The Angry Exile: I'm feeling sorry for Nick Clegg.

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

Friday, 2 July 2010

I'm feeling sorry for Nick Clegg.

Pity the poor Younger Twin. It was a good idea, that Your Freedom website, even if it did go tits up almost immediately because it couldn't cope with the traffic. But it's real problem is that it relies on a democratic process where anyone can chuck in whatever thoughts are fizzing around their brain as a serious suggestion. In turn this means that there have been suggestions for the repeal of laws that don't actually exist, suggestions that are totally irrelevant and suggestions for new laws to be brought in instead of existing ones to be repealed, and more often than not these tend towards the illiberal. I read through a few and just shook my head with despair.

Under the section 'Restoring Civil Liberties' (and these are all copied and pasted with absolutely no adjustment on my part, just some bracketed comments here and there) we have such gems as:

Under the section 'Repealing Unneccesary Laws':

Re-nationalise the Railways
repeal the Abortion act (again - AE)
Introduce Caning for Minor Offences and Anti-Social Behaviour
Raise the drinking age to 21
Bring back Hard Labour for Prison Inmates
Tax Caravans
STRICT DOG LAWS NEEDED NOW
Capital punishment (he wants to bring it back, natch - AE)
Death Penalty (ditto)

Under the section 'Cutting business and third sector regulations':

Bring Life back to the High Street and Local Store (by capping numbers of out of town shopping centres, free High St parking etc - AE)
Death Pentalty (another one, but unusually this one seems to think it would help businesses - AE)
Automatic Copyright for 3D Products, Inventions etc. like Books etc. Patents cost too much (fucking cheapskate - AE)
Ban sub-contracting
Scrap RIPA’s (not clear if this is something about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act in the wrong place or what - AE)
Creating high streets for communities (by doing what exactly - AE)
Cut leisure facilities in prisons
Force supermarkets to charge for their car parks to help support high street shopping

I'm not saying it's all bad or even that I disagree with all of the above. Far from it, there are some great suggestions about liberalising gun ownership, scrapping the ridiculous and hopeless prohibition of drugs, repealing the smoking ban and so on, none of which is at all likely to happen and has attracted the all too predictable comments from hoplophobes, busybodies and anti-smoking zealots respectively. There are even some well intentioned ideas up there, though usually with no clear idea what piece of law that want repealed and/or stuffed in a section where it makes no sense and is going to get moderated out. But reading an awful lot of it is like being inside Paul Dacre's head. It says Freedom, right? It asks for laws to be scrapped and how civil liberties can be improved, and what happens? Along come thousands of fucknuts with lists of the things they want other people banned from doing. You could almost think that people tend to be narrow minded, prissy, bigoted nimbys or something. So you see, Cleggy, your idea for a democratic style approach to increasing liberty was nice, but flawed. Democracy really is the worst system apart from all the others. At worst the tyranny of the majority and at best a genteel form of mob rule.

If you're really serious, Nick, I suggest you tear down the law. Seriously, scrap every last law, rule, statute and regulation, the whole fucking lot to cease effect at, say, one second before midnight on a given day. And start again from scratch from 00:00 with the Zero Aggression Principle at it's heart. You ought to be able to get all the law an ordinary citizen will ever need to know on the back of a fag packet. The only question is whether you, Dave and your respective parties have the balls to do it.

PS - On the other hand here and here are a couple of good suggestions:

5 comments:

Dick Puddlecote said...: Excellent post, AE.

"You could almost think that people tend to be narrow minded, prissy, bigoted nimbys or something"

The population has certainly been leaning that way for the past 5 years or so.; 2 July 2010 at 22:28
JuliaM said...: "Death Pentalty (another one, but unusually this one seems to think it would help businesses - AE)"

Businesses selling rope, I suppose..?; 3 July 2010 at 02:56
Angry Exile said...: DP, you sure it's just the last five?

Julia, could be, but then the anti-drug moralisers will probably object to the use of hemp. Seriously, what really worries me about the death penalty brigade is they invariably want it to apply to rapists. I haven't done a count of the cases of false rape accusations at yours but if these bozos had their way it's almost inevitable that some of those innocent blokes would have been judicially killed by the state. And I've got one recent one where cross contaminated DNA overruled a strong alibi and convicted a guy of a rape he didn't do. They'd probably have wanted to waste him without even taking him back to his cell.

Democracy, eh? Fucking love it [spits].; 3 July 2010 at 07:38
JuliaM said...: "Seriously, what really worries me about the death penalty brigade is they invariably want it to apply to rapists."

Not all of them! I certainly don't.

I wouldn't extend it to child abuse either. It should be reserved for deliberate murder, and ONLY deliberate murder.; 3 July 2010 at 14:59
Angry Exile said...: You know my feelings on that issue. The power of life and death in the hands of the state - ultimately the sitting PM, and there isn't one since abolition I'd have trusted with it - is not a good thing and fundamentally never will be. Even if you trusted all those PMs since Wilson could you be sure that the next one or the one after or the one after that wouldn't abuse it? And as I said, there was that bloke here who was wrongly convicted on the strength of cross contaminated DNA evidence... that could just as easily have happened in a murder case that hinged on DNA forensics.; 3 July 2010 at 16:21