Empire’s half-mast flag unfurls
Requiems tweet from ex-Spice Girls
Iron handbag, twin-set and pearls
Found dead in a bed at The Ritz

Cruel Britannia’s buccaneer
Brass-balled female anti-Greer
Cause of Ben bloody Elton’s career
Found dead in a bed at The Ritz

Sybil-out-of-Fawlty-Towers-hair
Steel clad belief in laissez-faire
The midwife that gave birth to Blair
Now dead in a bed at The Ritz

Lovelorn acolytes sadly weep
Cue phony Tony so skin-deep
“Hey – she was the people’s Meryl Streep”
Dead in a bed at The Ritz

Cold pre-packaged grocer’s daughter
Leading England’s lambs to slaughter
Ordained divine at Mammon’s altar
Dead in a bed at The Ritz

Boudicca of entente cordiale
The Tory gentleman’s femme fatale
Mandela’s foe and Pinochet’s pal
Dead in a bed at The Ritz

Fed the rich their daily focaccia
Spawned men of Jeffrey Archer’s stature
Besmirched the honest trade of thatcher
Dead in a bed at The Ritz

Here lies a shattered miner’s lamp
Factories choked down in black damp
Belgrano ghosts still slowly stamp
Round and round a bed at The Ritz

You can pray Charon rows her to hell
“Tramp the dirt down”, sound a futile knell
But all her dreams are alive and well
And living it up at The Ritz

Money shouts – just listen to the noise
Material Girls and City Boys
Ruthless Little Lord Fauntleroys
Even now they’re putting on The Ritz

Public service sold for private wealth
Community and kindness killed by stealth
Compassion, care and national health
Dying in a sick-bed far from The Ritz

Put inequality to the sword
Give each one of us our just reward
And then one day we all might afford To pay for a bed at The Ritz

by elvis mcgonagall, april 2013