I AM naturally optimistic, and have been putting my optimism to good use in the last few days organising loads of gigs from the end of February onwards.

If you’re in Shoreham, Edinburgh, Durham, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, York, Crewe, Manchester, Hull, Calstock, Mevagissey or Falmouth, I’ll see you in February and March, with loads more to come. All details at facebook.com/attilathestockbroker
Of course, I’ll be doing this one:
 
They had a Conservative Party
While people were gasping their last
And now it’s all out in the open
They’ll say it was all in the past
Their press will pretend to be outraged
Then revert to one theme: refugees.
Can’t we just put the whole lot on trial
And sack their pet editors? Please?
 
Do we want a banana republic
Run by toffs and their press baron friends
With a nonsense electoral system
Which serves only one party’s ends?
Corruption and pitiless power —
Opposition in sad disarray.
Time Scotland and Wales left us to it:
It was never their choice anyway.

I was called “a woke poet” online the other day, and it wasn’t meant as a compliment. It can sometimes be very insightful analysing how words develop new meanings in popular culture, and how others then try and change those meanings.

Here’s a great example. How the hell has “woke” become a right-wing term of abuse? It’s an African American version of “awoke,” which is the past simple of “awake.” It was initially deployed by the likes of the Black Lives Matter movement to indicate mass awareness of injustice, but is now deployed in a sneering way by the right. Let’s take a look at this.

The antonym of “woke” is “asleep.” So the right’s implied criticism is that we are awake, questioning, challenging, seeking justice (“SJWs”) while they, presumably, are asleep, in front of GB News with a copy of the Daily Mail on their collective stomachs, proudly oblivious to the fate of the planet and that of we who share it.

It’s a new version of “too clever by half” or “children should be seen and not heard” — used (il)liberally against me by my maternal grandmother in my youth along with “it’s not for the likes of us” as she fawned to her royal and wealthy “betters” as depicted in the pages of her beloved Daily Express.

It’s servile nonsense, these days almost always used by older right-wing mouthpieces to criticise left-wing youth. “School of hard knocks, university of life” — this from the pinched-faced, self-appointed spokespeople for a part of a generation who, more than any other before or since, had the full power of the welfare state behind them — behind us — and are proud to not have taken advantage of it.

I went to university on a full grant, the first member of my family to do so. I cannot stand the anti-intellectualism of “woke” as a pejorative term — and the implication that being “anti-woke” is noble, “real” and “working class.”

It reminds me of my aforementioned grandmother, living in a council house, married to a printer who was a prominent member of the local Conservative Association, or the bullies who tried to beat me up at primary school for being “clever.” It is, quite simply, bollocks.

Past simple? Too right.

Yesterday I joined the protests in Worthing against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which will mainly be used to criminalise people trying to save the planet, protest about racism, and right the wrongs of history by removing statues to profiteering, inhuman bastards. It has to be stopped.  

If such legislation had existed 40 years ago I’d have spent time in jail for sure, and so would many of you. Big up to the Colston Four and all those who follow in their footsteps.

Take care, keep safe.

Visit www.attilathestockbroker.com/merch.php My main Facebook page is www.facebook.com/attilathestockbroker; Twitter: @atilatstokbroka