The Angry Exile: Childcatcher

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Saturday, 16 August 2008

Childcatcher

From the Daily Telegraph -Profiles of 40,000 innocent children on DNA database.

Sorry? Was that innocent you said?

Meg Hillier, junior Home Office minister, said the database contained profiles of 39,095 children aged 10 to 17 who 'had not been convicted, cautioned, received a final warning/reprimand and had no charge pending against them'.

Yep, sounds like innocent to me. Grudgingly I have to give some credit to the Tories for bringing the issue up and for the LibDems for making waves as well. Let's not mince words here, it's a fucking disgrace that the government is happy to collect DNA records of innocent children - children - in this way. Yes, going by the law of averages some of them undoubtably will be complete shits, but remember they have not been... what was it again? Oh yeah:

'...not been convicted, cautioned, received a final warning/reprimand and had no charge pending against them.'

Thanks Meg Hillier, junior Home Office minister. Just who the fuck are you incidentally? Actually never mind, don't bother. It's not as if your chances of being in Parliament much less government for more than another couple of years are that flash, so you might as well keep it to yourself. For now I'll assume that you're one of the drones that senior ministers wheel out to regurgitate inconvenient answers to opposition MPs when they don't want the flak, ok? The fact that the DNA profiles of 40,000 children who haven't even been cautioned for any offense let alone been convicted in court have been kept by the state and it's not considered worthy of a cabinet member - picking someone at random, Jacqui Smith for example, since she's the bloody Home Secretary - responding is another fucking insult in itself, but I don't blame Meg for that.

Oh, but it's ok really:

A Home Office spokesman said...

Hang on, what happened to Meg? First 40,000 innocent people, children at that, on the DNA database isn't important enough for Jacqui Smith to comment on, and now Home Office junior minisdrone Meg Hillier has vanished to be replaced by an anonymous Home Office spokesman. Christ! Anyway...

A Home Office spokesman said: 'Inclusion on the DNA Database does not signify a criminal record and there is no personal cost or material disadvantage to the individual simply by being on it.'

Then there's no reason not to take them off either, you twat.

'The Government has no plans to introduce a universal database.'

Again, there's no reason to keep the records if that's true.

'The National DNA Database is a key intelligence tool which has revolutionised the way the police can protect the public through identifying offenders and securing more convictions. It provides critical investigative leads for police investigations, providing on average around 45,000 matches per year.'

Oh please do us a fucking favour. You're justifying this on the basis of annual convictions that are little more than the number of innocent people's details you're holding on the fucking thing? Oh, hang on a mo...

Anybody arrested for a serious offence can have their genetic data stored for life on the national DNA database - even if they are later cleared. The DNA profiles of 4.2 million people are on the database – an estimated one million of them are innocent.

So including adults that's the DNA profiles of a million or so innocent people, nearly a quarter of the database. And you reckon you're getting about 45,000 matches a year. I notice you don't say 45,000 extra convictions per year or 45,000 extra crimes solved per year. Just "matches". Is that 45,000 individual matches? One match to 45,000 crimes? What? We don't know because you're not telling us. All we do know is what you've condescendingly acknowledged: that your bastard bloody database has about a million innocent people on it, that nearly 40,000 are children, that the numbers are increasing, and that you expect us to think that you're not gradually building a universal database.

You utter utter bastards.

UPDATE: It's ironic that the number of DNA database matches claimed is the same as the number of people affected by the latest data security balls up. Honestly, if they're going to be authoritarian bastards they could at least try to be efficient authoritarian bastards.