Eastward ho!

My preparations for today's departure to Mongolia remain on course. By the time I return, Britain will be a different place, not least because Tony Blair will no longer be prime minister. So in honour of this, I have adapted Elvis Costello's Oliver's Army. Enjoy.
(Grand piano intro, preferably in white and in situ in ivory tower)
Don't start that talking/
I could talk all night/
The Orangemen go sleepwalking/
While I'm putting the world to rights/
For our ID card information/
Have you got yourself an occupation?

Tony's Army is here to stay/
Tony's Army is on its way/
And I would rather be anywhere else/
But here toda-a-ay

There was a Gordon Brown/
He didn't crack a smile/
But it's no laughing party/
When you've been on the murder mile/
All it takes one itchy trigger/
One more little/
One white young figure. (our boys in Iraq)

Tony's Army here to stay/
Tony's Army is on its way/
And I would rather be anywhere else/
But here today/
Oh-oh-oh-oh oohohoh

Afghanistan is up for grabs/
London is full of Arabs/
We could be in Palestine/
Over by that Iraqi line/
With the boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the T-y-y-yne/
But there's no danger/
It's a professional career/ (the army)
It could all be arranged/
With just a word in Mr Churchill's ear/
If you're out of luck or out of work/
We could send you to Johannesbu-urg

Tony's Army is here to stay/(Jean Charles de Menezes)
Tony's Army is on its way/
And I would rather be anywhere else/
But here today/
And I would rather be anywhere else/
But here today/
And I would rather be anywhere else/
But here toda-ay/
Oh oh oh oh/
oh oh oh oh.

(the last four lines of the final main verse relate to Blair's craven donation of a bust of Churchill from No.10 Downing Street to the White House, plus the propaganda spiel, while the last two lines of it relate to an isolated Colin Powell being sent in 2002 to the Kyoto follow-up Johannesburg conference being forced to stay that the USA would disagree with everything else the world prorposed, even after the world had agreed to focus on aid development rather than climate change. The rest of the song is pretty much self-explanatory).

There are other songs which have satirical value. Monty Python's Money Song for Gordon Brown (e.g. "There is nothing quite as wonderful as money/ There is nothing like a newly minted pound.) or Imagination's Just An Illusion with George Bush, his vice-president, Tony snow (White House spokeman) and Paul Wolfowitz (now at World Bank, architect of Iraq invasion) bodypopping on an iceberg that had just broken off from a melting Antartica. This could focus on many things such as CNN's declaration of Al Gore as president in 2000, educational policy, climate change denial, the scale of Hurricane Katrina or the mounting body count in Iraq(e.g. with applause from a military academy "Only in my dreams/ I'll turn you on, here for just a moment/ then you're gone/ It's just an illusion" the rising bodybag totals). Other songs could be Blondie's Atomic with Blair being taken to bed a pointy nuclear missile and serenaded by a singing Sellafield with a big crack down its side (e.g. "Make me tonight/ make it right") or Garbage's I Think I'm Paranoid for Kim Jong-il (e.g. "I think I'm paranoid/ and complicated" or his choreographed crowds singing "All I want is you."). All these songs however, can more or less be played straight without adaptation and so you can listen to them at your own leisure with your own ideas, but Costello's 1970s parody of mercenaries from Britain as a latter-day Cromwell's army needed a bit of updating.
On to Mongolia for me.