The second-hand idea industry

Their swish suits don’t hide one thing –
that these are still salesmen
selling second-hand ideas
whose clocks they keep turning back,
much mileage, but still going nowhere

They think sports stripes hide everything,
but we know there’s banana peels in the gearbox,
that the colour doesn’t mean much
when the engine costs too much to run.

Just what road would we drive anyway?
It seems all there are is right turns,
why bother leaving the driveway?

These computer driven cars that are all the rage,
you just can’t fix them in the backyard
this is the insanity of the motor age!

It’s aways more roads, more roads
all single-occupant cars on super-highways,
no railways, no public transport nodes
It’s all work, work, work…no time to play
Why buy a car that just doesn’t go?

My steady cycling takes me past them -
stuck at the traffic lights of prosperity
I’ve leapt on to another path
where we peddle a different notion
that there’ll be chaos without anarchy

and they're still there in that monumental car lot,
that some like to call parliament
selling their second-hand ideas