The Angry Exile: This weeks "Thank fuck I left the UK" moment is brought to you in association with ContactPoint

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

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

Tuesday 26 August 2008

This weeks "Thank fuck I left the UK" moment is brought to you in association with ContactPoint

Today's Telegraph, or from where I'm sitting it might be yesterday's, reports on ContactPoint, yet another government database. They've really outdone themselves this time. Every child, yes every single person under 18, is going to be on the database. Everyone.

Why? Well apparently the tragic death of Victoria Climbie in 2000 prompted a certain amount of navel gazing on the part of HM Government which resulted in the realisation that the police and social services, among others, may just have fucked up a teensy bit. Clearly the solution had to be yet another fucking database. Not firing the incompetent twats who failed to notice that the poor kid was being physically abused, or who had noticed but did fuck all about it, and then making sure you don't have any other similarly incompetent twats or hire twats in the future. Nope. A database... that'll do the the trick! Oh sure, some people were disciplined and reprimanded, and a couple of people were even fired and banned from working with children (though the bans were later overturned on appeal). But that's by the by - what fucking good would a fucking database have fucking done when the fucking fucktards failed to fucking act on information they fucking already had? What fucking good will a database do now or in the future when nobody has the first fucking clue how many fucktards remain in similar positions and would fail to act on similar information? Is the database supposed to go round and kick in the door of an abusive parent and gather up the child in its protective electronic embrace? Obviously not going to happen, so to be of any use at all it's still reliant on imperfect human beings who may fuck up from time to time, and unless you've got people involved who might think that being hospitalised twice in one week was a cause for some investigation and to ask if any was being done instead of assuming that someone must be looking into it.

However, more worrying than a new database with no guarantee of improving things is the scope and potential for misuse. Let's remember that everyone under 18 is on it. Then let's look in detail and see that in fact it's not just everyone under 18 but everyone under 25.

The records will be updated until children turn 18 then kept in an archive for six years before being destroyed, meaning they can be accessed until a young person reaches 24.

Well, I make six years after an 18th birthday inclusive of 24 with destruction of the records presumably being on the eve of someone's 25th birthday, but I'm nitpicking. The point is that you can be a working, tax paying, shagging adult with kids of your own before you're off the bloody database. In fact you can be working, shagging, paying taxes and have a sprog of your own before you're even 18 and the bastard record keepers have stopped updating your own records.

And who has access to this database?

An estimated 330,000 people ...

Do fucking what?

An estimated 330,000 people will have access to the data stored on ContactPoint, which is due to launch this autumn despite fears the Government's poor record on data security will mean it puts children at risk from paedophiles.

330,000 people - including police, doctors, care workers, head teachers (what the fuck?) and council workers (WHAT THE FUCK???) - with access to this monstrosity? Fuck me ragged. And while I don't see pervs round every corner the point about data security and the government's piss poor track record is well made. Some Googling reveals that celebrity kiddies won't be on the database, nor will children of violent parents, presumably because of the risk to their safety if the secure database isn't quite as secure as everyone had thought. Er, hang on. Did I read that right? Children of violent parents? Aren't they the ones the database is supposed to protect in the first place? It's supposed to protect them by not including them on it? Did I say "WHAT THE FUCK???" already? Thought so.

However I'm more immediately concerned with why 330,000 people including police and council workers (sorry but I just have to say WHAT THE FUCK??? again) need access to it. What the fu... ok, you get the idea. But what are they planing to do with the information.

Little-noticed guidance published by the Government discloses that ContactPoint users can request administrators to give them archived data for a number of reasons, including "for the prevention or detection of crime" and "for the prosecution of offenders".
The disclosure has led civil liberties campaigners to warn the entire database will be open for investigators to trawl for evidence that links young people to crime or anti-social behaviour.

Ah. It looks like we have a case of RIPA-itis. Bring something in with benevolent sounding intentions that will please the tabloids and/or the Helen Lovejoys, and then start seeing what else you can do with it.

However, a bit more Googling lead me to the Children Act 2004 in which we read that there is to be a Children's ~~Commissar~~ Commissioner and that among other things the Commissioner is to be concerned with the views and interests of children and their physical and mental health and emotional well being. So if you're under 18 and mature enough to be concerned or offended that the government is keeping information about you on the ContactPoint database there is something you can do. Since the Commissioner is concerned with your views write to him and tell him that all this is adversely affecting your mental health and emotional well being, and tell him to shove the database up his arse a circuit board at a time.

UPDATE - Also mentioned in the Times.

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