Spectator competition winners: A peer’s lament

In Competition No. 3283, you were invited to submit ‘A Peer’s Lament’.

There was a smattering of references to Baroness Mone, whose travails prompted this challenge. But of course members of the Upper House have plenty to worry about besides, as winningly detailed in a lively and varied entry that contained echoes ranging from Poe, Belloc, Thomas Hood and W.S. Gilbert to Boney M. The winners earn £25.

By these drivellers of babble-on who wouldn’t weep?

No wonder so many just drift off to sleep

When others talk nonsense that leaves us agog

With claptrap as clear as a thick London fog.

There are those like the ‘Churchill dog’ stuck in a car

Who nod as if listening then rush to the bar.

My mum was a housewife; my dad was out working;

I wasn’t brung up to be waffling and shirking

While claiming expenses like this pompous lot

For just turning up or, in some cases, not!

I’m a grafter, not born with a posh silver spoon

Stuck in my gob and I’m no bloody goon.