I WAKE up in the middle of the night a lot now: a mixture of age and anger, I guess. And when I do, I often write poetry. Here’s the latest.
 
4 AM
 
Awake again
A buzzing brain
So angry at our race
Our planet blue
Will barbecue
‘Cos we have wrecked the place
So many wars
To great applause
And EVERY leader’s wrong
Each raging cell
Screams ‘go to hell’
In poem and in song
 
And on top of the endless misery abroad and at home we have the news that Tata Steel is going to close its operations in Port Talbot — thousands out of work at the whim of a multinational, devastating an already impoverished area of the country to safeguard the profits of a company which is far too rich already and could easily afford to sustain the workforce while the entirely necessary transition to greener production is made.

This is just the latest example of why we need a completely new definition of the word “democracy.”

Because economic democracy is just as important as political democracy: perhaps even more so, for if you are denied the right to have what you need going into your mouth, you are going to lack the human capacity to exercise the right to have what you want coming out of it.