This is how it starts

'Austerity' - used by our current crop of particularly nasty politicians to justify their harmful ideology

Only following orders

ATOS assessor rubber-stamps another
triple-bypass case ‘fit for work’ –
sends them off to die
but ticks a box on
this week’s target-sheet –
who cares?
They probably don’t vote Tory anyway.

Benefits administrator
could turn a blind eye
to trivial claim-form imperfections
or the odd slop
of supposedly tell-tale emulsion
but does not –
homelessness beckons,
children hunger at school,
all for less in a week
than a politician’s breakfast bill
and the futile feeling
of a job done by the book.

Police Constable
could refuse to take
that homeless person’s bedding,
driving them out of sight
to freeze
and scab over
where the rich won’t have
their rose-quartz eyes
polluted by the poor,
but prefers to tug a helmeted forelock,
hold onto that maybe-promotion,
tenuous pension,
peer-acceptance,
while knowing it is wrong.

This is how it starts.