Election day. Some words from Leonard, who always lets in the light:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
That's How The Light Gets In 
And also, in these days of zero hour contracts, ‘Old Black Joe’s still picking cotton, for your ribbons and bows…’.
Well thanks for that corrective dose of pessimism Gerry!
Personally I always awake on such days with a keen sense of expectation.
I will never forget how it felt to oust Heath in the middle of a miners strike and 3 day week in February 1974
Or the moment when we finally and emphatically closed the door on the Thatcher years in May 1997 by handing down the biggest defeat on the Tories since that given to Duke of Wellington in the wake of the 1832 Reform Act.
My song would be Bob Dylan’s When The Ship Comes I’m
“Oh-the-time-will-come-up-when-the-winds-will-stop-and-the-breeze-will-cease-to-be-breathing
like-the-stillness-in-the-wind-before-the-hurricane-begins-the-hour-when-the-ship-comes-in……….”
I’m playing Jam singles on YouTube. Going Underground is current favourite to indulge my mood.
How very true…….. unfortunately.
David.
And when I found the video on You Tube it was preceded by a Tory election advert!!! https://youtu.be/Lin-a2lTelg
Obviously the elections in our country are a means by which we can address inequalities here. I see these almost every day in the work I do.
However I find myself challenged by websites like “How rich am I?” which puts a Global perspective on wealth. I have a small three bed semi (Wimpey 1966) a salary and small amount of savings. (Two buys at Uni etc) Still, I am well within the top 10% IN THE WORLD. Statistics are of course notoriously easy to manipulate, but as we think of our own situation we must couple it with a global view too?? Thanks for the post AGAIN!!
I like the distorted map; it makes metrocentricism look like an inoperable tumour.
The New Yorker did something similar many years ago on the mag’s front cover. The caption read: A New York view of the rest of the US. Streets adjacent to Sixth Avenue were shown in some detail, going west on Manhattan other streets were identified but not named, the shore on the east side of the Hudson was moderately defined but the west side had started to blur, New Jersey was a brown cloud labelled in shaky letters, beyond that prairie.
I shouldn’t really be trying to evoke a cartoon in words. Perhaps if I stay up long enough (6 am we get South Thanet) I may be tempted to cut my throat.
Sadly, the melancholy words of Leonard Cohen you’ve quoted here turn out to be prophetic and the patterns of wealth sustained again. We’ve got a lot of work to do!