Terraced houses, terraced lives,
terraced husbands, terraced wives,
terraced kids, and dogs and cats,
all cleared away for high-rise flats.
 
Build ‘em cheap and stack ‘em high.
Communities that touch the sky.
“This is where we’ll house the dregs
(don’t worry ‘bout the Building Regs)”
 
Floor on floor of cattle pens,
their residents like battery hens,
with lonely, panoramic views
but nobody to share their news.
 
Isolated in the skies,
all the lifts are vandalised.
Rubbish stacks up in the halls,
grafitti covers all the walls.
 
Used syringes on the stairs,
their Social Landlord couldn’t care.
“Just tart ‘em up and make ‘em pretty,
their ugliness can’t mar The City”
 
Twenty floors of fractured lives,
fractured husbands, fractured wives
fractured kids, no dogs or cats.
Nowhere to play in high-rise flats.



Version 2

Slum Clearance
 
Terraced houses, terraced lives,
terraced husbands, terraced wives,
terraced kids, and dogs and cats,
all cleared away for high-rise flats.
 
A stark, Post-Modern Brutalism
became the sixties’ future vision.
Lives sacrificed on drawing boards,
by local civic overlords.
 
Their slick ‘impressions’ of the dream
in Crimson Lake and Hooker’s Green
showed cycle paths and planting schemes
and lots of healthy public greens.
 
But planned ‘Utopia’ can’t compete,
the lost, lamented terraced street
where people lived and loved and died,
with friends and family by their side.
 
Build ‘em cheap and stack ‘em high.
Communities that touch the sky.
“This is where we’ll house the dregs
(don’t worry ‘bout the Building Regs.
 
And now we’ve got the planning sorted
the ‘open space’ can be aborted”)
With all the ‘Homes for Heroes’ razed,
the modern ‘homes’ were double glazed!
 
Floor on floor of cattle pens,
their residents like battery hens,
with lonely, panoramic views
but nobody to share their news.
 
Isolated in the skies,
all the lifts now vandalised.
Rubbish stacks up in the halls,
grafitti covers all the walls.
 
Used syringes on the stairs,
their Social Landlord couldn’t care.
“Just tart ‘em up and make ‘em pretty,
their ugliness can’t mar The City”
 
Twenty floors of fractured lives,
fractured husbands, fractured wives
fractured kids, no dogs or cats.
Nowhere to play in high-rise flats.



Version 3

Slum Clearance
 
Terraced houses, terraced lives,
terraced husbands, terraced wives,
terraced kids, and dogs and cats,
all cleared away for high-rise flats.
 
A stark, Post-Modern Brutalism
became the sixties’ future vision.
Lives sacrificed on drawing boards,
by their architectural overlords,
 
whose slick ‘impressions’ of the dream
in Crimson Lake and Hooker’s Green
showed cycle paths and planting schemes
and lots of healthy public greens.
 
But planned ‘Utopia’ can’t compete
with lost, lamented terraced streets
where people lived and loved and died,
their friends and family by their side.
 
Build ‘em cheap and stack ‘em high.
Communities that touch the sky.
With all the ‘Homes for Heroes’ razed,
the modern ‘homes’ were double glazed!
 
“This is where we’ll house the dregs
(don’t worry ‘bout the Building Regs -
and now we’ve got the planning sorted
the ‘open space’ can be aborted)”
 
Floor on floor of cattle pens,
their residents like battery hens,
with lonely, panoramic views
but nobody to share their news.
 
Isolated in the skies,
all the lifts now vandalised.
Rubbish stacks up in the halls,
grafitti covers all the walls.
 
Used syringes on the stairs,
their Social Landlord couldn’t care.
“Just tart ‘em up and make ‘em pretty,
their ugliness can’t mar The City”
 
Twenty floors of fractured lives,
fractured husbands, fractured wives
fractured kids, no dogs or cats.
Nowhere to play in high-rise flats.