Shipbuilding

Shipbuilding is a song Elvis Costello wrote for famed English performer and songwriter Robert Wyatt to record. He made a single of it that rose to #35 on the British charts before Costello recorded his own version for the song for his album Punch the Clock.

The song is about the prosperity that sweeps over a dormant port town in Britain during the Falklands invasion of 1982. The key line in the song, of course: "Is it worth it?"

Shipbuilding
Elvis Costello

Is it worth it?
A new winter coat and shoes for the wife
And a bicycle on the boy's birthday
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
By the women and children
Soon we'll be shipbuilding.......
Well I ask you
The boy said "Dad they're going to take me to task, but I'll be back by Christmas"
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
Somebody said that someone got filled in
For saying that people get killed in
The result of this shipbuilding
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
A telegram or a picture postcard
Within weeks they'll be re-opening the shipyards
And notifying the next of kin
Once again
It's all we're skilled in
We will be shipbuilding........
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls.

The same question entered my mind today while reading the compelling story, The Helicopter War, by Eric Gershon in today's Hartford Courant. While the war in Iraq has deepened our indebtedness to China in an alarming way, and has, by many accounts, been the suction which is draining the life from our economy, in Stratford and Bridgeport and Plainville, the war means bombfall profits.