The Best Target Is One That Does Not Recognise That It Is A Target

I remember very well
where I was when I first heard
the deadly phrase, 'government target'.

I was in my local job centre,
a misnamed place if ever there was one.
It had just replaced The Labour Exchange
which of late had exchanged very little labour,

The target the government had in mind
was the statistics for the gainfully employed
and for those who's time was so unimportant
that they were left to make small amounts
of dole money work hard in their favour.

If the new statistics looked good
then how they looked proved
to anyone who asked about them
that the government was working hard
at keeping people in work
and work should keep employees
and all their dependants
in their place and out of poverty. 

Would that their theory worked, but it didn't,
no new employers offered lots of employees
miracle jobs, exhumed from nowhere, 
to take up the slack in a sagging economy.

The actual target the government wanted to hit
was what people believed about work.
The government wanted work to not pay,
and yet for it to appear to be seen to.

The government wanted people
to read the word 'target' as a noun
-where a target is something with an aim-
whilst among themselves they used it a verb
-where its purpose is to attack-
and what the government wanted to attack
hardest was any idea people had
that what they believed might be
in their government sights, for replacement.