The media

Janine performs her poem 'Babyface' in Cambridge in 2016.

 

Bring out the braziers on Ramsay Street,
close down the kitchen and turn up the heat
No more exploitation of the workers' labours -
the staff are going on strike in Neighbours!

The ranks of the workers' movement swell
as the comrades at Lassiters Hotel
flex their muscles and show some clout
by downing tools and walking out

Janine Booth reviews ‘The Reason I Jump’

I don’t watch many documentaries about autism, and on the rare occasion when I sit down to watch one, I am overwhelmed with a sense of dread. So much rubbish is said on the subject, even by people who want to be on the right side. So many patronising tropes, so much pity, not enough solidarity.

China jails citizen journalist for Wuhan reports

Four years in jail for citizen reporter
Who spread the news from virus-struck Wuhan
Her mother cries in court to lose her daughter
She showed the world the sickness, did Zhang Zhan
So ominous the charges that they brought her
For breaking China’s free expression ban
Their stricken morals under smoking rubble,
‘Picking quarrels and provoking trouble’

Julie Burchill

Will fight them on the beaches like Churchill

She's been cancelled and silenced by opinion shapers

She'll tell you all about it in the national newspapers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

pic: Pete Linforth at Pixabay

Teachers say:
Let Daily Mail writers be heroes

Let them walk naked through war zones
Let them battle with an invisible enemy

Let them fall on the battlefield
in even greater numbers than they already have

Safe in the knowledge that they will be
lionised at the Daily Briefing

And that Matt Hancock may
issue a badge in their honour

A response to an appallingly bigoted cartoon (pictured) which appeared in the Morning Star.

An oversight has come to light
our usual process
transgressed, broke apart

and through the cracks
crept a carnivorous
cold-blooded cartoon

a hand-drawn saurian,
fawning, crawling, stalking
readers bravely pleading for safety.

I peeled back the adverts and found
a beautiful town

Waiting at the bus stop
I stilled the rotating displays
and pasted timetables and useful information
in their place

I restored all the lamp posts
to their role as posts bearing lamps
rather than gallows
from which buy-me banners hang

<Sarcasm alert> Today, in an astonishing piece of investigative journalism, the Sunday Times shocks the world with the revelation, based entirely on material already in the public sphere, that I am really quite left wing and that other left-wing members of a left-wing party do not object to this. Whatever next, I ask?!

Click the pic for the full and shocking details ...

"If a man ever raised his hand to me
I'd be gone."

Roars and applause from the studio audience
Put the shame-faced guest in her place

And the waves of clapping 
Wash the blame
From him to her