The Angry Exile: Government health warning: drinking alcohol pan cake you missed

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 29 January 2011

Government health warning: drinking alcohol pan cake you missed

Hot on the heels of wanting to ban a piece of motoring safety equipment because it causes a handful of deaths as well comes another recommendation to the federal government from its Nannying friends.

ALCOHOL manufacturers could be forced to put cigarette-style warnings on labels if the federal government adopts a recommendation in a food labelling review.

While self righteous pricks and NIMBYS all over might be tumescent with excitement at this news smokers will find this depressingly familiar. What's been done to them all began with health warnings on packets for those too stupid to work out that putting a roll of burning leafs into your mouth and breathing through it is not exactly natural and so might be less than wholesome. Some days I fucking despair for the human race, I really do.

The report from an expert panel chaired by former health minister Neal Blewett also backed a requirement that fast food stores provide nutritional information about products.

Neal Blewett, you may not be surprised to hear, was a member of the Australian Labor Party.

On alcohol, it recommended generic warnings on labels such as ''Alcohol can damage your health'' and ''Drinking to excess is a danger to yourself and those around you''.

As with warnings on tobacco way back when, this kind of thing is probably not news except to that small minority who move their lips when they try to read. Christ, the media have been parroting it for so long that warnings on labels are pretty much redundant from a point of view of informing drinkers, and there's a tacit admission of that too.

But the panel said such warnings were unlikely to be modify behaviour if used in isolation and could be justified only as part of a national campaign targeting the public health problems of alcohol.

And in there is the clue. Control is the goal and the health warnings are no more than hammering in the regulatory wedge a bit further.

VicHealth chief executive Todd Harper said health advisory messages were already required on alcohol labels in 43 countries. ''It's time Australia caught up with the rest of the world,'' he said.

Which is complete bollocks. As parents say to children, if the other kids all stick their hands in a fire would you do it? Would you, Todd? Okay, scaling things up, if a majority of countries flogged people for alcohol consumption would you want Australia to do it too? Besides, your maths is wrong. There are between 193 and 203 countries depending on how you choose to figure it, meaning that if 43 have alcohol health warnings Australia is currently one of the 150 who do not. Hardly catching up with the rest of the world when only a minority are doing it, is it?

Widely welcomed by health groups was a proposed system of ''multiple traffic light labelling'' giving red, amber or green lights for various nutrients such as fat and sugar.

Such a system should be voluntary, the panel found, but would become mandatory if manufacturers were making a particular health claim about their product, for example that it was high in calcium and good for bones.

Oh, God, not the fucking traffic lights again. And voluntary? As in this kind of voluntary?

Today’s consultation document will say brewers and distillers must publish health information on all bottles and cans of wine, beer and spirits.
The document will outline three options: that drinks firms voluntarily comply and print the warnings; that they be forced to do so by the Portman Group, the industry’s regulator; or that they will be forced to do so by law.
These are options? Like fuck are they. The industry may choose option 1 voluntarily, or the regulator will impose the terms of option 1 on them, or it will get the government to impose the terms of option 1 even more forcefully. This is fucking Mafia stuff: one way or another the choice is as false as offering any colour providing it's black. The whole consultation document exercise is just meaningless propaganda, a pretence at having a discussion over a policy that has already been decided upon.

That's the kind of voluntary that was being talked about in the UK last year.

Needless to say the drinks industry here, unlike their UK counterparts last February, aren't taking this lying down. Oh, no. They girded their loins and rolled up their sleeves in preparation to fight this tooth and na... oh.

... brewer Lion Nathan, which promised to ''voluntarily adopt consumer health messages that support responsible drinking choices, including during pregnancy''.

''Because we believe this is the right thing to do we will take these steps regardless of the pending government response to the report and the passage of enabling legislation,'' the company said in a statement.

Some days I fucking despair for the human race. Did I mention that?