Beggars and buskers, boarded up buildings

Cardboard and sleeping bags block every door

Rough sleepers lie in the grime and the litter

Their hopes and their dreams spread out on the floor

Queues at the dole office Queues at the food-banks

Yesterday’s bread and closing down sales

The only sure future is begging and busking

The cold wind is growing into a gale

Tattoos and nail-bars, betting shops, barbers

Ten kinds of coffee and charity stores

The city I love is falling apart

As they give to the rich what they take from the poor

Bankers and brokers and billionaire bloaters

Lining their walls and pockets with gold

Banquets and binges while children go hungry

Callous contempt for the weak and the old

Limos and Lear Jets, fast track for cash back

Burner phone business and jobs for the boys

As they plunder our planet for power and profit

Greed that poisons, pollutes and destroys

Queues for an ambulance, queues for a doctor

NHS broken and brought to its knees

By chancers who promised us fortunes

While they danced and they drank and they partied

And laughed as they left us to bleed

Its not about colour its not about creed , it’s all about greed

And greed seldom answers when compassion calls

Greed burns down bridges and greed builds up walls

This came out of walking through Chester a few years ago and seeing so many rough sleepers

Then watching the antics of the Government of the time on television But that’s another story.