The loose-tongued Prime Minister
claimed that capitalism and greed
made the vaccine succeed.
claimed that capitalism and greed
made the vaccine succeed.
Really?
I don’t remember
selecting my injection
from the many assembled
on a free-market stall.
Not at all.
And I don’t recall
thinking ‘that one looks nice’
and paying a price
set at the intersection
of demand and supply.
Not that one – too high.
I saw no greed in the eyes
of the hi-vi’d volunteers
with their cheery faces
who showed me the places to stand
and stewarded me through
from each frazzled hazard tape to the next.
They didn’t take cheques.
And I do not recall – at all –
the NHS staff who gave me the jab
fresh from the lab seeming greedy.
After all, if they were greedy
they wouldn’t be NHS staff, would they?
You’re having a laugh.
I remember the distress, the unholy mess
that capitalism and greed made
of the so-called NHS so-called Test and so-called Trace
When the race for the contract was run
and they’d won, they saw no need
to deliver the promised life-giver
now that their fees were guaranteed.
And to cap it all, to call all the facts in,
If vaccine capitalism is so
astounding in its greed
Why did it need more than a billion pounds
from the government envelope
to develop it?
The capitalist catechism of greed
Or the solidarity of meeting human need?
Cut the feed:
capitalism and greed
