I Am the Very Model of a Modern Surgeon-General

A rewrite of the Major-General song from the Pirates of Penzance for modern times…

I am the very model of a modern Major-General;
I’ve information radical, irrational, illogical;
I feed it to the Government in fashion categorical;
Who like to foster fear at large in manner mathematical.

The brief was to produce disease from sources quite apocryphal;
And add to it conveniently in order alphabetical;
To meddle with the populace in matters biological;
Animal and vegetable, mineral and chemical.

I am the very model of a modern Surgeon-General;
I’ve information critical, sensational and terrible;
It’s not entirely accurate or even vaguely credible;
I feed it to the press who make it all nicely indelible.

They can be counted on to be quite easily corruptible;
At telling tales to those who are sufficiently susceptible;
And frighten all the readership with stories hypothetical,
Uncritical, improbable, refutable, unethical.

A yarn was plucked from pure thin air of origins zoonotical;
Repeated by the press at large in manner quite robotical;
To set the scene for moves obscene invoking catastrophical:
Endangering all human ties as well as economical.

The lies we told to have our way were truly astronomical;
We had to silence dissidents in ways quite categorical;
And crush the laws without a blink in manner quite emphatical;
Inducing in the populace a state hyper-hypnotical.

The measures were designed to trounce all values hippocratical;
Sanity quite disappeared, or took a long sabbatical;
We couldn’t have our plans undone by cries of ‘that’s unethical’;
And so we instituted steps with methods quite tyrannical.

We set about destroying all the means of the resistance;
Through censorship and ridicule we smeared them with persistence;
But still they came a charging with a singular insistence;
We’d violated all the rules in medical existence.

I am a loyal member of the body sycophantical;
Repeat a lot of nonsense which with ease is controvertible;
I do my level best to stay away from analytical;
And shine when called upon to be sublimely hypocritical.

(Return to top of music score)

I am the very essence of a top Attorney-General;
Whose job it is to navigate the cunning and the criminal;
To hide from public scrutiny the giving of immunity;
By those of us in unity who have total impunity.

(Slow pace)

It never was the role of kings to harm our rights nor clip our wings;
We saw to that when these were freed in 1215 at Runnymede;
Do not repeat the old mistake that tyrants oft perpetuate;
That life you can obliterate, the rest will just capitulate.

There are some other-worldly strengths you do not know nor do possess;
That will out-stride whatever lengths you go to with experiments;
These are our ancient laws, you see, which we embrace eternally;
The Anglo-Saxon tendency to honour our own legacy.