Salted Caramels

Garthwaite, K. (2014) 'Fear of the brown envelope: exploring welfare reform with long-term sickness benefits recipients.'

Over 91,000 incapacitated claimants died between 2011 and 2014

 

 

The DWP –Department for War on the Poor –

Deploys a plethora of paper weapons on the unemployed,

Origami games galore down at jobcentrepluses these days,

Administrative harassment of claimants, “disrupt and upset”

Is the sport, managers cutting out cardboard sheriff badges

To pin on employees’ lapels who manage to hit their targets

Of sanctioning sundry jobseekers for missing post-dated

Appointments too prompt for the post –but there’s no

Excuse for poor clairvoyance among the “scrounging” classes,

It’s just another type of avoidance of work or looking

For work (even if most posts advertised are fictitious!),

Or taking up unpaid placements; there’s Customer

Compliance appointments elliptically phrased in

Sterile-looking letters that leave much space for doubt

And worry for recipients as to what to expect on turning

Up to ‘tape-recorded’ interviews – Piano wires?

Thumbscrews…? Nothing so three-dimensional,

For it’s a game of malignant origami the DWP plays,

It prefers paper weapons –O, ink can kill as well:

An average letter from this Department can work

A pretty lethal spell of unsympathetic magic,

Like black spots to Black Dogs! But of all the paper

Weapons deployed none can compare to the terror

Of brown envelopes, ubiquitous brown envelopes,

Lying in baiting wait on doormats of a morning

Like paper moths or flattened praying mantises

To greet indigents’ lockjawed yawning; and these

Brown envelopes can paralyse on sight, as soon as
Claimants spy them in hallways they get dreadful frights,

Muscles tighten, throats turn dry, hands go clammy,

Brows perspire, hearts start thumping, pulses racing –

Such symptoms these simple shapes inspire, mere