A New Nursery Rhyme

A New Nursery Rhyme by Tom Maguire

Sing a song of England,
Country of the free,
Sing her teeming millions,
Rulers of the sea;
Sing her trade and commerce,
And her "vales serene",
Isn’t it a dainty dish
To lay before the Queen?

Sing a song of England,
Shuddering with cold,
Doomed to slow starvation
By the gods of gold;
See her famished children
Hunger-marked, and mean,
Isn’t that a dainty dish
To lay before the Queen?

Sing her House of Commons,
Sitting all at ease,
While the ring of coal-lords
Fasten like disease
On the helpless toilers,
Hollow-eyed and lean;
Faith! it is a dainty dish
To lay before the Queen.

Mammon in the counting-house,
Counting out his money,
His Lady in the parlour
Eating bread and honey.
The worker on the highway,
Short of food and clothes -
God bless happy England!
And save her from her foes.

From The Labour Champion, 11 November 1893. 

Mark Lynas on the causes of food riots

What biofuels do is undeniable: they take food out of the mouths of starving people and divert them to be burned as fuel in the car engines of the world's rich consumers. This is, in the words of the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, nothing less than a "crime against humanity". It is a crime the UK government seems determined to play its part in abetting....The threat posed by biofuels affects all of us. Global grain stockpiles - on which all of humanity depends - are now perilously depleted. Cereal stocks are at their lowest level for 25 years, according to the FAO. The world has consumed more grain than it has produced for seven of the past eight years, and supplies, at roughly only 54 days of consumption, are the lowest on record. The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, has already warned that 100 million people could be pushed deeper into poverty because of food price rises caused directly by this imbalance between supply and demand. Even consumers in rich countries are suffering. We now pay higher prices for our food in order to subsidise the biofuels industry, thanks to measures such as the renewable fuels directive.

Full article here, while for an analysis of the current food riots in Haiti, see here. For a more historical perspective on the politics of hunger see here