XLVIII

It is simply UNACCEPTABLE that those on benefits have more

Coming in than those who WORK (bark WORK!); to think,

Those feral urban foxes, feckless non-contributors and lounging

Scroungers finding it easier to keep Mr Wolf from the door

Than the Jemima Puddleduck working poor, who also

Have to wait longer than Johnny Foreigner fleeing some

Oily war, longer than the sponger, or sicko, for social housing

Or a Council House anchor –so now you know what to say to

Those Little Red Chiding Hoodies and Do-Gooders when they

Start bleating like lambs about the stigmatised poor! NO MORE!

(Shout NO MORE!). Now all those in social housing or council

Flats with one bedroom more than they need must be forced

To move out or face a cut in their Local Housing Allowance –

The new Herodic Law; and that also goes for disabled tenants

Swinging the lead with one spare bedroom used to store

Their equipment: they have the option to downsize their

Specially adapted domestic spaces, or downgrade their

Impairments, or find a smaller place out in the doughnut-

Churn of outer ghettos, or take in lodgers; these clearances

And closures of underoccupied spaces have to be done

To rehouse two million families in cramped accommodation…

Because this Government is ON THE SIDE of those who WORK

HARD and WANT TO GET ON, who SAVE and DO THE RIGHT

WING; as for any families harbouring rioters or drug addicts,

Out the door they go: no room in the Big Society for breakers

Of the law (under a certain income threshold, that is)! We’ll

Huff and we’ll puff and we’ll blow down your door! –and as for

The homeless, there’s no excuse, not in snow or downpour,

Never in a month of Sundays, or gone to the bottom of rotten stairs,

To squat in other peoples’ empty properties, drafty plaster

Portfolios of absentee landlords –now all squatters are outlaws,

Pariahs, prosecutable, to be sheltered at Her Majesty’s Pleasure –

Though not in her spare rooms, prolific under-occupancies

Honeycombing capacious palaces upholstered by her subjects’

Dutiful taxes, but in her unfurnished prisons –Wormwood Scrubs

Social Housing Ltd. With Compliments from the Windsors

(Only for those giro-gorging Saxe-Coburg Gothas, those

Tax-lactating dynasts, our nation’s ermined and Hessianed

Blue-blooded benefit claimants: exemption from the rug-pulling

“Spare-room subsidy” –because they’re our Royal Family,

Our most treasured and leisured burden –and, in any case, we

Could hardly slap a Palace Tax on them since, while they might

Be indisputably asset-rich, they are also cash poor, in spite

Of the Queen’s regal visage adorning all those banknotes);...