A Pretty Penny

At my band rehearsal tonight ('Three Pressed Men') we decided we're going to have to cover Steve Tilston's remarkable song A Pretty Penny, written (amazingly) a few months before the banking crashes of 2008 :

There's some men in this city who are paid a pretty penny
Just for guessing where the money flows.
Certain handshakes, knowing smiles in this City mile :
that's the way you know the bonus grows.

We should be so lucky they're such plucky fellows
Only right they pluck the sweetest plums.
If we don't knock such wisdom, rock the boat or rock the system,
if we're good, we'll get to pick the crumbs.

Chorus :
And behind their hedge they don't plant wheat
they don't cut corn, they don't pick tea
they don't dig coal, they don't forge steel.
They just push numbers all about. They push too far - we bail them out,
keep their fingers firm on fortune's wheel.

Such fine aspirations, their justifications.
Where's the justice I would like to see?
It seems the simple fact is : keeping rules and paying tax
is just for simple fools like you and me.

The sky's the going rate; they want it on a plate,
they'll relocate should we dare to decline.
Well it's a global market : they can take their jet and park it
somewhere where the sun refuse to shine.

Steve Tilston 2008
recorded on the album 'Ziggurat'
http://www.stevetilston.com/home