The Angry Exile: Death cured.

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

Wednesday 23 June 2010

Death cured.

Well, more or less if certain figures are to be believed. I refer you to Velvet Glove, Iron Fist. Having seen the the claim that 40,000 deaths are due to junk food he's done what I've wondered about for ages and added up all the claims of the things that we like to do that supposedly kill us. Interesting reading.

I've wondered for some time what would happen if you added up all the 'preventable' deaths claimed in reports like this. I've never got round to doing a proper estimate but as a very rough, back-of-the-envelope calculation, here's what I've come up with...

As a starting pointing, there are about 490,000 deaths a year in England and Wales (ONS, 2008). Of these, 175,000 involve people aged 85 or over. It's surely pushing it to describe these deaths as 'preventable', so lets exclude them, leaving a total of 315,000.

Of those 315,000, there are some that even the most eager public healthist has yet to blame on lifestyle. For example:

Intentional self-harm: 8,000

Flu/pneumonia: 11,000

Accidents (including traffic accidents): 13,00

Alzheimers/Parkinson's/motor neuron disease: 7,000

There are many, many others but let's be ultra-conservative and just exclude these 39,000 deaths. That leaves us with a total of 276,000.

Now let's look at how many deaths are attributed to specific causes in the newspapers:

Junk food: 40,000

Smoking: 106,000

Alcohol: 40,000

Obesity: 30,000

Air pollution: 50,000

Medical accidents and errors: 40,000

= 306,000 deaths

In other words, we seem to have more deaths from the estimates than we have bodies in the graveyard. Even with the implicit, if ridiculous, assumption that every cancer and every heart attack is preventable, the figures don't add up (and we still haven't taken into account things like fires, assaults, drownings, murders and contagious diseases).

As a commenter over there pointed out we also have to make some allowance for deaths which have multiple causes, though I think using the term 'cause' implies something rather more definite and 'factor' is probably a better choice. Still, if the claims of the various bansturbators, killjoys and Strength-through-Joy types are to be taken seriously it looks like if only we'd put that bloody fag out, board up the pubs and burn down all the take-aways then dying would be a thing of the past.

Almost.

Any related deaths in the cleansing process will not count towards statistical purposes

Of course, the other way of looking at it is that they pull numbers of dead from [insert hated activity here] out of their arses whenever they need to top the last lot of terrifying headlines, but who'd seriously believe that?

Well, for starters anyone who remembers that these healthist bastards have form in making up the safe limits in the first place.

2 comments:

microdave said...: Was that picture of Obo taken before, or after his latest rant?

http://obotheclown.blogspot.com/2010/06/fucking-bbc-cunts.html; 23 June 2010 at 07:40
Angry Exile said...: Heh. Well, there's a bottle of whisky next to him. Is that a clue?; 23 June 2010 at 15:01