The Angry Exile: What the hell's it got to do with you, George?

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, 16 June 2010

What the hell's it got to do with you, George?

I still haven't got round to blogging my thoughts on the new rule of The Twins, the Queen's Speech, blahblahblah, but I've said plenty of times before the election that the main British parties were as bad as each other and often stood for the same kind of illiberal shit, making it a bit like one party government but with a choice of which wing of the party you want to vote for. And just as I'm thinking that maybe things might turn out different this time I see something that make me think maybe not. Today's example comes courtesy of the Trancellor, George Osbourne, who thinks its now up to him personally whether you get a mortgage or not.

House buyers could be refused mortgages under new Bank of England powers to be unveiled by George Osborne.
The Chancellor will announce that he will hand a host of new controls to the Bank to prevent another financial crisis.
The powers will mean that, for the first time in the modern era, the Bank could impose restrictions on the amount banks can lend.

Of course thanks to Gordon Brown and his badger faced sock puppet buying a couple of banks for the current government to play with he can probably do that to an extent anyway. But who the fuck is he or the Bank of England to say how many mortgage loans a private company can supply? What the fuck's next? Is (googles the name of the Transport Minister) Phillip Hammond (who he? Any relation of the short one off Top Gear?) going to cap the numbers of cars built in British factories so as to reduce traffic jams? Fucking hell, why not copy China's One Child policy and take some of the pressure off the education system?

The Bank and its Governor, Mervyn King, would be able to prevent banks from lending too much, or to over-extended customers, if they judge that this would destabilise the economy.
The precise details of the controls the Bank is to be given will be detailed fully at a later date.
However, they are likely to include restrictions on the loan-to-value ratios offered to customers. For instance, families could be prevented from taking out a mortgage for anything more than 75 per cent of the value of their home.
The collapse of Northern Rock was widely attributed to its policy of lending customers up to 125 per cent of the value of their homes – despite the inability of many to repay the loans.

Yes, and apparently the 24 carat bellend controlling the nation's pursestrings doesn't understand any better than his predecessor that the best disincentive for other banks repeating that policy would have been to let Northern Rock go to the fucking wall. That's water under the bridge now, so the next best thing would have been to spell out very clearly that the safety net is gone for good and that any bank that over-lends in future is on its own. But Georgie-boy, with the instinctive reaction of every paternalist cunt born, has decided he knows best. He knows better than the bankers who are already reconsidering the decisions that got their fingers so badly burned. He knows enough not to cap mortgages but other lending too.

Mr Osborne's "toolkit" is also likely to include broader restrictions on lending to businesses.

Want to expand your business? Well, come into the Angry Bank PLC and talk to us about a loan. Unfortunately we have to run our decisions past the government now, and actually the whole industry has hit it's quota for loans, so I hope investment in your invention for turning dog shit into diamonds can wait till the next financial year so that... wait, please don't go. There's no need to get on that plane and take your wealth creating ideas abroad. Oh dear, never mind. Want to trade up to a larger house? Well, come into the Angry Bank PLC and talk to us about a mortgage. Unfortunately...

Oh, and I notice the same article says you're going back on your pledge to dismantle the FSA, that regulator of the supposed de-regulated market that we're to believe fucked everything up rather than the distortions twats like you lot introduced. I realise that deals had to be made in forming the coalition but all the same it just proves that it's not just Labour manifestos that aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Fuck you, George. Fuck you very much.

2 comments:

JuliaM said...: "He knows better than the bankers who are already reconsidering the decisions that got their fingers so badly burned."

As we saw when we dug into the US lending market crash, a lot of the bad decisions were mandated by government pressure to ensure 'fairness' and 'equality' for the urban underclass.

The banks wouldn't have granted them otherwise.; 17 June 2010 at 17:59
Angry Exile said...: Yep. In fact that was, as I understand it, the raison d'être for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac in the first place. That's a time bomb that's been ticking since the 1930s and rather than defuse the fucking thing some Presidents (I'm thinking of a certain cigar loving one) chose to pile a few gas bottles on top.; 17 June 2010 at 19:17