The Angry Exile: Fuck Calais.

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 28 March 2010

Fuck Calais.

Just over five months ago I blogged that as a result of the Lisbon Constitreaty coming into force I now call Australia home.

Why? Because for all practical purposes the country in which I was born no longer exists and Australia is all I am left with. I was born English and British in the same sense than someone can be born a Londoner or a Lancastrian, or for that matter Norman or Bavarian or Tuscan, but England and the UK no longer exist because the Czechs have dropped their opposition to the EU Constitreaty:

Vaclav Klaus, the only European Union leader who has still not signed the document, said he could not wait for a British general election next year which could lead to a Tory government and a possible referendum to bury the Treaty.
Mr Klaus said: "The train carrying the treaty is going so fast and it's so far that it can't be stopped or returned, no matter how much some of us would want that."
Oh fuck it.

And that's desperately sad not just because in the back of my mind the UK was always there to return to if Australia didn't work out for me, but because millions of people who want to think of themselves as British, to say nothing of those French, Germans, Spanish, Italians etc. who feel love and pride and patriotism towards their respective countries, can just fucking forget it from now on. It may not look it yet but Britain is dead.

...

So the choice is made for me. Home is here in Oz by my own decision to move here, but it could have been the UK once again in the future. Not now though. I can never go to that home again because it's not really there anymore. It is an ex-country.

Once or twice before then I'd blogged on some outrageous Orwellian move on the part of Her Majesty's Repulsive Bunch of Self Serving, Nest Feathering, Deceitful Cunts and said that it made me want to go no closer than Calais, but as a result of the EU's ever closer integration we now have a good reason to steer clear of the whole fucking continent.

MILLIONS of Britons face being snooped on by a new European intelligence agency which has been handed frightening powers to pry into our lives.

Europol can access personal information on anyone – including their political opinions and sexual preferences – if it suspects, rightly or wrongly, that they may be involved in any “preparatory act” which could lead to criminal activity.

It is understood the agency will concentrate on anyone thought “xenophobic” or likely to commit a crime involving the environment, computers or motor vehicles.

This could include covert monitoring of people who deny the existence of climate change or speak out on controversial issues.

This is genuinely worrying and goes further than my most tinfoil hatted dreams. Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance, at whose blog I picked this up, says:

“It doesn’t surprise me that Europol has been handed these rather frightening powers,… We now live in a pan-European state so it was to be expected that it would have a federal police force with powers over us….There is a real danger that opposition to EU policies could make an individual liable to arrest…. For example, if Brussels adopts a hard-line stance on climate change, it’s conceivable that someone who broadcasts their scepticism of climate change may be accused of committing an environmental crime because they have undermined the EU’s efforts to save mankind.”

The Angry Exile says, 'Fuck Calais, it's somewhere in southern Norway now, possibly Switzerland if Mrs Exile wants chocolate.'

As with all these things the worry is not so much a government of today which is granting itself these powers with a kind of 'just in case' attitude, but the unknown governments of the future who may decide to abuse these powers for their own benefit. But even before that there is a worry for the here and now: 'mission creep' as the machinery of state, the various little cogs and wheels with their quotas of toothbrush moustached cunts in high-viz jackets whose empty lives are made more full by exercising these powers over the little people, will take it upon itself to use these powers more and more and for a wider range of situations than was ever envisaged.

And what have the 300+ million people in Europe got to protect them from this? The European Commission, the European Parliament, and the national parliaments that have already ceded power to the above, that's what.

They're fucked, aren't they? Welcome to Stasiland, Istanbul to the Atlantic Coast.