Viewing TV journalists pontificating on the news of Philip Hammond’s budget and willing him to make capitalism work, I became fixed on the voices of the two people debating the issues.

A black man and a white woman both young(ish), from where I am, journalists speaking in accent less tones with varying degrees of poshness. On any such news and current affairs programmes, close your eyes and listen and what will hear are numerous David Cameron’s and Theresa May’s.

What I get this is that “They -all sound- just -the -same” the metre matching those in the song “Lit-t-le box-es” who “all-look- just- the same.!”

 “Little Boxes” was written in 1962 by the folk singer Malvina Reynolds and when recorded by Pete Seeger went into the charts. One pundit saying “Its about about the conformist, quick-fix attitudes of middle-class Americans at the time.”

To the “doctors and lawyers and business executives” made out of “ticky- tacky” just add politicians and journalists ( of the political kind) and “Little boxes” is up to date only more so. The people who run our affairs and those who describe and judge them go unleavened by anything different. There are, increasingly, Labour exceptions, and lively they are too. One eliciting a letter to a newspaper in its praise. But few and far between.

There are those among politicians claiming to come from, a council estate who one can only assume an elocutionist lived next door..

So its altogether Now!

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There’s a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same
*****
And the people in the houses
All went to the university
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same
And there’s doctors and lawyers
And business executives
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same
***********
And they all play on the golf course
And drink their mar-tin-ies dry
And they all have pretty chidrren
And the children go to summ-er school
And then to the university
Where they are put in little boxes
And come out all the same.

end