Comments on: QE poetry competition announced

By: Golden Balls Beckham and Carol Ann Duffy « Though Cowards Flinch

Golden Balls Beckham and Carol Ann Duffy « Though Cowards Flinch — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:39:27 +0000

[...] was based on Aristophanes and who was very bored this evening. Namely, me. Unlike the only previous poetry competition on TCF, this will not hold your interest. Run away [...]

By: freethinkingeconomist

freethinkingeconomist — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:50:08 +0000

Shall we agree that Tom Freeman won?

Either a copy of my QE piece, or a guided tour of Bickerstaffe, in Lancs, for the lucky winner…

By: Poems for our time | FTdotcomment | FT.com

Poems for our time | FTdotcomment | FT.com — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:50:09 +0000

[...] Though Cowards Flinch (which ran a competition on the topic): There’s this bloke who runs England’s Bank. He saw the economy starting to tank. So he doled out more dosh To those already awash. And they used it to maintain their rank. [...]

By: Dave Semple

Dave Semple — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:15:02 +0000

Hey, you and Giles got mentioned in the FT blo:

http://blogs.ft.com/ft-dot-comment/2010/02/11/poems-for-our-time/

By: If you read anything today, read this by Tom Freeman « Freethinking Economist

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:13:39 +0000

[...] would also urge the poetically minded to head towards ThoughCowardsFlinch where some impressive haiku are being created; and I like CS Clark’s personal touch: He [...]

By: CS Clark

CS Clark — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:43:14 +0000

This isn’t very good either, and probably economically illiterate. But it is an authentic villanelle.

For he’s given our money away
If not in coins then just in ink
And he’s saved the economy

He gave someone’s money away
Whose money it was I can’t quite think
But it worked – hip hip hooray!

He didn’t give my money away
From helping the nation I wouldn’t shrink
But I was already in debt anyway

Did he give your money away?
Did he take it with a smile and a wink?
Did it come off your cheque on pay day?

What? He gave their money away?
Then why did they call him a cad and a fink
When they’re richer by far today?

So, he gave some money away
And we’re in the red and they’re in the pink
And how that worked no-one can say
And I think we’ve been f’ed in the a.

By: Tom Freeman

Tom Freeman — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:52:22 +0000

This is exactly the sort of thing that was bound to ruin my evening. Or rather, to make my evening, for I love nerdish humour and I don’t care who knows it. here’s a limerick:

The Old Lady was most displeased
That credit was painfully squeezed
She made billions from nought
And yet I must report
My own bank balance is uneased

And I’ve had a stab at a much longer poem here. First verse:

Mervyn King was in his counting house, counting out our money;
It didn’t take him very long, a fact he deemed most funny.
“To return our stagnant nation to a land of milk and honey,
I must make things more liquid – or at least, a bit more runny.”

By: Mil

Mil — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:52:54 +0000

Here’s a series of haikus (my favourite form of poem, basically because it’s about as short as you can get and therefore requires little effort on my part):

People who banked and
trusted bankers who eased were
too easily pleased.

People who filled socks
with soggy old banknotes were
cleverer by far

than the trusting mass
which believed the words and ads
of cruel salesbeings.

Time to return to
other moralities of
another planet.

An economy
at the service of people;
not people at the

beck and unkind call
of an economy which
knows only money.

By: QE in 462 words: the ballad of Mervyn’s shovel « Freethinking Economist

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:44:05 +0000

[...] Paul Cotterill has formalised the poetry competition on QE here. And extra points will be awarded for anyone including a discussion of the pound sterling, as [...]