The Cuts: A poem

(With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe)

Let's look forward to the cuts
Spending cuts!
And celebrate a government that's finally got the guts
How we feel all a-quiver
With the sweet anticipation
Of what Osborne will deliver
Just to make the unions shiver
And repair a shattered nation.
Swing the axe, axe, axe
Chop the budget, don't raise tax
As the serried ranks of Labour join in choruses of tuts
At the cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts
Cuts, cuts, cuts
At the painful but most necessary cuts

Let us welcome in the cuts,
Costly cuts!
For we must receive our medicine, ignoring ifs and buts
With the country on the brink
Only fools would turn or shrink
From the measures, hard to bear.
Yet they're right -
And yes, of course, we care
And we recognise some people will despair -
Just hold tight
As the Guardian erupts
With a gush of muddle-headed, bleeding-hearted tosh.
Polly's nuts
And Seumas Milne a putz
Their analysis won't wash
They are stuck in dated ruts
With their silly opposition to the cuts
To the cuts, cuts, cuts
To the cuts cuts cuts cuts
Cuts cuts cuts
With their whinging at the swingeing spending cuts!


Feel the sharpness of the cuts,
Longed-for cuts!
Listen as the controversy rapidly erupts
See the quangocrats take fright,
And forget to be polite
Almost horrified to speak
They can only shriek, shriek, shriek
Don't you dare!
In a clamorous appealing for their feather-bedded jobs
As they cast about for reasons why they must retain their jobs
And in terror of the dole
They will threaten and cajole
Warn that chaos will descend
If the state refrains to spend
If the Chancellor refuses to take care
With the cuts, cuts, cuts
How the word rips up their guts
With despair!
And we watch with exaltation
At the frenzied decimation
Of a hundred thousand civil service drones
Who spend all day on Twitter or the phones
Clear them out!
And a million welfare shirkers
Who sponge off honest workers -
All their illnesses are feigned
And their breeding unconstrained
And they're housed at our expense
Free of rent
Undeserving,
It's unnerving
How they always play the system
So rejoice as they fall victim
To the cuts
To the cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts,
Cuts, cuts, cuts
To the cleansing and catharsis of the cuts

Feel the fury of the cuts
Savage cuts!
Tremble every minute as a public service shuts
As the prisons overflow
Have to let the rapists go
Less police!
But at least we'll get those carriers
(A shame they won't have harriers
Or jets)
And it's better not to think about the foul and unplugged drains
Or the slow and rusting trains
Or the houses no-one's able to afford
Or the scientists who're forced to work abroad
By the cuts
In the schools
All the hungry kids will get wet when it rains
Yet we're all in this together
And we'll face the bitter weather
Take the strain,
Not complain
As we steadily get poor
Still we will not ask for more
Like those rowdy Greeks or French
They are fools.
Pay our debts!
Watch the government retrench
Though the bankers still get rich
Which is good
And we'll toil, toil, toil,
(Though we're running out of oil)
In the darkness of the night
When there's no electric light
And we'll have to work till eighty
Just for food
Now they've got us by the nuts.
Though the burden may be weighty
Still there's comfort for we know we need these cuts
And we'll cheer the Coalition
And enjoy the masochism
Of the cuts, cuts, cuts
The unprecedented cuts
The exquisite masochism of the savage spending cuts
Of the cuts cuts cuts cuts
Cuts cuts cuts
While we're moaning and we're groaning at the cuts.