Warm Britannia
Nelly Giulien

A hundred thousand useless mouths and backs - A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift

Note on poem: The bodies of 15,500 miscarried and aborted babies were incinerated as general waste by twenty-seven NHS trusts in just the last two years, with Ipswich and Addenbrookes Hospitals using them for green fuel

The Third Reich was efficient, yet
in one regard they failed
to maximise resources and
it's we who've blazed a trail.

Though they couldn't be expected
to think, 'green energy',
staring them in the face they had
cheap electricity.

As bodies need disposing of
in number, you're well-placed
in prison camp or hospital
to optimise your waste.

A baby who's miscarried, dead
through choice, just born deceased,
need not contribute nothing, can
have some small use, at least.

Now given that such infant flesh
is meagre in amount,
the obvious development's
to roll the practice out.

The old and terminally ill
we dehydrate to death
could be much more productive once
they'd taken their last breath.

Asylum seekers we deport,
if killed won't be returned,
but those we've kept and given food,
once dead, could all be burned.

Disabled scroungers who decide
to kill themselves or die
because they're told they need to work
would be a good supply.

The skiving chavs self-fatten on
that free fried junk they eat.
Those calories transferred ought to
give off a lot of heat.

Hard workers are society.
You're human? You produce.
Though worth much less than taxpayers,
the dead can have a use.

A well-known poet writing under the pseudonym Nelly Giulien.

Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter.
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