Political Costello Redux (For a lazy Saturday)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Wars are supposed to create great protest songs, but the 1980s Falklands war was so short it produced only one I know of, the sublime Shipbuilding, lamenting England's hysterical RW dream of returning to the days of empire.

Is it worth it?
A new winter coat and shoes for the wife
And a bicycle on the boy's birthday
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
By the women and children
Soon we'll be shipbuilding.......

Well I ask you
The boy said "Dad they're going to take me to task, but I'll be back by Christmas"
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
Somebody said that someone got filled in
For saying that people get killed in
The result of this shipbuilding

With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls

It's just a rumour that was spread around town
A telegram or a picture postcard
Within weeks they'll be re-opening the shipyards
And notifying the next of kin
Once again
It's all we're skilled in
We will be shipbuilding...

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Anti-Thatcher protest song Pills and Soap, released as a single on UK election day, 1982

They talked to the sister, the father and the mother
With a microphone in one hand and a chequebook in the other
And the camera noses in to the tears on her face
The tears on her face
The tears on her face
You can put them back together with your paper and paste
But you cant put them back together
You cant put them back together

What would you say?
What would you do?
Children and animals two by two
Give me the needle
Give me the rope
Were going to melt them down for pills and soap
Give me the needle
Give me the rope
Were going to melt them down for pills and soap

Four and twenty crowbars, jemmy your desire
Out of the frying pan into the fire
The king is in the counting house
Some folk have all the luck
And all we get are pictures of lord and lady muck
They come from lovely people with a hard line in hypocrisy
There are ashtrays of emotion for the fag ends of the aristocracy

The sugar coated pill is getting bitterer still
You think your country needs you but you know it never will
So pack up your troubles in a stolen handbag
Dont dilly dally boys rally round the flag
Give us your daily bread in individual slices
And something in the daily rag to cancel any crisis