike, an evil thing, called Death upon its back.
It would seem our police today are happy to abide by emergency laws, introduced under an act which parliament should never have approved, yet allow their cruel rich friends to flout the law whenever it suits them. Happy New Year.
All the Goss 