Notes:
•The title “The Great Stink” refers to the effects of sewage and refuse being dumped into the River Thames during hot weather in July and August 1858. One might ask: what’s changed in the UK, 168 years on?
•Joseph Bazalgette was a civil engineer whose subsequent work on sewers helped prevent further outbreaks of disease.
• “Pen and ink” is English rhyming slang for “stink”.
• “Blood and sand!” easily came to mind in the context of this piece – it was the most colourful expletive I ever heard my father use.
Foul Malice rules in Britain’s Blunderland,
No Terrorist gangs made stolen desert bloom,
No Olives, on The Mount of Blood and Sand,
That Palestinian childrens’ monstrous tomb.
More murderous forever wars, their means,
Colonial rapine, still their greedy end,
Thus, poison and turds fill Albion’s lakes and streams,
Whilst Parliament’s ears, to Genocide’s Friends are lent.
Once, Empire, who press-ganged men of fighting age,
Enchains now, agèd women who invoke God’s word
As terrorists, who provoke the Fascists’ rage.
Great Britons’ pens are feared more than the sword!
Rise, Bazalgettes, stem Parliament’s Great Stink,
With neither jets nor bombs, but pen and ink!
Le Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh,
Dé Luain, an seachtú lá déag de mhí Lúnasa,
an bhliain dhá mhíle is fiche a sé (17/8/2026).
