Society News - March 2006
JUNK MAIL
By Anne Nonymous
This is the Junk Mail crossing the border
Delivered by truck now, that's the order
None of it wanted, all of it waste
All of it tinged with commercial distaste
Delivering catalogues all unsolicited
Names on the mailing list slyly elicited
Yearly subscription, that's the refrain
Take out a loan or a time-share in Spain,
Unwanted brochures shrouded in plastic
Thousands of leaflets bound by elastic
All come unbidden, a waste of a trip
Bound for the landfill, bound for the tip
All come by lorries pounding the highways
Blocking the ring road and clogging the by-ways
No more will the Night Mail arrive at the station
De-railed by the forces of privatisation
Victorian problem Victorian answer,
That is an insult to the service they ran, sir
Imagine old Isambard taking this tack
Sorry we're late sir, leaves on the track!
Now, gone is the romance
Gone is the snobbery
The twenty-first century's Greatest Train Robbery
So while we're asleep the postman is driving
And the profits of shareholders quietly thriving
To bring us material for which none of us asked
To redress the balance is how we are tasked
Here comes the postman rounding the block
Here comes the postman, here comes his knock
With quickening heart I leap from my bunk
Anything interesting, dear?,
Nothing, just junk!
The above satire, by an unnamed author, about the demise of the British
Mail Trains, was heard on British radio.
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