The Angry Exile: There's a good idea buried in here.

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 21 October 2009

There's a good idea buried in here.

The idea of paying MPs even more than they get already in return for them stopping taking the piss on expenses is not going to be popular, especially not when it's associated with someone like Gordon Brown.

MPs are to be offered a pay rise to make up for a loss of income from expenses claims under plans drawn up by Gordon Brown to quell a growing back-bench rebellion.
The Prime Minister is desperate to avoid a Commons mutiny over next month’s report by Sir Christopher Kelly, which is expected to sweep away many of the MPs’ allowances.

So he's unable to control his own MPs, who in turn are unable to restrain their compulsion to feather their nests courtesy of the taxpayer's wallet. As has been pointed many time before in various blogs and articles there is no justification for a pay rise when every available job is being contested by at least half a dozen candidates from various parties, each of whom had to beat several other people just to be a candidate at all. All this crap we keep hearing about the money needing to be high enough to attract quality people into the job is complete bollocks - when there are at least a couple of dozen people after each and every job there is certainly no need to up the pay.

However, there was one thing mentioned that makes a lot of sense.

Under Mr Brown’s plan, any rise in an MP’s basic salary of £64,766 would be paid for by a reduction in ministers’ wages. Currently, 98 MPs serve as members of the Government, earning between £96,000 and £197,000. If they took a £20,000 pay cut, it would save almost £2 million and mean all 646 MPs could be paid around £3,000 more without further cost to the taxpayer.

Well, I already knew there were far more people in the government than necessary. Nearly 100 of the 356 Labour MPs are on the government payroll - more than a quarter. And all on salaries ranging from nearly 50% to more than triple the already handsome £64K they get as an MP. Reducing the difference might produce Ministers who are more inclined to act on principle than toe the Government line, which isn't a million miles off something suggested in The Plan. Still, the idea of MPs getting more money isn't going to fly very well post expenses scandal, and if Gordon thinks there'll be votes in it he's crazier than we all thought.

However, there is something close to a good idea in there. Why should the cost of Government keep going up and up and up just because the Prime Minister of the day can create more and more Ministerial positions? Half the time it seems like jobs for the boys, either the people who supported the PM in the contest to lead their party and who expect their backs to be scratched in return, or people who didn't and might become challengers in the future, or just plain old fashioned mates. So how about this for an idea: fix the cost of the executive's wage bill? Let's be generous and call it £10 million to start with, index linked (to the official inflation figure so that there's a disincentive to keep bullshitting about that). That can be 100 x £100,000 or 50 x £200,000 or 20 x £500,000 or whatever - they can sort it out themselves. If the PM needs to grease more palms with the salary and perks even better than that of 'ordinary' MPs that's fine, but since the pot gets no bigger everybody else's salary has to shrink. Give too many people nice Whitehall offices and they'd actually end up getting less than they would as an MP. The only downside I can think of is that you'd know that the cunts would rarely, if ever, use less than the £10 million, but I can't see an obvious way around that. Keeping who gets what in the public domain might tend to reward PMs who keep the bill down but before long I think the shites will revert to type and go for all they can get. Still, as imperfect as it is it's better than the way things are now. The bastards seem to like the idea of capping this, that and the other, so why not apply one to themselves?