Gravitas Manifesto
Now that the Liberal Democrats have self-destructed the Conservatives might manufacture a petty disagreement and call a snap election on the pretext that we need their "strong government". Therefore I think it's time for a new manifesto for Gravitas.
As you know we campaigned last time on a Jubilee debt cancellation initiative for all personal debt to be declared null and void every 50 years (backdated to 2000). Plus permission for shoulder-launched rockets to be used against cars with booming stereos, summary execution for tailgaters, one law limit per ten years etc. Having failed to achieve power last time our think tank has been hard at work and we have come up with a simple but radical plan to solve the debt crisis and reform the tax system. Our proposal is for a Poetry Tax.
If everyone who writes poetry just had to buy a £50 license for each poem they write and include the license number with it when published, at a stroke we could wipe out the national debt, eliminate the need for all other taxes, solve world poverty and still have change left to replace unsustainable energy sources with eco-friendly ones, establish free education and free school lunches for all children everywhere. This would also have the benefit of improving the general standard of poetry in the country.
Vote Gravitas to implement a Poetry Tax now. Thank you.
From the desk of
Feargal Mooney
Founder and President for Life
Gravitas Jubilee Debt Amnesty / Death to Tailgaters
3 comments:
Wouldn't that penalise the sad, self-obsessed and/or melancholic though? These people who write this almost entirely dreadful stuff are surely already in dire straits and to inflict on then what would be in effect a fine for what is clearly an affliction seems unfair in a rather Tory way. Surely these people need treatment rather than pauperising.
Please withold my name. My own husband is a 'writer' of sonnets and is in denial insofar as he won't face his illness, like so many of these wretched solipsistic sorts. Drug use has now been recognised as an illness and I would plead that poetry be similarly treated. In my view Gravitas's proposal will simply drive these poor wretches underground and they will in any case avoid the tax by signing their navel-gazing dross as Anonymous. Far better that we should know who they are, identify their obsessions from their rhymes and (worse) 'free verse' and get them help.
Gloria Mundie (Mrs)
Mrs Mundie and her ilk make me sick, quite frankly. After 13 years of New Labour misrule haven't we had enough of special pleading and funding for people and groups which are without doubt responsible for their own misery, and, in the case of poets, responsible for the misery of those who are unfortnate enough to give them or their product the time of day.
Mrs Mundie's idea of spending hard-working taxpayers' money on - and she was right in this assessment - navel-gazing wretches, is ludicrous.
To these poets themselves my advice would be to damn well pull yourselves together. We are a long time dead so for God's sake bloody well cheer up.
Thank you.
Sorry if this is off-topic but does anyone have the words of "There was an old woman of the roads"? It's the only poem I ever liked. Pardon my ignorance, I left school when I was 10 but I've always remembered Mr Walsh making us recite that poem. And if we got it wrong it was the bamboo cane on bottom, god forgive me. Hope you're all well. I'm still pottering away at the clerical outfitting. Reminds me I must go and get Fr Santos' inside leg measurement for the black slacks. (c) Mrs Haverty
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