2016 - the year of me being quoted in UK newspapers

One of the strange things that happened during the peculiar year that was 2016 was that poems of mine were quoted in The Daily Telegraph (pictured above), The Daily Mirror, and most recently The Times (London), in which former David Cameron adviser Lord Finkelstein took time out to take issue with one of them.

I look forward to 2017 when I expect to be quoted regularly in both Pravda and The Wall Street Journal.

My new St. Stephen's Day Tradition

Tomorrow is St. Stephen's Day. St. Stephen is pictured below on one of his more challenging days.

In these parts it is traditional that young people spend some of St. Stephen's Day going door to door performing songs and doing traditional dances.  Despite being no longer in the slightest bit young, I plan to join in this tradition as of tomorrow. I will be going door to door around the West of Ireland, ringing door bells and reciting my new poem 'Of Course They Know It's Christmas' (after Bob Geldof and Midge Ure) over a small megaphone to anyone who answers. I will be dressed in traditional costume. See below.

Please give generously. I haven't yet decided what traditional dance I'll be doing and am, as ever, open to suggestions.

Of Course They Know It's Christmas

 

To mark the season I have re-written the original lyrics for Do They Know It's Christmas?

I've taken the liberty of retitling it Of Course They Know It's Christmas and it's published on Culture Matters, Socialist Unity, & We Know What's Up.

I wish you all an ecstatic Christmas. Personally I am mostly looking forward to December 30th when I will be celebrating the one hundred anniversary of the timely death of Grigori Rasputin.

Mr Rasputin's lawyers have asked me to make clear  
that he had no involvement in either Band Aid or Live Aid.