The Angry Exile: Depressing.

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, 12 April 2010

Depressing.

I came across one of those voting advice type webshites earlier today, and it's left me feeling throughly depressed. Vote Match 2010 is pretty easy to use, starting with a simple 'select country to begin' and then presenting 30 questions along the lines of 'do you support such and such' with the options of agree, disagree, open minded and skip. Okay, fair enough, but Jesus it's shallow. Question 1 - 'New prisons need to be built to ease over crowding'. Well, that rather depends, doesn't it? If nothing is done about the massive number of newly created crimes along with plenty of other activities that could be legalised (why the fuck are we still locking people up for a bit of puff?) then probably you do need to build more prisons, but if you're going to reduce the number of crimes then you immediately take the pressure off the prison system, right? So I chose 'disagree' in the expectation of getting a question about drug legalisation or repeal of some or all of NuLab's nu-laws. Unfortunately there wasn't one so I had to go back and skip it. Similarly number 5, 'The Bank of England should have overall responsibility for financial regulation', presupposes that there's a need for financial regulation beyond theft and fraud laws. Simply disagreeing could mean that I'm happy to leave it with the FSA, which I'm not. Same with 16, 'The cost of NHS administration should be cut by one third'. What if I think it should be 50%? What if I think the NHS should be abolished and broken up into a mix of private and local authority hospitals? I'd be disagreeing with the statement but not in a way that supports the status quo. No. 22 ' The number of MPs should be reduced by 10%' - again, if you think it should be reduced by much more than 10% you're disagreeing, but simply saying disagree is probably going to be taken as being happy with the current numbers. There are a few more along those lines but that's not as depressing as what came next. At the end of the 30 questions I was presented with a list of issues and asked to highlight the ones that matter most to me, followed by the ones that matter least.

Crime and justice
Defence and foriegn affairs
Economy
Education
Employment and equal opps
Environment
Health
Immigration and asylum
Parliamentary reform
Pensions and retirement
Soverignty and devolution
Tax

And since the most important issues for me are personal freedom and individual liberties, the ever increasing surveillance state, the also increasing influence of the nanny state and the gradual infantilisation of the population where the cunting fuck does that leave me? 'Parliamentary reform' and 'Crime and justice' are connected to those things that most concern me but it's pretty tenuous. The reality is that what's most important to me isn't there. Votematch clearly isn't catering for any libertarians, which is confirmed by the final screen where you select the parties with which you want your views compared. The choices are Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, Greens and BNP, and it recommends that you don't select any party that you would never consider voting for. Since all six have at least one deal breaker as far as I'm concerned I tried to select none and was informed that I had to choose three.

/facepalm.

Well fuck it, in for a penny, so I selected the lot. I wasn't too surprised that UKIP came out top for me, but the second place is hilariously inappropriate. The BNP? Really? I'd said let asylum seekers work, don't make them have ID cards, and don't deport people convicted of serious crimes (not really my views but the test is so superficial it was the least inaccurate option) and that makes the BNP marginally voteworthy for me? Behave.

Okay, I understand that such a quick and simple online quiz can't possibly be expected to cater for all the complexities and the presence of independents and very new 'micro' parties like LPUK, and in fairness they do say that it's not supposed to tell you who you should vote for as to get you thinking. But my real beef is that it doesn't seem designed to get anyone thinking about individual liberty who isn't already doing so. Perhaps too few people still give a shit about it to make it worth including in online politics quizzes, which is probably also why it's becoming a rare commodity in Britain. And that's why Votematch left me feeling depressed.

1 comment:

JuliaM said...: "Perhaps too few people still give a shit about it..."

Sadly, I suspect you've hit the nail squarely on the head there. Most people who bother to vote are going to fall into two camps; the enthusiastic (either for or against) and the vote-out-of-habit voter. The latter, I suspect, never change their vote.; 12 April 2010 at 16:07