The Angry Exile: Normal service resumed.

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

Thursday 11 June 2009

Normal service resumed.

Same old story - same old Labour "saying same old Tories":

Gordon Brown accused the Tories of planning deep public service cuts after Andrew Lansley said most departments would have to slash budgets by 10 per cent.
Mr Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said "very powerful spending constraint" elsewhere would be required to allow a Conservative government to give real-terms increases to the NHS, schools and foreign aid.
It was for shadow chancellor George Osborne to set out where the axe would fall over the three years from 2011, he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, admitting it would be "very tough".
The Prime Minister seized on his comments as he battled Tory leader David Cameron at question time in the Commons - seeking to draw a clear General Election battle line over spending.
Calling on Mr Cameron to confirm the 10 per cent figure, he said: "Let us have a debate about the choice that really does exist in the country between a Conservative Party that now wants to cut, even at a time of recession, into our basic public services and a Labour Party that wants to invest in them."

Of course the Tories are going to cut services when they get in. You already know that Gordon, because you've already spunked away so much fucking money the Tories won't have any choice. More than ever it will make no difference whether the Tories or Labour are in power in a year's time because either will face the same problems and be forced into similar solutions. No money, increasingly worried creditors, huge national debt and so on. We should expect not Tory cuts in both "investment"* and taxes nor Labour tax and spend** but simultaneous cuts in services and increases in taxation regardless of what colour rosette the winner of the election wore. Sure, I suppose they could always print more money - it's worked out just fine in Zimbabwe after all. Or they could just borrow some. I mean some more. Oh, okay, I mean even more... assuming the country can still get credit because of it's fucking monster sized debt already.

Now the thing is that Gordon knows this, and Dave knows this, and Gordon knows that Dave knows and Dave knows that Gordon knows that Dave knows it. In fact we all fucking know it. So all that's happening here is that Gordon had a typically socialist Pavlovian response to a Tory suggesting that government departments would have to get by on less. The truth is that because of the mess they've got the country into Gordon and his badger faced sock puppet have begun to cut spending already. I can smell the hypocrisy from 10,000 miles away, and it's fucking revolting.

UPDATE: blogged more expertly at BoM - well worth a read.

* Investment in the political sense of course means the economic equivalent of hosing money onto a bonfire and hoping the sheer weight extinguishes the flames.
** Spending - see investment.