The Angry Exile: Twat (the Even Younger).

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, 9 May 2010

Twat (the Even Younger).

The latest example of voting fraud in the UK turns out to be some insufferable bell end of a 14 year old kid, Alfie McKenzie, who was sent a polling card after his 19 year old sister accidentally told a registrar that he was eligible, and was able to use it after his mother did nothing more than "told him not to vote" and because the staff at the polling station failed to query it.

"It was just too much of a temptation to resist," he said. "I'm a socialist, I'm really, really interested in politics. I'd been reading up on it a lot before the election, and I'd got very interested in tactical voting. Nobody asked me for ID or anything, I was literally in and out of the polling station in about 15 seconds.

Unbefuckinglievable. How did he manage to avoid being spotted?

"I was at the polling station by 10 past seven. I dressed really carefully, in my trenchcoat, with my glasses, and I was careful to wear my posh shoes. I put on a posh accent, sort of southern. I reckoned if they thought I was a Tory voter nobody would suspect me, because it couldn't have made any difference in this constituency."

So the kid dressed like, well, like a kid playing grown ups by the sounds of things, and he wasn't spotted. When it was busy later on that might seem fair enough but at ten past seven? Couldn't have been that busy because he was able to vote, go home to change and get himself to school on time. In fact he said he was in and out in seconds. Is this an indication that the staff at the polling station were less than with it or just another example of how turning up with the right paperwork is more important in modern Britain and people rarely think to check if everything looks in order? For fuck's sake, at least the Gestapo men thought to check up on Gordon Jackson by wishing him luck in English.

And Alfie's vote?

"I would be a Labour supporter, but I voted Lib Dem tactically: I would have been interested in a Lib-Lab coalition, but Clegg is in with Cameron right now, isn't he? I'm not really a Cameron man."

You're not a man at all yet, shit for brains, though you're clearly old enough to know that you shouldn't have voted because you fucking said so yourself.

'I realised I was breaking the law,' Alfie said. 'But I'm very passionate about politics, so when the polling card arrived by accident I felt I had a duty to use it.'

What a shame you're not as passionate about democracy. You might have seen your duty as reporting it - to the media if you wanted your fifteen minutes - before the fucking election so that the potential for fraud was highlighted well before polling day. I could also say the same thing about your parents, who seem to be too busy seeing the funny side of their country's electoral processes being fucking wide open to abuse.

You're in a safe Tory seat so your vote was insignificant as far as the result goes, but what it exposes is extremely significant as far as it shows yet more potential for electoral fraud. Ask yourself this, Alfie, passionate young socialist and dedicated non-thinker that you are: what would you be saying if a few thousand baby Tories in marginal labour areas had been able to do what you did?

H/T Bella Gerens.

3 comments:

BTS said...: '..his sister Georgie gave his name, along with hers and their parents, Nadine Wiseman and Darren McKenzie, to a woman who turned up at their front door with a clipboard. It was done in all innocence.'

The family has since had their home and all their possessions repossessed due to an alleged case of identity theft. The police are looking for a man with a clipboard who claimed to be from the bank. Apparently, he asked the young lady for her parents bank and credit card statements.

She also handed over their birth certificates, passports and National Insurance numbers when he said that 'the chap in the tax office next door heard I would be stopping by here and asked if I could pick them up to save him the journey? It's good for the economy and the environment, you know..'

'Her mother, Nadine Wiseman, is finding it hard to inflict a violent enough punishment for her daughter's behaviour. She said: "She's a fucking spastic – I let the bailiffs fuck her until she vomitted blood and in exchange they let us keep our barbecue set so that we really make her scream – there's never a dull moment with Georgie around."; 9 May 2010 at 11:27
JuliaM said...: "...or just another example of how turning up with the right paperwork is more important in modern Britain and people rarely think to check if everything looks in order?"

Got it in one.; 9 May 2010 at 15:50
Anonymous said...: BTS you sick mofo; 21 May 2010 at 00:23