I wrote this poem after realising 'light diet' is the new (presumably politically correct?) description for children who are sent back from the school medical room having been suffering the effects of not eating enough. I'm thinking of sending it to David Cameron.

‘Light Diet’

Shaky, pale children come back from the medical room where you sent them - because they were shaky and pale - with a note.
They pass it to you.
You look at it, confused.

‘Light diet?’
They shrug. They don’t understand what it means either. They’ve only just started learning English and even though they’re doing really well, this is beyond them.
And it’s beyond you.
‘Have you not had anything to eat?’
They shake their heads.
‘I’m OK!’

But they’re not OK and ‘light diet’ does not explain the emptiness in their eyes or the sadness in their stomach because their dad is earning minimum wage and they don’t have any more money and he’s been giving them two pounds a week for their lunch because that’s all he has.

Light diet makes it seem like a choice.

But they don’t have a choice. They don’t know what choice is because they’ve never really had one, and those who do have a choice...to change things, to make things better...don’t care. Because they’ve got food, got a job, got a house to call their own.

Number 10, Downing Street. A place these shaky, pale children have never been because they can’t even afford the bus fare to their own under-funded school.