The Angry Exile: Another 'thank fuck I left the UK' moment, brought to you in association with the British Parliament.

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 May 2009

Another 'thank fuck I left the UK' moment, brought to you in association with the British Parliament.

It's fucked. It really is.

As I mention from time to time I didn't actually leave Britain to escape and in a way I feel kind of saddened that I don't get homesick. In fact, as I mentioned the day I started this blog, I felt a bit guilty for looking out of the window as Heathrow went backwards and downwards and thinking thank fuck for that. My wife wanted to be in Australia for lots of reasons, family among them, so that got me on the plane. But when it came to the actual leaving bit of leaving I just couldn't get worked up about waving good bye to the land of my birth in the same way that it was hard to say good bye to people that I care about. I'm fond of the place, I'd like to go back sometime and I certainly don't want to see it ruined - well, more ruined than the fuckwits in charge have already made it - but I just can't seem to generate any feeling resembling homesickness or regret. Mostly it was and still is thank fuck. And this evening it's thank fuck again because of Westminster blowing the opportunity to reform itself in the wake of the expenses scandal and put oversight back where it belongs - in the hands of the electorate. Instead it's to be moved one stage further away and put in the hands of a supposedly independent regulator.

Yes, it's the sort of stupid, pointless, undemocratic, wank of a solution that anyone with a brain would half expect Gordon Clown to come up with anyway, but what really adds a dash of shit to the swine flu infested ham sandwich is that both Cameron and Clegg agreed to this as well. So, just as with the EU, all main parties are agreed and the British people have no choice in the matter at all, though some say this is by design rather than ineptitude, and I can't think of anything to point to that says they're wrong other than Hanlon's razor. Open primaries, recalls, complete transparency of MPs' expenditure, any chance the House approves? Nah, we'll just have different rules with a different set of boundaries to be pushed and still no thought given to whether the money is a justifiable expense, just whether it's claimable. And this in turn is to be overseen by a different body independent of the House of Commons, which we can be quite confident won't be the Fees Office by another name and staffed with the same people plus assorted party placemen and cronies. Sure, that's sooooo unlikely to happen, isn't it? Bollocks. It's fucked of course, and between resigning Speakers, victorious Gurkhas, the ongoing economic issues and the naming of yet more troughing MPs* the media, with the odd exception, seems to have given no thought about it whatsoever. Did someone say parliamentarians are going to emerge from this even less accountable to the people who employ and fund the, than before... oooooh shiny shiny, what were we saying?

So in short, fucked. Whether irreparably and irredeemably fucked or just temporarily fucked remains to be seen and depends a lot on what the minor parties and which ones can make of it. Some (Greens, BNP) are just as bad or even worse than the fucktards running things now, others are worth a vote in European elections but I probably wouldn't support them when the general election is called, and neither they nor the LPUK, my likely first choice, really have a prayer of forming a government and achieving any real change. A seat or two maybe, and even then I only get that feeling in my more optimistic moments, and if this blog doesn't seem very optimistic it's because right now I'm not. The glass is half empty, and what's been left in it looks and smells suspiciously like piss.

It makes me want to weep, it really does. But more than that it makes me think thank fuck I got on that plane.

*Jim Sheridan, shit that he is for buying a big, fuck off plasma TV, a leather bed and a heap of furniture out of the taxpayers' pockets, marks himself to be so much worse:

Mr Sheridan yesterday said he would vote for a candidate to replace Mr Martin who would ban sketch writers from the Commons.

Yes, I'm sure you'd just love to turn off one more light so that it's a little easier for you to keep your expense claims and any other iffy behaviour in the dark. If you come down with fungal chopper rot it couldn't have happened to a more deserving shit munching freeloading bastard.