The Angry Exile: Revision to tax freedom day.

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

Thursday 9 September 2010

Revision to tax freedom day.

Via roughly half the blogroll I see that thought is being given to changing the format of tax freedom day in the UK to "whenever HMRC see fit to give you any of the money you've worked for". I'm still a bit tied up with other things and anyway there's little I can add to comments of Bill Sticker, Bucko, Captain Ranty to name but a few. It beggars belief, it really does. A government agency fucks up in such a way that millions have underpaid tax and millions have overpaid tax, and their proposed solution is to have employers pay your wages directly to the tax orifice and trust them - which would be the same them who fucked up in the first place - to give you the amount of wages that they believe you are owed in a regular, timely fashion and, importantly, without fucking that up too. Oh, but surely it's the employers payroll departments who've been fucking it up, not HMRC? Well, partly, yes, but HMRC and by extension the government bear a lot of responsibility for making it so fucking complicated in the first place. Every year I was on PAYE my tax was either wrong or I was on an adjusted tax code because it was wrong the previous year, and this was despite my dealing with the tax orifice personally and relaying what passed for their advice to the payroll department. Didn't matter who I worked for or whether payroll was in house or contracted out to payroll company (and I doubt they'd be thrilled at the idea of the government effectively nationalising the payroll business and leaving them out of it), there were minor fuckups every other year. This continued until I became self employed, which I'd highly recommend incidentally (and incorporation, since if it's good enough for a weapons grade cock slot like Richard Murphy it's good enough for everyone), and started doing my own returns. Frankly the only downside is needing to keep good records and spend a day form filling once a year. Oh, and that if you leave the country, and even if you tell the tax orifice that you'd prefer to treat yourself to a cheese grater back massage than go back and give them any more of your money, the bastards will probably still send you a return if they have anything remotely resembling a valid address for where you're going.*

So bearing in mind that they are frequently so inept that even being on the other side of the fucking planet isn't far enough to escape their tendrils of incompetence, hands up who thinks it's a good idea to let them be paid all of your earnings from your employer and to trust them to pay you what you're owed?

Anyone?

No?

Gosh, there's a surprise. Okay then, hands up who thinks in the unlikely event they fuck up tax paid they'd either (a) notice, and if so (b) be in much of a rush to tell you about it? Without the full payslip details PAYE taxpayers get at the moment how would they know that HMRC isn't helping itself (probably not deliberately) to an extra few quid a week?

Anyone?

Still no?

Funny that.

* I only gave them mine because I knew the bastards owed me some NIC back, though to give them credit they tried their best to persuade me to keep paying it. I'm convinced the whole thing will have gone tits up long before I hit retirement age, or they'll have only kept it going by having raised the age to 104. I politely told them where they could put their NICs and asked for a cheque to be made out in dollars or a transfer to a UK account, didn't mind which. Predictably, what I got was a cheque in Sterling that cost me 20 bucks to pay in.