Hating Tories

Boris Johnson nominates
the President of the United States

He says the Nobel Prize for Peace
should go to Donald Trump

But that joker has been played before
No satire in it any more

Irony died, doesn't he see?
when Kissinger won it in seventy-three

This poem was published on Poetry24 on 11 May 2018.

Sorry?
Is
Jeremy Hunt
for real?

Up to 270 dead is
the toll of that 'glitch'

That is
Hundreds of women gone
unscanned, untreated

Hundreds of women gone

That is
the toll of that 'glitch'
Up to 270 dead is 
for real.

Jeremy Hunt
is
sorry.

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.

Boris arms the Saudis
They use those arms to kill
He says if we don't arm them
Then other countries will

So when I next see Boris
His nuts will meet my knee
And if I get arrested
Then this will be my plea:

Oh officer, I claim my act
Was for the greater good
And if I hadn't done it
Some other fucker would