Poems

Unregistered Chickens

A Sonnet

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWe must stop those unregistered chickens!
How dare they manage their own clucking lives!
They walk the land; they don't give a dickens
Even when threatened by our great big knives.
How dare they not rely on the State grain,
Perfectly modified for what they need.
They're eating raw and they're feeling no pain...
Soon enough they'll start growing their own seed,
And gathering in flocks of their own kind.
Living without once succumbing to rage,
Thinking without a propagandised mind,
They'll begin thriving with no pen or cage.
How dreadful there's unregistered chickens;
The very thought of them free just sickens!

Unregistered Chickens - A Sonnet by Tom Shaw

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Silly situations require Silly poems. I set out to write a poem with this title after hearing of Richard Delingpole’s music project of the same name. I had two possible directions and perspectives to go with it, and though I settled on the one you’ve just read as my favourite, I’ll put the alternate version as a comment for anyone who’s interested.

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But why this topic? As of the 1st October 2024, the UK Government deems it a crime for anyone raise chickens outdoors in a back garden that are not registered with DEFRA, with threats of up to 6 months imprisonment or hefty fines for those who do not comply. Supposedly, this is so that agencies can inform individuals if there is an avian flu outbreak in the area and what steps owners should take. Because it would be absolutely impossible for DEFRA to give that information out to people on a mailing list without needing to know if they had any chickens or not.

This argument of “helping chicken-keepers” simply doesn’t make sense - and what business is it to the national government anyways? I can’t help but feel this is about something else entirely. Are we seeing the groundworks of a system that can track animal protein in its totality, and then animals can be culled or taken away due to “climate change”, “bird flu”, or by not having mRNA-packed injections?

All this links to a bigger question that The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. posed: Why do all these varying crises and solutions require the same centralised solutions by the same people who created models that failed in forecasting the crises and providing solutions in the first place?

I would argue we don’t need them, and that we’d be just fine as unregistered chickens. And I don’t seem to be alone in this, given the amount of “malicious compliance” protests that the system has already seen.

Bob Moran’s excellent cartoon from a few years ago captures my sentiments pretty well: