The Angry Exile: More government interference in your life.

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, 2 July 2009

More government interference in your life.

If you're running a credit card company you can stop fooling yourself - the government are going to tell you how to run it now.

Credit card firms will be told today to stop luring customers into higher borrowing as part of an overhaul of consumer rights. Lenders will be banned from raising credit limits without asking the customer first and ordered to stop sending unsolicited credit card cheques through the post.

They will also be banned from raising interest rates on existing debts and have to put repayments towards paying off the most expensive debt — rather than the cheapest as most now do. Minimum monthly payments will have to rise.

Oh, do fuck off. Look, when a credit card company raises someone's limit there's nothing stopping them from ringing the card company and telling them to fucking put it back or they'll pay the card off. There's nothing stopping them from ripping up unsolicited blank cheques either. Being unable to raise interest rates creates a bit more stability for the borrowers but is grossly unfair on the lender when the base rates are still liable to changes. The rest is simply interfering with how they choose to run their business, and again people can always go to the competition if they don't like it.

No doubt the feeling is that there are a lot of people with debts that are becoming unmanageable.

No, not them. Well, not just them anyway. There are a large number of people to whom banks, credit card companies and other lenders have loaned money in a very cavalier way, and because some of these people were either unlucky or had the self control of a four year old alone in a sweet shop many now owe significantly more than they can afford to pay back. This is certainly a problem, but it's a problem that came about because of the boom in easy credit created by the Sub-Prime Mentalist himself when he was Chancellor. He had no complaints about the debt people were running up while easy credit was helping to fund his lavish public spending, but now we're back to recession and the fear of repossessions, busy bailiffs and personal bankruptcies suddenly "something must be done".

Well I have an idea what could be done: nothing. Let the credit card companies and their customers sort it out themselves. Those who are struggling can come to repayment arrangements with most lenders and since a bankruptcy will often mean that not all the debt will be recovered there can be as much incentive for the lenders to try to avoid that as the borrowers. What that should mean is that only the very deepest in debt, which will usually (not always, I admit) be the most irresponsible borrowers, will become bankrupt, and both borrowers and lenders will take more care in the future. This is less likely to happen if the government interfere with artificial protection for borrowers because the risk vs reward balance is unnaturally tilted away from the risk side. The disincentive to get a credit card and spend like crazy is reduced when people think life in debt is easy than it really is. But perhaps that's what we should expect from governments when their own debt problems are solved by printing money now and fucking the taxpayer for it later.

Incidentally, The Times also had a link to a finance article listing Gordon Clown's ten biggest financial fuck ups, where they note that