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| Safety first: the many hats of George Osborne. Composite: Rex/Getty via The Guardian, June 5, 2016. |
“Welfare for Osborne was just a bottomless pit of savings, and it didn’t really matter what the human consequences were, because focus groups had shown that the voters they wanted to appeal to were very anti-welfare . . . “ —Nick Clegg in a Guardian interview 2 Sept 2016.
“Like the Living Dead in a second-rate horror film, the premiership of Theresa May staggers on oblivious.” —Editorial in London Evening Standard edited by George Osborne, 31 August 2017.
Hard hat on head, photographers on hand,
He knew to whom this image most appeals.
Disabled? Jobless? A negligible band,
Their money useful, though, to grease his wheels.
Cold-bloodedly, the snake, now scotched, not killed,
Still slithers towards its overarching goal,
A prospect leaving half a nation chilled,
The pitiless George Osborne in control.
Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. His verse has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web venues such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Angle, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Light, Parody, Per Contra, TheNewVerse.News, The Rotary Dial and Snakeskin.