The Angry Exile: That white fluffy stuff appearing over your eyes is wool

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

Sunday, 10 April 2011

That white fluffy stuff appearing over your eyes is wool

Still, nice try on the part of George Osbourne.

The Chancellor said he remained focused on reducing the UK's budget deficit, which stands at about £122bn this year, as he spoke at a meeting of European finance ministers and central bank governors in Hungary.
"I made it clear that unlike the Irish case the UK will not be making a bilateral loan to Portugal. British taxpayers' money will not be lent directly to Portugal," he said.

I hope everyone has spotted that the operative word Georgie Boy is using there is 'directly'. He has to say that because he know sdamn well that he has no ability, none whatsoever, to prevent British taxpayers' money going to Portugal indirectly as long as the UK hands over £9 billion a year to the European Union, the entity now hosing money at Portugal and whose income of course comes from the taxes of member states' citizens. £9 bn is about 7 or 8 per cent of your budget deficit there, George, and you're giving it to people who are in turn going to 'lend' about £90 bn to Portugal. Or to look at it another way, the money will go to Portugal over the next three years and Britain's EU contributions during that time will be getting close to £30 billion, or a third of the value of the loan.

But it's okay because George says that there will be no direct loan from Britain to Portugal. Any money that comes from the £30 billion that he'll have taken at gunpoint from British citizens and given to the EU is indirect and somehow doesn't count. And in a way I suppose it doesn't since once it's gone it's gone and it makes little practical difference where it ends up. Doesn't help the deficit much, let alone the actual nation debt, but presumably Georgie is hoping to save a few quid by ~~closing some tax avoidance loopholes~~ reducing the number of perfectly legal methods of minimising tax liabilities (with an exception clause for disHonourable Members of Parliament, natch).

New tax year, same old MPs. After Budget promises to tackle tax avoidance, Parliament is passing legislation to block several loopholes – but an obscure clause specifically exempts MPs from these new restrictions.
...

“HM Revenue & Customs says that this legislation is only there to stop ‘tax avoidance’. However, Section 554E(8) specifically exempts members of the House of Commons and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority from the new legislation in situations where they are actually caught by it.”

Do go read the whole thing, and if you were one of the 25 million or so who voted for the usual suspects last year I hope it's a wake up call - nothing significant has changed. Oh, about 150 troughers didn't bother to stand again and a bunch more lost their seats, a few of them are going to prison, Labour has gone into opposition, the Speaker was replaced even before the election, and Britain now has the LibConservial Dimotive Cobbleition running things, but all the same nothing significant has changed. Just look around. The government is still spending money it hasn't got at an ever accelerating rate (just accelerating less rapidly than under the snot munching madman), it's still intending to make current and, in the case of the national debt, future tax payers foot the bills, and both it and the political class from which it comes are conspiring to give themselves breaks and advantages so they can continue to avoid the pain they're going to inflict on the proles. I'm not even going to begin to cover the continuing nannying of almost every fucking thing imaginable or, in contrast to pre-election talk, the decidedly lukewarm attitude to personal liberty. There is, as I've said before, not three main parties but one with three wings, and with a few notable exceptions all three wings are composed entirely of cunts who can neither be trusted to look after your businesses, your welfare or your wallet.

So if you voted for the usual mob, especially if you did it to keep one of the 'other two' out and even more so if it was something along the lines of your parents always voted that way, I do hope you're thoroughly fucking proud of yourself now.* This time round you had any number of independents, micro parties, and mini-parties to choose from, UKIP being only the most well known and LPUK being the one that would bring you the most freedom, but 25 million of you still chose to vote for Labour, Conservatives or the inappropriately named Liberal Democrats.*

As the man in the mask put it, if you want to know who to blame you need only look in a mirror. In the meantime if the fact that George Osbourne is removing your opportunity to pay less tax at the same time as handing over more of it to the EU so they can give it to member states whose governments have been even more profligate than any of Britain's, I can recommend a cast iron strategy for legally avoiding UK tax entirely:

Just get the fuck out of there.

* The same applies if you voted for your parents' party's opponents. Fair enough if you were one of the fortunate few with a decent offering from the usual lot, and the same applies if there really wasn't any decent independent or minor party option and you were left with the choice of the least worst candidate or not voting at all. Personally I'd spoil the ballot paper first but in any case I'm not talking to you but to the vast numbers who voted for similarity in the expectation of change, often for very poor reasons that they really hadn't thought much about.