Skinners

In the rich mans shadow
Are the traders from Canton
Working in the market
Yes out there upon
Hooks there hangs
Live animals
Dogs and cats who try
To get away hooked up to nails
That keep them in the sky

With contracts for the departmental stores
In knightsbridge and Mayfair
Those are where the elitist wander
And clearly they don’t care
They wear their smart designer clothes
And their designer shoes
And they buy into the cruelty
For They have nothing to lose

And stuck there on the market
The stripper of the skin
Just a rusty sort of knife
And a rusty tin
And the animals are hung up
And whilst they are alive
Their skin is ripped right off them
Clearly they won’t survive

But this is the price of fashion
Piece work its on price
The fashionable London Departmental store
They did roll the dice
The poor man out in Canton
Has to do this kind of stuff
Has to murder stolen pet dogs
Although he has seen enough

And the cameras call him a devil
But The real devils are those
Who sit in Their walnut boardrooms
Thinking that they pose
True respectability when of course
They really are
The low life in this equation
Their heads beneath the bar

A fat cigar a cognac
A snob who shakes the hands
Of other eminent tories
He probably has his fans
But nobody really knows him
As the creator of the poor
Skinner in the Chinese market
Who nobody’s met before

The animals rights films show us
The marketeers how they
Strip fur off of the animals
Its the animals who pay
But the bastards are store managers
And the
Management who buy
Into all this cruelty
Keeping their precious margins high