The Angry Exile: Another one gets away with it.

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

Friday 30 October 2009

Another one gets away with it.

Tony ~~McNumpty~~ McNulty, a man so egregious that I once felt 'cunt' wasn't strong enough, gets to keep the money he raked off as well.

The former Home Office minister was criticised by a formal inquiry for allowing his parents to live rent free at taxpayers' expense and ordered to repay more than £13,000.
But the Parliamentary committee, who decide MPs' punishments ruled he should be allowed to keep the majority of the money claimed on the home. The official investigation said it was "reasonable" for the taxpayer to help fund Mr McNulty's parents' house as it was in his constituency and could be designated as his second home.
Yet Mr McNulty himself admitted he only stayed there for a maximum of 66 nights a year. He spent the rest of the time at the nearby £900,000 house he shares with his wife Christine Gilbert, the head of Ofsted.

If you've got a very expensive monitor for Christ's sake do not play this clip:

Oh, you just appeared to benefit did you, Tony? So can you explain in what sense you did not actually benefit by getting the taxpayer to cough up sixty large ones towards a house occupied by your parents?

The report, published by the Standards and Privileges committee, comes just weeks after Jacqui Smith, the former Home Secretary, was only mildly rebuked despite being found to have broken the rules by claiming more than £100,000 after designating her family's house as her "second home". It will lead to more questions about whether MPs should decide on punishments over expense claims made by their colleagues.

Fucking hell! After all the fuss, fury and fallout six months back is this going to be the pattern? Slaps on wrists, token repayments and weasel worded apologies? Is anyone actually going to be told to pay back the lot and, since returning all that he stole wouldn't get a burglar off scot free, are any of the bastards actually going to be punished for it? I wish I could believe it but it doesn't look likely. And we were told that some MPs were suicidal? I think maybe what someone thought were wails of despair were actually howls of laughter.

UPDATE: Elsewhere in The Telegraph:

The report from the Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges into Tony McNulty exemplifies everything that was rotten with the now-discredited system of parliamentary allowances. It also casts serious doubt on whether MPs have even begun to understand what it was about the system that caused such anger.
McNulty ... claimed the additional costs allowance (ACA) for a second home occupied by his parents in Harrow. Over a period of several years, he was paid around £72,000 to cover the costs of mortgage interest, council tax and other bills.
The question of whether Mr McNulty claimed taxpayers' money to subsidise his parents would be a matter for the police, if there were some grounds for suspicion of fraud. Yet the morality of his actions does not appear to have troubled the standards committee at all. Even though his parents were living in the house, the committee accepted that Mr McNulty stayed there occasionally, thereby legitimising his claim.

On a couple of occasions where work has taken me away from home I've stayed at my mum's rather than a hotel. Did I miss a trick there? Should I have sent my then employers a bill for mum's mortgage, utilities and council tax? Would the fact that they'd have taken little time to think about it before telling me to fuck off make me less of a cunt for trying it on?

However, the ACA was supposed to reimburse MPs for expenses "wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred when staying overnight away from their main UK residence... for the purpose of performing parliamentary duties". Since Mr McNulty chose to live just outside his constituency, it is hard to comprehend how John Lyon, the standards commissioner, managed to conclude it was "necessary" and "reasonable" for him to have a second home just a few miles away. Why did Mr McNulty not live in his constituency, and save the taxpayer £72,000?

Why did he not just flush himself down his own toilet and save us a lot more?

The committee also said that since he did not claim his full second-home "entitlement", there was no loss to the taxpayer. Oh, but there was. The expense of running a second home was incurred only because Mr McNulty did not live in his constituency, which is just a 30-minute train journey from Westminster. That was his decision; why should the rest of us pay for it and put a roof over his parents' heads as well? This point was lost on the committee, made up of MPs who presumably thought it unexceptionable.

I think there's has been a misunderstanding about the concept of a jury of one's peers: thieves should not have their fates decided by fellow thieves, and likewise MPs accused of exaggerated or fraudulent expenses claims sure as fuck shouldn't be able to rely on their honourable or otherwise friends in Parliament to smooth things over.