Our Streets

This is not about poverty, it is about culture

The young people stealing flat-screen televisions and burning shops

That was not about politics or protest

Politics or protest, pol-pol-politics or protest

I've said before that there is a major problem in our society

With children growing up not knowing

The difference between right and wrong

Looting, violence, vandalising, criminality, pure and simple

There's a riot going on in our streets

And they're bleeding, bleeding

And nothing in our leader's speech

That I can believe in, believe in

My street's in flames again

Fueled by the hype on the news at ten

Now another bored kid, he wants to join in

Go and set alight to a wheelie bin

Well, I've had enough of these incidents

But don't insult my intelligence

Telling me the riot was a consequence

Of criminality and insolence, no

'Cause I've seen the inequality

You breed in this society

Cutbacks that make the people bleed

For your ideology of greed

And you tell me that's the life they choose

But I say they've nothing left to lose

Nothing left to lose

Now there's a riot going on in our streets

And they're bleeding, bleeding

And nothing in our leader's speech

That I can believe in, believe in

There's a riot going on in our streets

And they're bleeding, bleeding

And nothing in our leader's speech

That I can believe in, believe in

I hear them chatting on the radio

Like parrots regurgitating the same old

News media bullshit, but what do they know?

What it feels like to be living below

The poverty line, when every time you go

Out into the town, all around there's dough

But money only moves in a one way flow

From bottom to top, it makes you feel low

Oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh

Sooner or later you're going to blow

Oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

Now there's a riot going on in our streets

And they're bleeding, bleeding

And nothing in our leader's speech

That I can believe in, believe in

There's a riot going on in our streets

And they're bleeding, bleeding

And nothing in our leader's speech

That I can believe in, believe in

When you gonna stop demonising the youth you've failed?

Telling us morality must prevail

Sticking every kid with a hoodie in jail with no bail

For your fairy tale

While you force-feed them materialism

Without giving them a hope of ever making a living

And you wonder why they're finding other ways to get cash

And when your shop displays, they get smashed

And you tell me, "Oh, these single mums

Their sons, they just don't know

Right from wrong 'cause their dad was a no-show

That's why they're looting whisky from a Tesco"

But you don't know

These words you write, you must type on a stereo

A two-dimensional film from a TV show

Now there's a riot

This is not about poverty, it is about culture (Riot, riot going on)

There's a riot

That was not about politics or protest (Riot)

Pol-pol-politics (Riot going on)

There's a riot

Looting, violence (Riot)

Vandalising (Riot)

Criminality, pure and simple (Riot going on)

There's a riot

A clear and heavy line between right and wrong (Riot)

(Riot going on)

There's a riot going on in our streets

And they're bleeding, bleeding

And nothing in our leader's speech

That I can believe in, believe in