The Angry Exile: Helping the victims of crime.

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

Sunday 3 January 2010

Helping the victims of crime.

Great idea, make the offender pay money toward the victim. But what if there isn't a victim as such? What if we're talking about things like speeding, the prototypical victimless crime?*

Motoring fines to rise by £15 for Victim's Surcharge.

Yes, this cuntish idea raising it's boot ugly head again. As I said last May:

The point here is a very simple one - what fucking victims? Speeding may be annoying, it may be antisocial, and it can be intimidating. But it's overwhelmingly a victimless crime. Cue outrage from the Helen Lovejoys... why won't you think of the children Angry Exile, you fucking bastard. Well, actually I am. Speeding, despite what many governments (the UK, Australian Commonwealth and Victorian state governments among others) like to say, is not a big killer. Driving like a fucktard is the real problem, and since many people who drive like fucktards also exceed the speed limit we have simplistic policies from simpleton governments to try to achieve road safety by tackling speeding because they haven't a clue how to tackle fucktardishness. And if we're truly thinking of the chiiildren we really must concentrate efforts on the fucktards regardless of what speed they're doing. Here in Victoria we're fast (no pun intended) approaching the point where almost any example of fucktard driving below the speed limit goes unpunished unless it happens right under the nose of a cop with nothing better to do, and since they're often looking for speeding they do have something "better" to do (I'd just argue that it's only better for a given value of "doing any good at all"). Conversely regularly exceeding the speed limit is likely to get you a pretty hefty fine sooner or later even in the complete absence of fucktardary. And the UK was getting much the same way when I left it although a £60 fine, even £75 if Jack Straw's proposal goes through, is pretty light compared to here. But what really winds me up about the UK idea is that even though it'd still be cheaper to commit the victimless crime of speeding there it fucks me off that a victim surcharge could be levied where no victim exists.

It occurs to me now that I was wrong about one thing there: there is a victim, actually. Oh yes, even if no-one is hurt, even if no-one is even inconvenienced and no crash occurs, even if no-one even sees it take place and the incident is noted only by cameras and computers there is still a victim. It is the poor, poor state that has been made a victim of crime, because its orders and decrees have not been obeyed. Hmmm, that kind of rings a bell.

The Fall of Man, or simply "the Fall," in Christian doctrine refers to the transition of the first humans from a state of innocent obedience to God, to a state of guilty disobedience to God.

Obviously I'm not saying that governments are run by lunatics with god-complexes (well, not all...) or collectively think they have some kind of divine wisdom and therefore must be obeyed without question (again...). No, of course not. But they mostly fucking act like it.

Unfortunately with NuLab's track record on sneaky revenue raising it's a foregone conclusion that it will also be seen as a stealth tax, just as everyone said when Jack Straw suggested it last year. So let's get some genuine victims lined up to try to justify it, and so the Tele's sub heading is:

Fines for motoring offences such as speeding and having dirty windscreens are to rise by £15, under government plans to help victims of domestic violence or sexual assaults.

Yeah, right, who cares if they're not actual victims of offences to which the Surcharge is being applied but completely unrelated crimes? Well I suspect everyone forced to pay it will care, you bunch of self righteous, evil cunts. Partly because you've increased the penalty for a crime that doesn't actually have a victim by parading someone else's victim. Would you add ten years to a burglar's prison sentence because not all victims of crime see someone convicted for it, or because they were unable to sue the criminal for compensation whether they were caught and convicted or not? Of course you fucking wouldn't, so why the fuck do you think it's okay to do it to someone whose crime is basically disobedience and whose only victim - and it's severely fucking stretching the definition of victim - is the state itself? On top of that who the fuck thought it was remotely a good idea to imply that doing 80mph on a motorway is somehow close enough to committing a sexual assault that the driver should be forced to contribute to a rape victim's or a battered spouse's compensation fund? You cunts. You evil, lazy cunts. Tell the fucking police to go catch the real fucking criminals, the actual rapist, the violent partner, and bleed them for compensation. Don't go after someone whose only crime is that they neglected to obey your fucking diktats and combined being conveniently easy to catch with being reliably likely to pay up without a fight. And if you can't catch the real criminal or if you can't convict them or if they have no money don't think that gives you the right to turn around and go after someone with deeper pockets just because they lack the innocent obedience to the state that you demand of everyone.

As an aside I'd like to know why the state compensates victims of crime anyway. Does it compensate victims of lightning? I'm sure crime victims and the public in general would be more comfortable with the resources being used to catch the bastards, who could then at least be sued if they have anything. But if I'm a crime victim I don't want the fucking state committing another crime against someone else in my name, and as far as I'm concerned that's exactly what forcibly taking some of their money from them for some minor transgression that didn't affect me at all is. Like so many other things, including the Victims Surcharge, state supplied crime compo is their lazy alternative to actually tackling crime. Worse still, it's a crime in and of itself and completely fucking wrong, even if Harritwit Harmong has to pay it for her little collision.**

* Speeding in itself harms no-one. Seriously. It's an all X are Y but not all Y are X thing. Driving like a fuckwit certainly can harm people and fuckwits will often be speeding, but it's the fuckwittery that's the problem. The speeding is no more than a symptom, and a misleading one at that since fuckwits can be just as fuckwitted below the speed limit.
** I fucking loathe the woman but no injuries occurred, her insurance would cover the damage she caused if she hasn't/doesn't cough up for it herself, and the point remains that even with a genuine victim (of property damage) she should not be forced to pay towards compensation for a completely unrelated crime that didn't involve her at all.