I am, like everyone, currently deep into essay hell. However I just came across a really relevant poem in a copy of Celyn magazine while scouring it for inspiration.
It summarises frustrations about spending priorities pretty well. The fact that in the London governments latest budget defence spending is protected whilst education is not. Even the university have shares in arms companies, which Campaign Against the Arms Trade highlight year after year.
Anyway, im not a massive poetry fan but thought this was pretty fitting so here it goes.
Money for War by Herbert Williams - from Red Poets issue 15.
The patients are lined up on hospital trolleys,
They're waiting for ten hours or more.
But put down Iraq for another six billion,
They always find money for war.
The schools are a shambles, there aren't enough textbooks,
The damp's coming up through the floor.
But stack up the cluster bombs, target the missiles,
There's no end of money for war.
We can't pay the nurses half what they're asking.
They're stroppy? Then show them the door!
Just make sure there's a smile on the face of George Dubya
By giving him money for war.
The dentists go private. Our molars go rotten.
The trains are a joke. It's a bore.
But so long as the profiteers make a good killing
You'll find that there's money for war.
We know what the future holds. Pain and frustration.
No this and no that. It's the law.
And most certain of all is the truth beyond telling-
There'll always be money for war.
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I'm afraid I must disagree. Regardless of your view on the morality of arms trading/manufacturing, or the current theatres of conflict, we are at war, and most people who you would ask in the know would probably say there ISN'T money for war.
ReplyDeleteHow many reports have concluded British soldiers have had to fight without the right armour, vehicles or support aircraft. The reality is, I'm afraid, that war is a phenomenally expensive business, and this country and its government have undergone a decade of war without paying the cash for it, and as a result has paid in bodies...
I fully support the soldiers calls to be fully equiped and more to the point to recieve support after they leave service. It is a crime that in this day and age the government think their duty to soldiers, who have risked everything, ends after they leave the armed forces.
ReplyDeleteHowever think about the money that is being spent on renewing trident. We are sacraficing the education of a nation, amongst other things, for weapons of mass destruction that hopefully will never be used.
... in the event that they are used, our problems will be much bigger than the education system or the NHS. I really can't see the need for Trident, if it came to the point where we had to use it then we can safely assume that the world's gone to pot. Let's spend the money on Education now, so that we don't create a society of people who are more than willing to push the red button.
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