Lyrics Every Home A Prison - Coldcut, Jello Biafra

Every Home A Prison

Rejoice, friends
Big government is over
From now on, instead of community
You will be left
In the marketplace
To fend for yourselves
Claw for yourselves
Stab for yourselves
Guard for yourselves
What little money, savings, dignity, and shelter you have left
After your jobs are downsized
And exported to Mexico
Tennis shoes made by slaves in camps in Indonesia
Computer jobs sent across the ocean to Indonesia
You will be next unless you bow down, lick our boots
And throw your benefits away
Your raises away
And this is all you have to look forward to
Forever and ever and ever
As more and more benefits are slashed
No more tax-and-spend welfare state
A windfall from tax cuts for the rich
As more and more people
Out in the cold on the street
Begging for money
And when that doesn’t work
Robbing people
Carjacking
Home invasion
Everyone taught
That life is so cheap
There’s nothing to look forward to
Except what you can score
(And smoke in a pipe)
Ending welfare as we know it
Means third world crime as we know it
So why is it
All these young people today
Misbehave
Misbehave
Misbehave
Don’t they appreciate the world we’ve built for them?
Crappy jobs
Dog-eat-dog
No compassion
In the marketplace
If you like school
You’ll love work
Instead they ditch school
And hang out on the screet
Yob culture (Hooah!)
Young hooligans
Everywhere you look (Hooah! x3)
On TV anyway
And in the newspaper
They’re causing trouble (Hooah! x3)
More and more people
Will pour in the streets
As their rents go up
And job opportunities go down
So we have to keep them down
Before they rise up
And burn our house of cards to the ground
It’s just the cost of doing business
In third world countries where we keep the peasants down
We have to live in armed compounds, armed guards
Play tennis
At gunpoint
A different route to work behind bulletproof glass each day
But hey, the more the hordes hate you, more status you’ve got
Why not do this with the whole world?
With GATT treaties
Downsizing
But what about those goddamn hooligans in the street?
We stole their future
It’s all their fault
We must lock them up
There’s no room in the jails
So the best way to sweep them away
Make every home a prison today
Curfew
Curfew
Who cares how much our leaders are corrupt, as long as they’re tough on crime
Curfew
Keep them away
Curfew
No longer unauthorized activity
You can’t leave the home without an electronic ankle bracelet
Your offenders must be tagged and watched at all times
Tag their parents with bracelets too if they don’t obey
For that matter, tag them at work and make them stay
The main enemy
Terrorist threat
Is your own children
Think about it
The music they listen to
That tells them the world is bad
It’s the songs that are the problem, not the violence outside
Keep them locked up
Keep them in curfew
Put them away
Don’t let them out
We’re tougher on crime
Before the election
We want a national law establishing children’s bedtime
The bedtime patrol
Will check up on you
Bedtime patrol
Make sure your bracelet’s on
The nanny state
To reach down your pants
And check and see if you’ve been moistening yourselves
With any unauthorized substance
Without permission
Tag them
Curfew them
Keep them down
Keep them at home
To school
To rent a video on the way home
And stay home
Just like at work
Do not gather after dark
Curfew
It’s such a family-oriented word
A much more acceptable, smiling, soft word
A much more palatable concept
Than martial law
Put your bracelets on
You’re safer when you’re watched
Don’t go outside
You’ll set the alarm off
Curfew
Forever and ever and ever