The Angry Exile: This weeks special offer.

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

Wednesday 20 August 2008

This weeks special offer.

The Telegraph talks money again, this time speculating that the MOD can't afford all the Eurofighter Typhoons it was committed to ordering and is looking to shift as many as half, possibly to the Saudis. The MOD's line at the moment is that all this is pure speculation but on the other hand Typhoon costs overran a fair bit and the damn things were late in service as well. Worth watching to see how many of the 144 aircraft the RAF actually end up with in say five years or so.

I'm not the first to say this but you have to wonder why the UK government insists on being so heavily involved in developing really big military systems. I'm no military expert and for all I know there are valid reasons for having your own designs of submarines, ships, aircraft, missiles, rifles and so on, and I can see that at least the UK has shipbuilding experience and has the expertise to build some things itself and that doing so provides jobs. But then look at all the cock ups. The SA80 rifle with all it's problems (according to a soldier I spoke to a year or so ago it's now a great rifle, but it took a while and a lot of money to make it so), wrong boots and body armour, ineffectively armoured vehicles deployed in someone else's war zone, Nimrod, the special version of the Chinook that can't fly unless conditions are just so, and of course the Typhoon. Surely some of these and more could have been ditched cheaply at an early stage and a proven off the shelf product bought instead. It's not as if it doesn't happen sometimes anyway - the Apache helcopter is a British built licensed version of the American original with probably just a few tweaks here and there, and the RAF has long used Sidewinder missiles, Chinooks, Hercules transport aircraft and now Globemasters as well. All designed by and in some case made by Uncle Sam. Say what you like about the Americans, they do give good death machine. So it seems to this ~~Angry~~ Stingy Exile that buying from abroad a bit more often might have saved time, money and maybe lives.

And on buying from abroad I was in the crowd at this year's Australian Formula One Grand Prix a few months back and watched the RAAF doing fly pasts in their (American) F18 Hornets. Impressive stuff, especially the low level pass with the landing gear and tail hook sticking out. Tail hook? Australia doesn't have any aircraft carriers. I suppose it's not like ordering a BMW and ticking the box marked "delete sunroof".

* I understand one problem with the SA80 has never been solved - you can't use it left handed. As a right handed person who shoots left handed for eye dominance reasons I thought this was fairly insignificant. I learned to shoot the other way round and thought it would be the same thing... until it was pointed out that clay pigeon shooters rarely need to fire round the corner of a building but soldiers in built up areas might have to, and for them it would be nice to have a gun that is easy to shoot round both left and right hand corners.