The Angry Exile: Crash landings

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

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Crash landings

I can barely bring myself to write on this lunacy.

Up to 100 student pilots will be told the news on Tuesday with some of them only a few hours away from becoming fully qualified to fly fighters, helicopters and transport aircraft.
The cuts will mean the waste of an estimated £300million already paid for training the pilots, plus the cost of redundancies. The training of RAF pilots can cost up to £4million a man.

And this is not the end of the problem.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, a former head of the RAF, warned that the cuts would leave the Air Force with a “black hole” of pilots in future years.
“If you don’t have a steady stream of youth, you will end up with a shortage of people,” he said.
Commander John Muxworthy, the chairman of the UK National Defence Association, said the defence cuts were now into the “seed corn” of the Services.

Which should be blindingly obvious to everyone.

Jim Murphy, the shadow defence secretary, said: “The harmful human impact of the Government’s defence plans is becoming clearer by the day."

True, but to be fair let's just remind ourselves which cunts spunked away all the money. Still, it must be said that it seems like an insane place to try to make savings. In terms of a sports team it would be like hanging on to everyone that has got maybe a season or two left plus the current crop of regular players, but abandoning all investment in young players and cutting loose the ones you have trained and made ready to replace those older ones soon to swap the sporting scrum for the media version. Like some American sports Aussie Rules football operates a draft system which gives the bottom placed club each year the first opportunity to pick young talent. Such is the focus on young players - and bear in mind that some may not play a senior game for a year or two - that clubs that have done particularly poorly are occasionally accused of doing it deliberately purely to get better draft picks. Such is the interest among supporters that the draft night is televised. It's understood by everyone that youth with potential literally determines a club's future ability to win, and while I don't claim any military expertise whatsoever I'd be astonished if what applies on the sports field doesn't also apply on the battlefield.

So what the fuck is Britain playing at binning these young pilots, pilots that will be needed rather than might be needed, if only to replace those older ones who leave? What's the plan, keep them on past the time their knees can't take the G's and sorties hold less appeal than SAGA cruises? And why is this happening at all when, as I keep saying, the UK isn't actually cutting expenditure? It certainly fucking needs to but this is pinching pennies when there are massive gold bars' worth of savings that could be made elsewhere, starting with Britain's £50 billion quangocracy that the Cobbleition's axe largely bounced clean off without leaving a mark. And this hurts, it really does. It hurts at a time when Britain is engaged in combat operations (needless or not, it's a fact), and will mean worse hurt in the future and beyond as you have fewer pilots both to fight if needed and to pass on knowledge to the next lot of young pilots. It certainly risks more than giving the Spanish Archer to some arts quangos and overcompensated town clerks calling themselves chief executives. Britain may end up with comical abilities as far as air power go but it'll proudly lead the world in twinning towns and conceptual bollocks art made, perhaps literally, from shit.

Anyone ever see Aliens? Do you remember the bit when the Colonial Marines are in the tunnels under the giant atmosphere processor? When someone notices that firing their rifles in there will damage the cooling systems for its nuclear power source, eventually causing a very, very large explosion? Remember the reaction of the Marines when they have to hand their magazines in and sling their rifles?