The Angry Exile: Drawing a line.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

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

Saturday, 11 December 2010

Drawing a line.

I've made no secret that I'm not the biggest fan of Chuckles FcKnuckles, his over priced biscuits, and his loopy beliefs, or that in principle I'm a republican (small "r"). I think the guy is an over-priviliged tool. But this is out of order:

Well done, protest drones and other useful idiots. You've brought out sympathy in me for a guy I have held in contempt probably for far longer than many of you. You stupid, stupid twats.

Comments (11)

Logging you in...

Dashboard | Edit profile | Logout

Logged in as

0 Vote up Vote down

@AmbushPredator · 746 weeks ago

My sentiments exactly!

+1 Vote up Vote down

@AmbushPredator · 746 weeks ago

Did rather love this 'CiF' column though:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/...

It's rather like the punchline to that joke '...but if you shag ONE sheep..!', where thecwords 'trash ONE Royal car..' have been substituted.

Comments are hilarious, too! ;)

1 reply · active 746 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 746 weeks ago

I've just been to read a few. Oh, good grief.

+1 Vote up Vote down

banned · 746 weeks ago

I have little doubt that the spooky people who decided on the cars route knew exactly where the protesters were, their mood and their methods. My view is that they deliberately sent Chas and Camilla into peril to garner anti-student sentiment in the event of harm coming to them.
1-1 draw I'd say.

5 replies · active 746 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 746 weeks ago

I normally go with Hanlon's Razor as often as Occam's. No need to go looking for conspiracy when plain old stupidity and incompetence is sufficient to explain so much of what is observed. In this case even that might be a little harsh on the protection people looking after His Royal Earness. He and his missus live in Clarence House, I believe? And reports say they it happened in Regent Street as they were going to the London Palladium. Drawing a line from Clarence House to the Palladium it's not easy to avoid Regent Street altogether without going a ridiculously long way out of the way, and I imagine with riots going on the protection team wouldn't want that because if you make the journey long enough then eventually you're bound to run into trouble. Could be that they were just unlucky yesterday.

+2 Vote up Vote down

AmbushPredator 59p · 746 weeks ago

I really can't see anyone putting the Royal Protection officers into a situation where they may well have to shoot someone - they know that, when the mask came off and it turned out to be someone's idiot son (I'm looking at YOU, David Gilmour!) just 'caught up in the moment', the headlines would be damning, no matter how righteous the shoot...

0 Vote up Vote down

Tom · 746 weeks ago

Indeed, stupid explains much (on both sides). The authorities, by now though must have quite extensive intelligence (SB / MI5 / Police specialist units) in place and after the Millbank debacle if I were in their shoes I'd be looking to tag at least the ring leaders and overly enthusiastic hangers on. If you forcefully break from the agreed route then expect some consequences and possibly to get your ass kicked by a bunch of burly coppers... Regent Street is well off route I don't know enough about events on the ground to offer an analysis but I suspect that inadequate mobile resources were in place to contain a breakout.

Back in Thatcher's miners strike they used tiered tactics to control the miners movements, ditto with travellers in the 80s - now they seem to be playing orchestrated confrontation and escalation coupled to perception management on an epic scale. The veiled threat of gunplay from the Met does nothing at all to depressurise the situation, quite the opposite.

Only now, ie later is the actual sequence of events becoming a bit clearer, and then only by comparing detail in different emotive reports.

Very handy though, PR wise a problem is an opportunity in disguise.

Mark Wallace http://www.crashbangwallace.com/2010/12/10/six-le...
does a fair job of nailing it and his Point 6 is one that I concur with. The Met have itchy trigger fingers.

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 746 weeks ago

Good points, though I'm going to play a little Devil's Advocate with one of them: the Met's veiled threat of gunplay. Couldn't it be argued that it's fairly common knowledge that wherever His Royal Whyness goes armed police officers whose primary duty it is to protect him go also? And if this is so could it not also be argued that any violent acts against him or his missus may result in guns being drawn and used, and that this ought to be foreseeable by any reasonably intelligent person? If the answers to both those questions are yes then either there's some truth in the old maxim that the intelligence of a mob is that of its least intelligent member divided by the number of people in it, or the level of thinking ability needed to get into university really has dropped like a fucking anchor. :D

Not that I'm defending the Met here as such, but that the Charles and Camilla incident didn't become another Tomlinson incident or de Menezes incident suggests either the force has learned some lessons or (perhaps more likely IMO ) the officers picked for Royal protection duty are better judges of when it's necessary to pull the trigger on someone than the anti-terrorist lot.

0 Vote up Vote down

Tom · 746 weeks ago

I suppose I should have expanded a bit more on the Met and guns. It has been my direct experience at the American Embassy that armed Met officers are breaking several firearms safety rules. Guns level and pointing towards members of the public with their fingers at the trigger I always thought was a no-no. Army acquaintances of mine have been quite scathing about UK plod and guns.

The MP5 armed nightclub bouncer swagger affected by several of them when dealing with people who were quietly and politely queuing in an orderly fashion got my back up too.

The contrast between the US Marines and these dangerous buffoons couldn't have been starker.

As other folk have said and it's worth repeating - the plods are swept up in the adrenaline rush of the disturbances just as much as the protesters and I suspect that it's only a matter of time before some berk pulls a trigger - on auto that'd probably be Stockwell * 10.

+1 Vote up Vote down

Bucko · 746 weeks ago

I didn't think my contempt for these protesters could get any worse, but that helps
My recent post Friday night Moose music

1 reply · active 746 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 746 weeks ago

Quite. It gives me a kind of cognitive dissonance where on the one hand I loath the politicians that the protestors oppose and have no time at all for the Prince of Fails, but on the other my piss boils mightily at the sight of thousands of whiny students claiming they have a right to have others relieved of their earnings by the State to pay for something the students expect to make money out of themselves in the long run.

Post a new comment

Comment as a Guest, or login:

Tweet this comment

Connected as (Logout)

Email (optional)

Not displayed publicly.

Submit Comment

Subscribe to

Add insightful or amusing remarks for me to think on and respond to. Or add annoying comment spam for me to waste time deleting, in which case may your genitals turn square and fester at the corners.

Unnecessary ranting and gratuitous profanity is strictly encouraged.

NB - due to some annoying pricks comment spamming lately all comments with three or more any links go into a moderation queue. If it's not spam I will publish all comments even tenuously related to whatever I was rambling about in the post. Otherwise please refer to the comments policy.

Comments by IntenseDebate