The Angry Exile: No more Nanny State? In our dreams.

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, 1 December 2010

No more Nanny State? In our dreams.

Not for the first time I'm experiencing the depressing feeling that NuLabour and its nasty, intrusive, bossy little ways never really left, and it's the fault of whoever was pulling the talk-cord on the Health ~~Secretary~~ Sockpuppet, Andrew Lansley, when he came out with this weapons grade cuntwaftery.

Click to article

For fuck's sake, this is Brownian level cognitive dissonance here. No more Nanny Statism but instead there will be nudges in the right direction, said direction decided by none other than the fucking Nanny State. And what kind of nudging are we going to see from BlueLabour's Health Sockpuppet? Well, let's have a look-see.

Government will be less 'intrusive' in people's lives and not tell them what to do, minsters said as they published the new public health white paper, Healthy Lives, Healthy People.
Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said Jamie Oliver's approach in schools had been a good example of encouraging healthier living but then had been taken too far with dictates laid down about what could and could not be in lunch boxes.

Okay so far apart from the bit about schools encouraging healthier living. Schools are there to fucking educate, and some people might feel they'd do so more effectively if they restricted their focus on health matters to not letting the kids eat anything from the chemistry lab's jars and sticking plasters on grazed knees.* Other than that not bad, but I have a feeling that it can't last. Oh, and sure enough (my bold)...

He said: "I think what Jamie Oliver did was brilliant but telling people what should be in lunch boxes all the time was a mistake. We want people to have changed their behaviour not just be told what their diet should be."

In other words what Jamie Oliver did wrong wasn't that he came across as a hectoring, nosey, self-important, nannying know-all but that he was ultimately unsuccessful in making the proles do what they're told.

Tactics will be switched from nannying and legislation to nudges and persuasion. This will include vouchers for healthy living, walk-to-school incentives.

Which is fucking nannying and will fucking require legislation, making the qualitative difference between Labour and Cobbleition as near to zero as makes no fucking difference.

“People’s health and wellbeing will be at the heart of everything local councils do..."

Oh, Christ. As if the government and councils weren't already overly concerned with the minutiae of citizens' lives, now we can look forward to even more. Some day a council will eventually employ gauleiter type solely to make sure everybody has had a shit today, probably known as a Constipation Avoidance Officer or Regularity Regulator.

Or a Bottom Inspector.

In addition there will be five Public Health Responsibility Deal networks, involving charities and industry on food, alcohol, physical activity, health at work and behaviour change, to formulate ideas.

Translation: five more fucking quangos associated with a bunch of fake charities and corporatist fuckbaskets lobbying government to nag the poor cunts paying for all of this to stop living how they want to and start living how they're told to. Fuck me dead, they're already well under way with elf'n'safety at work as well as the food and drink - and clearly Andrew fucking Lansley has no intention of putting a stop to it - and now they're going to start on physical activity and behaviour change. The first smacks of good old Kraft durch Freude, which is nasty enough, but the Orwellian sounding "behaviour change"? Am I the only one who finds that term just a bit fucking disturbing?

And this is all supposed to be a reduction, nay, an end to Nanny Statism? Do me a fucking lemon, will you. Look at what else we have coming out of the Health Sockpuppet's department lately:

Minimum prices on alcohol.
Increased tax on stronger beers.
Confectionary companies should fund anti-obesity campaigns.
Cigarettes and tobacco in plain packaging.
Smart cards for kids and readers on lampposts to prove they're walking to school. (H/T Raedwald for that one).

Jesus, if this is a retreat from nannying I'd hate to see what he'd consider an increase. Interfering in the decisions of individuals, interfering in how private companies run their business and encouraging council busybodies and prodnoses to take yet more interest in both, all on the taxpayer, natch. Well fuck you, Lansley, fuck you right in the lungs - this is nothing but bloody nannying, and if you can't see that you're a bigger bellend than is normal even for Westminster. Did I say cognitive dissonance earlier? I was wrong about that. Cognitive dissonance implies that someone is aware of the contradiction in what they say and in the positions they hold, and far from Lansley recognising that I suspect he honestly believes all of what he's said. There's a much better term for what Lansley is doing here.

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them...

Doublethink and other IngSoc-like habits were often characteristic of NuLabour ("Peace is War" and "Knowledge is Ignorance" both seem pretty apt examples of doublethink for the Blair and Brown years), and to find the new Health Sockpuppet at it as well just shows once again how similar the main parties have become. The policies themselves are not altogether a surprise because the Tories were always a bunch of paternalistic bastards who assumed they knew what was best for everyone, though no less unwelcome for all that, but Lansley's claim that this is somehow an end to the Nanny State is really pissing into the wound.

Bastards!

* Not that they're allowed to stick plasters on knees or teach chemistry anymore in case pupils might turn out to be allergic to plasters or have a fit from trying to remember Avogadro's number.