MADAM,

Rather than rant and rail on the subject of the county council’s proposed tax on the stalls, signs and chairs put out on the street by the last surviving and much cherished independent shops in our beloved Monmouth, I have committed my thoughts on the matter to doggerel verse. Let us hope wisdom prevails.

They taxed my old dog more than any fat cat,

They’ll tax you and me for this and for that,

They’ll tax you for having fine corns on both feet,

But the worst tax of all is for signs on the street.

 

The old and infirm, the lame and the blind,

Are the council’s concern – "We’re so fair and so kind,

They can fall to their deaths in a knee-deep pot-hole,

But preserve them we must from a stray barber’s pole."

"For the ill and the frail there’s no doctor at night,

But Phil Munday’s stall is a peril we’ll fight.

An NHS dentist? As rare as Welsh gold,

But Stephens must perish for the good of

the old."

 

"Sure, there’s many a man in the back of

a hearse,

Dispatched by a trestle, a pot plant or worse,

And as they lay dying reading, ‘Full tan and wax’,

The last words they uttered were, ‘Please, God, more tax."

 

So a word for you numbskulls of old MCC,

It’s really not cricket, not on, don’t you see?

Monmouth’s a town where we live and

let live,

Enough of your taxing, we’ve no more

to give!

Des Morris

(Buckholt)