The Angry Exile: Passport Control 2 - We Know Where You Went Last Weekend

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

Sunday, 15 March 2009

Passport Control 2 - We Know Where You Went Last Weekend

Here's a happy thought for my weekend - anyone leaving the UK for any reason, by any means and for any length of time will have the details of their trip recorded and, and if you're British you can probably guess what's coming, stored on a database. All in the name of catching terrorists and criminals of course, but obviously the numbers of law abiding travellers who'll go on the system will outweigh those of terrorists and criminals by a factor of many millions to one (possibly much, much higher). It's a happy thought for me because I can avoid it by simply never going back. Bit of a shitter because I never intended to burn the bridges completely when I emigrated. I slag the place off a fair bit but it was the place I was born and naturally I feel fond of it despite choosing Australia as my home. And of course there are people back in the UK that I do care about very much and I always expected to see them again occasionally. But unless they're willing to meet up at a cafe in Calais this latest piece of IngSoc style large scale monitoring is going to scupper that, because I'm don't intend to play the games of the UK Border Agency. The only slight flaw in that plan is a vague worry that the people I'd be travelling half way around the planet to see may not be allowed to cross the 20 or so miles of water to France, but I suppose as long as they're good little drones who do what they're told they'll probably just have their trip put on the database. And if they're really lucky maybe it'll go no further as opposed to being lost because some twat left a disc on the fucking train or dropped a USB stick down the back of the seat in a taxi or however the useless bastards are choosing to mislay confidential information these days.

As well as being fucking intrusive and a worry if when data is lost, it's also going to be a pain in the arse in a practical sense:

The full extent of the impact of the government's "e-borders" scheme emerged amid warnings that passengers face increased congestion as air, rail and ferry companies introduce some of the changes over the Easter holidays.
The new checks are being introduced piecemeal by the UK Border Agency. By the end of the year 60 per cent of journeys made out of Britain will be affected with 95 per cent of people leaving the country being subject to the plans by the end 2010.

Air, rail and ferries. That's all the booze cruises to the French hypermarkets as well as the holiday makers and busniess travellers. And don't think this won't mean yachties too, because it will.

Yachtsmen, leisure boaters, trawlermen and private pilots will be given until 2014 to comply with the programme.
They will be expected to use the internet to send their details each time they leave the country and would face a fine of up to £5,000 should they fail to do so.
Similar penalties will be enforced on airlines, train and ship operators if they fail to provide details of every passenger to the UK Border Agency.

Once again, and typically of ~~IngSoc~~ New Labour, this is legislation that is largely reliant on the law abiding to comply with because they don't like to break the law. I can't see how they'd stop someone in a small RIB going in and out of some barely visited cove in the middle of the night, as some criminals no doubt do already. Think the threat of a five grand fine will make them drop the agency an email the day before so the details of their trip to bring in two hundred weight of coke and half a dozen pistols can be recorded on the database for the next ten years? Bollocks will they.

The big chuckle is that the article mentions that this scheme may not be legal under European law. If that turns out to be true I'm going to fucking hospitalize myself laughing. EU law! That the laws of one control obsessed bunch of bastards might screw up the designs of another control obsessed bunch of bastards would be fucking priceless.

This has helped me in one other way. I've been thinking about whether to renew my British passport at the not exactly bargain price of $268, which for comparison I reckon would buy me enough fuel to drive from Melbourne to Adelaide. Since I can use an Aussie passport to go anywhere other than the UK, which I think insists on a UK passport if you've got one, I can save the money. Fuck it, it's not like I'm going to get any closer than here now, is it?

H/T to the Penguin ranting here.

UPDATE: Wonder if this has anything to do with it. Sure, not exactly up there with the Kray twins and Al Qaeda, but then it's not exactly the first time laws would be used for trivial offences when they were brought in supposedly to deal with terrorists and organized crime?