The Angry Exile: Idiots.

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 24 November 2010

Idiots.

I'm sure there are some people happy with the Cobbleition over this:

BRITAIN said it would cut the number of non-EU migrants allowed to work in the country by a fifth to a maximum of 21,700 a year, as it seeks to radically slash immigration levels.

Home Secretary Theresa May also announced plans to tighten student and marriage visas, as the government seeks to cut migration from the current level of hundreds of thousands of arrivals a year, to tens of thousands.

Oh dear. Look, I'm aware that I court some controversy by being in favour of open borders at least in principle, though I'm always careful to put a few conditions which I believe are absolutely essential prerequisites such as no taxpayer funded handouts, no free housing, no language assistance and no modification of the local culture. That's not an exhaustive list either, but you get the picture - the circumstances in which I'd support open borders are vanishingly unlikely under a government of any of the UK's main parties. All the same I'm still in favour of the ideal of free movement of money, goods, services and people, but even it's not even necessary to accept that much to see what a dumb idea a hard limit is. What do you do when your cap of 21,700 migrants is full halfway through the year? Tell applicants that they'll have to wait 'til the following year, perhaps. Okay, but it could be that among those number 21,701 and up is the world's most naturally gifted brain surgeon who suffered the misfortune of having been born in some war torn despotic shithole, and that they intended to leave the place and settle in Britain, dedicating their life and skills to the NHS. So what are they going to do when they hear, "Sorry, come back in six months?" They're probably going to go to another country rather than wait, and so Britain loses that talent maybe to here or New Zealand or Canada or whatever country is smart enough to welcome skilled migrants without shutting the door when an arbitrary number is reached. Doesn't even need to be a brain surgeon. It could be the stereotypical corner shop entrepreneur - doesn't matter as long as they're putting in. Why the fuck would any country want to limit the number of people who want to come in and work and contribute? Frankly it makes little more sense than NuLab's long term policy of inviting in every fucker who knows to get off the plane holding a hand out, palm up.

And on the subject of NuLab, or UnNuLab or whatever we're going to call them now, they're not to be out-fuckwitted by a bunch of Tories and LibDems. Oh, no.

As he embarks on a review of the party Mr Miliband, labelled Red Ed during the leadership campaign, warned his party not to expect, what he described as a quiet life.
In an indication of the tax policy he wants Labour to pursue, he said the 50p top rate of income tax for people earning more than £150,000 should be permanent.

Even dafter than Teresa May and the Cobbleition, and showing no greater understanding of the idea that people are free to move. Keeping out people who want to come in is hard but it's not a patch on keeping in people who've had enough and want to get out, and the more monied someone is the easier it is for them to leave one country for another. Either Red Ed is too thick to realise this and too ignorant of recent history to know that lower taxes increased revenue for Nigel Lawson, or he's simply a Laffer Curve Denialist who assumes that you can tax people to the point they simply stop working and still somehow get tax off them.

And this is precisely the kind of thing that keeps me opposed to both parties (I'm counting the Cobbleition as one party for the time being, though I sometimes count all of them as a single party with three wings). In their separate ways they're both equally committed not just to the big state and further loss of liberty but to continued stupidity as well. Dimmer leaders for a dumber Britain.

'Kinell.