The Angry Exile: Think of a number and double it - was this how much you were speeding, sir?

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 24 March 2009

Think of a number and double it - was this how much you were speeding, sir?

How can someone be clocked at nearly 70 mph faster than they were actually going, and around 50 faster than the car is actually capable of, and still end up with a ban? Well, if you plead guilty to dangerous driving it does help the CPS a fair amount.

Judge Andrew Hamilton said: "May I make it absolutely clear that had you been driving at 150mph you would have been going immediately to prison.

Eh? Where did 150 come into it? 50 mph limit, driver admitted doing 105 mph in an Elise capable of reaching 127 mph, police speed measuring equipment recorded 173 mph, so.... 150 mph pulled out of your arse as an arbitrary level at which you'd be comfortable sending the guy to prison? Is there a special course judges go on to spout cockwaffle?

"However, you were not driving at 150mph, you were driving at 105mph, and for whatever reason the prosecution have accepted that basis of plea, and that puts the case in a different light."

So why fucking dribble on about 150 mph? Nurse! Nurse! He's out of bed again.

O'Reilly sold the Lotus to a buyer in Germany for about £9,000 a month after the offence was committed on the A515 between Buxton and Ashbourne on July 12.
Prosecuting, Rebecca Herbert said the car's new owner had written a letter to the Crown Prosecution Service to confirm that the car had not been modified "in any way"...
"It may be because our defendant is fortunate in the circumstances that the car has been moved very quickly from the country."

It may also be that you were extremely fucking lucky that the defendant was either daft or honest enough to put his hands up to a speed guaranteeing him a ban when the police's measuring equipment over estimated the speed by such a huge margin that reasonable doubt was a virtual certainty. Don't tell me that you'd have happily continued a case which rested on a device that said the car was going nearly 50% faster than Lotus made it capable of, because if you'd had to sell that to a jury.... well, in the past the CPS has dropped the case in these situations rather than admit that the a speed camera/radar/lidar got it wrong. I'm sure it would have been the same again.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not excusing a tool who drives at 105 mph in a 50 zone. It may well have been safe to drive above 50 mph (or not - the article doesn't describe the location or conditions so for all I know 30 could have been reckless), but I'd find 55 mph and still safe a bit hard to believe. But for the police to rock up to court with a speed reading that was off by such a massive margin is even harder to believe, yet clearly they did and it's not the first time drivers have been prosecuted for doing what turned out to be impossible speeds, Peter O'Flynn, James McGregor and Dale Lyle and probably others. So there's now four examples that I know of (not counting some here in Oz because the equipment might well be quite different), and it's only made the media because the recorded speeds were so wildly detached from reality that the drivers made a fight of it to a greater or lesser extent. Had it been the normal sort of speeding ticket, say high 30s in a 30 mph zone, many people would simply send the cheque and take the points because they'd genuinely have no clue whether they were speeding at that point (because the vast majority do speed from time to time, and generally with absolutely no harm done). And even if they were sure they weren't speeding and the police device was wrong, where do you go from there. Unlike murder, terrorism, rape, mugging, burglary and everything else we think of as crimes with speeding you are effectively guilty till proven innocent, not the other way round. The accusation of the machinery is treated as if it had the weight of proof and anyone arguing with it must be bale to provide something heavier still. Showing that the car can't actually do what it's alleged to have done seems to work, but what your options are if the equipment dreams up a speed your car can do I have no idea. As far as I can see you're fucked basically. So since these various speed measuring devices don't seem as reliable or accurate as the police and prosecutors would like us to think, failing to meet the giggle test in the case of the 406 mph Peugeot, isn't it about time the burden of proof was put back to where it's traditionally been, the policing of roads was given back to mobile patrols, and any of these devices with known iffy results (generally handheld it seems) chucked in the bin?