Looters

Criminality pure and simple
Decent people all agree
Looting shops and burning buildings
Didn't you watch it on TV?

Cameras, sports clothes, closed computers, mobile phones and branded shoes
Flat-screen TV's, Play Stations
Cigarettes and bottles of booze

You smash up the shops and you get free stuff
It's all about the money nowadays
Innit?

The lower classes on the rampage
Moral panic in the press
Beat them, birch them, hang them, shoot them
Looters deserve nothing less

But why the anger, why the outrage, why the demonizing hate
Aren't they just following in the footsteps of those who made this country great

You smash up the shops and you get free stuff
It's all about the money nowadays
Innit?

France is straight, now there's a looter plundering the Spanish main
Burning towns and looting treasures
Pride of England scourge of Spain
Was rewarded with a knighthood, looters deserve nothing less
Made himself a tiny fortune
And lots of dosh for good Queen Bess

You smash up the shops and you get free stuff
It's all about the money nowadays
Innit?

Clive in the East India Company fattened on the spoils of war
Tax the peasants into famine
Found India rich and left it poor
If the natives dared rebel them their imperial masters would make them pay
Tied them to the canons muzzle
And blew them flesh and bones away

You smash up the shops and you get free stuff
It's all about the money nowadays
Innit?

The Brutish Empire built on looting
Grab the London make the laws
And everything the land produces
Coffee, diamonds, gold is yours
So we got sugar, cotton, spices, rubber, tin, tobacco, tea
They got cricket and the bible, and our royal family

You smash up the shops and you get free stuff
It's all about the money nowadays
Innit?

Take a look at our museums plundered treasures on display
That gold crown looted from Magdala
Admire it at the V and A
The Rosetta Stone, the Elgin Marbles, Neil MacGregors' Benny pluck
The history of the world in loot, isn't it time we gave them back?

You smash up the shops and you get free stuff
It's all about the money nowadays
Innit?

Looting, a great British pastime
The upper classes loot by self
The bankers, tycoons, city gamblers
Siphon of the nations wealth
Centuries of high-class looting, payback time is overdue
Hype up pins into the night
What now?
Next time it could be you

You smash up the shops and you get free stuff
It's all about the money nowadays
Innit?