Hating Tories

I contemplated emigrating
or moving out of town
I'd spend my weekends walking dogs
my weekdays knuckling down

My grandmother was Scottish and
my great-grandma a Jew
And while some borders still stay down
perhaps they'll let me through

Or I could hump my tucker bag
and pitch up in Australia
(Though on that points-based entry test
I'd probably score a failure)

Imagine if every time someone died
on an NHS waiting list
A scar appeared on
the skin of a Tory MP

If every time an MP failed to turn up
to an inconveniently-arranged appointment
They were sanctioned
​their state handouts stopped

Imagine if every time a person went to a food bank
a Tory MP had to go too
Not for a photo opportunity
but because the cupboard was empty

All hail to public hospitals
Which treat us at no cost at all
Come forth and heed the homage call
Give thanks and praise

Admire their shiny corridors
The wonder drugs in well-stocked stores
And colour-coded wings and floors
And curtained bays

Where patients' injuries are healed
By specialists in every field
Equipment-laden trolleys wheeled
In urgency

Pick up the leaflet
pick up a pen
Rate on a scale of nil to ten
how broken is your heart
how much your life is rent apart
Rate your mental state
Is it three or six or eight?

Rate on a scale of nil to ten
Where nil is
I don't give a toss about them'
And ten is
'I'll never feel intact again'

They sleep in mansions instead of tents
They never scale the perimeter fence
There's high-class bogs for the ladies and gents

Only the rich elite may come
Get orf their land, you common scum
Tarquin's squiffy on a shot of rum

So tell us a true-blue campfire story
It's better than bloody Jackanory
The tales that are told of GlastonTory

Jacob Rees Mogg, oh Jacob Rees Mogg
Rose from the bowels of a foul, toxic bog
And stared with intent through a poisonous fog
Searching for public estate he could flog
An accountant who scribes in a three-column log

Janine performs 'That's a Tory' at Well Spoken! Doncaster on 11 May 2017.

Molly choked
​On her voddy and coke
When Pat told her the Tories' intention
To unlock her pension
Not to mention
Their plans for social care
Grow old if you dare
Mrs May says
It's her lucky day
Molly can die in her own home
But as soon as she's cold
Her home will be sold
To pay off the loan
To cover the bill
She racked up being ill
Sod that

(To the tune of Dean Martin's That's Amore)

There's a knock at the door
Then a snort, a guffaw
- That's a Tory
With a suit, blue rosette
And a snarl, you can bet
- That's a Tory
When they hurt the disabled
Say they're strong and they're stable
- Some story!
When they tell you to blame the distressed and the lame
- That's a Tory!

Today’s headline is that the Cancer Drugs Fund, which was announced by the Tories in 2010 and ran until 2016, was a ‘huge waste of money’. The Annals of Oncology journal has published a study led by Professor Richard Sullivan of King’s College London, who also described the Fund as a ‘major policy error’.

The Conservatives thought they could pick up a few votes in 2010 by promising to fund expensive cancer drugs that the NHS was not funding, and the CDF was the result. It funded cancer patients to receive medications which had not yet been approved by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Launched in 2011 with a budget of £200 million, the Fund was supposed to be a stopgap while alternatives were developed, and was initially scheduled to run until 2014. However, the government did not pursue its alternative policy, the ominous-sounding Value-Based Pricing, and instead extended the CDF until 2016, by which time it had been denounced by the Cancer Taskforce and the National Audit Office as unsustainable, and some doctors - including Richard Sullivan - were calling it an ‘unethical fix’ and a ‘waste of public money’. Still the Conservatives promised in their 2015 election manifesto that ‘We will continue to invest in our lifesaving Cancer Drugs Fund’ and issued the poster pictured, only to scrap the CDF a year later, absorbing it into NICE.