The Angry Exile: Comparing apples and oranges?

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

Monday 2 November 2009

Comparing apples and oranges?

No. This is way beyond apples and oranges and more like comparing apples and something like steel girders.

David Wilshire, the disgraced Conservative MP, has compared the treatment of politicians over their expense claims to the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany.

Wilshire has just moved beyond my ability to swear. How can I? What abusive names could possibly suit someone who feels that there is any comparison whatsoever between 6 million innocent Jews being murdered and 646 politicians being put under the microscope because a significant number have been caught feathering their nests at the expense of taxpayers?

Mr Wilshire, who was forced to resign after paying more than £100,000 in expenses to his own company, said the “witch hunt” against MPs “will undermine democracy”.
“Branding a whole group of people as undesirables led to Hitler’s gas chambers,” he added.

Oh really? Remind us, Wilshire, how many MPs have recently been murdered for no reason other than their occupation? That would be as many as..... er..... none, right? How many have been subject to medical experimentation against their will? Oh, fucking hell, that'd be none again. How many have been enslaved and sent to labour camps? Again, none whatsoever.

Let's also have a reminder exactly why Wilshire and other disgraced MPs are in the situation they are in: they were dishonest and venal and abusing their expenses to line their own pockets. In Wilshire's case expenses were paid to his own company and this lead to his being forced to stand down as an MP. Did taxpayers make you do that, Dave? Did your constituents in Spelthorne force you? Did anyone coerce you in any way? Again, the answer is no. You chose to set up that company. You chose to put expenses through it. You, David Wilshire, you and no one else. If you genuinely think that bears the remotest resemblance to the genocide of the 1940s you're either a bigger fool or an even more loathsome and repulsive, self-excusing, hypocritical, venal waste of oxygen than you first appear. Or possibly both. Personally I can't even imagine looking my Jewish neighbours in the face and telling them that a British MP thinks he and his kind losing their coveted positions of power and privilege is anything like the Shoah, much less being the bastard and putting it in writing to all constituents - oh, and to add injury to insult using taxpayer funded mail for it too.

Can any British politician sink lower than this? It'll take some doing but sadly I'm sure someone will have a go.

2 comments:

JuliaM said...: I'm just waiting for the censure from Call-Me-Dave. He'll have to.

Won't he?; 3 November 2009 at 00:56
Dick Puddlecote said...: Wilshire got it completely wrong ... it would appear that the preferred method of execution is likely to be piano wire. ;-); 3 November 2009 at 06:41