The Angry Exile: More name irony.

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 12 February 2010

More name irony.

Here.

A father who defended his family from drug-crazed thugs by wounding one with a Samurai sword has been cleared by a jury.
...
The blow almost sliced off the ear of Michael Severs, one of the thugs.

Severs? Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Lucky lad, though. He got his ear sown back on and the traditional non-custodial sentence despite threatening to rape and kill the family of David Fullard, the guy who hit him with the sword. Nice to see that the UK is still living up to its NuLabour ideal of being tough on crime and on the causes of crime by going after victims of crime who stood up to the bastards. Oh, that's unfair of me, isn't it? They're also pretending to be burglars as well (H/T Leg-iron).

/facepalm

If they end up having trouble wearing their designer sunnies properly due to being short handed in the ear department they'll have only themselves to blame.

The obvious point to be made here is that there is little downside for the criminal. The soft sentence is almost a dead cert these days, you'd have to be phenomenally unlucky to be caught anyway and the public aren't allowed to fight back. Ah but hang on, you say, there's all this stuff being talked about how David Cameroid is going to let householders fight back and didn't both David Fullard and Munir Hussain got let off, so it's going to be okay... isn't it?

No.

For one thing both Fullard and Hussain along with numerous others have been victims of crime that have then been victimised by the criminal justice system as well. What the criminals did was bad enough but they then endured trials for far more serious charges while the crims got the kid gloves - charges for actions that would never have occurred had the criminals involved not first initiated violence and the threat of violence against them. For another Munir Hussain's sentence was merely reduced to a non-custodial one - he's not been let off. For a third even if we could do what we liked in our homes, and I bet you that's not going to happen in the UK any time soon, we can't stay there. What do we do when we go out? As Leg-iron pointed out in his bit about the cops playing at being robbers burglary is in decline - so many of us have things that are both more valuable and much more portable on us when we're out than some cheapo consumer electronics at home. And as now the only option is to rely on the police being, as the cliché goes, only minutes away when it's seconds that count. Or at a push I suppose you could take photographs everywhere you go so the police follow you around all day, but it's hardly practical for everyone to do it.

The answer is obvious: recognise the right of people to defend the only lives they will ever have with whatever tool, device or weapon they choose (providing they can do so without harming innocent third parties). Leg-iron again (the rest is just as good):

I have no objection at all to Sikhs being allowed to carry a knife. Not a single objection to raise on the matter. I object most strongly to being told I can't carry one and it's not because the Sikhs can, but for the exact same reason they give for being allowed to. Their reasoning is that they have never stabbed anyone so can be trusted with a knife. I have never stabbed, or even threatened anyone with a knife. Millions of people in this country have never done so either. So why can't we be trusted with them?

Why not just ban anyone convicted of a violent offence from carrying a weapon? It doesn't have to be an offence involving a weapon. If someone is demonstrably of a violent character, ban them from having any kind of dangerous weapon and review it, say, every five years. Ah, but that would involve actual thinking on the part of the government and the judiciary and they can't be bothered with all that. Far easier to lump the trustworthy in with the few who really are nutters and then fine people for having something they've never troubled any one else with.

So I say let the Sikhs have their knives. Instead of shouting about 'them' being allowed to have them, shout about 'us' not being allowed. Don't get distracted.

The only thing I can add is to ask why just knives? Let me be clear that I don't want to carry a gun in public, okay? But I do want to be able to carry a gun in public, and more importantly I want my neighbours to be able to carry a gun in public as well. I want criminals paralysed not by 9mms in the spine (though if push comes to shove...) but by the uncertainty over which of their potential victims might be armed. A fifth of the population would probably be more than enough to ensure that criminals go back to house break ins, only having first made really, really really sure that nobody is home.

Until then our best means of defending ourselves might as well be this.