Monday 23 January 2012

Numbers Galore 99

Numbers Galore

Car numbers and engine numbers and chassis numbers too,
Model numbers part numbers, colour codes pursue.
House numbers street numbers, area post codes an all,
All across the country, codes for counties large and small,


Does anyone still have one of these Farmers Weekly metric converters, I still use mine and had it even before I had a calculator. The numbers game has gone absolutely mad in the last thirty years, look at the Cattle Movement Service and all the ear tag numbers, and all the numbers involved in the Single Farm Payments system.
At one time the only number that went on your cow or beast you were selling was the paper auction yard number, and the accountant always wanted to look at your movement book to try and trace what you sold and when, but even that only said cow or calf or sheep and how many on what date and the lot number, and all the fields had names and the lanes and ponds and woods.








































Numbers Galore

Phone numbers and the mobile, bank sort codes n' accounts,
Credit card that can be skimmed, all ya savings trounce,
Car numbers and engine numbers and chassis numbers too,
Model numbers part numbers, colour codes pursue.

House numbers street numbers, area post codes an all,
All across the country, codes for counties large and small,
Field numbers, map numbers, parish number long,
Acres turned to hectares, if ya know where they belong.

SBI and there's IACS, vendor as well,
PI and a Trader numbers, and Stewardship numbers tell,
There's numbers for every thing, for this that and tuther,
Fill ya head with confusion, so many thing that got to cover.

Gallons turned to litres, pounds and ounces gone to grams,
Miles turned to kilometres, and foot to millimetre crammed
Therms have turned to Mj's, power in Hp turned to Watts,
Heat is Btu to lbs, is now into Joules per Kilogram it jots.

The moneys gone to Euros, bank rate measures that,
Information all in plastic, and its in your wallet sat,
Converted into bar codes, so computers read the lot,
Nothing ever private now, they know all of what you've got.

Countryman

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase...... The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.Frank Herbert (1920-1986)

No comments:

Post a Comment