The Angry Exile: A lesson unlearned

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

Friday, 6 May 2011

A lesson unlearned

Click for linky

There were claims that thousands of people could have been “disfranchised” because they were only given the option of voting in the referendum when they arrived to vote.
Sources close to the No to AV campaign said they were “certain” that staff at polling stations were not giving out ballot papers automatically in Rugby, East Staffordshire, Lichfield, Morecambe and Lancaster.
At least one formal complaint has been made to the Electoral Commission, the elections watchdog. One insider said: "This could mean that potentially thousands of people have been disfranchised."

Yes, it's probably not all that important because the No to AV vote was always likely to win anyway (I wouldn't mind eating those words within the next 24 hours but I don't expect to) but Jesus Christ on a soap box, didn't they fucking learn anything from the various cock ups last year? They said they would, didn't they? From that last link to The Independent on 7th May last year:

Jenny Watson, chairman of the Electoral Commission, promised a comprehensive review of the system after describing it as close to breaking point.

This would be the same Jenny Watson mentioned in today's Teletubbygraph, yes?

The referendum is be the biggest test for the Electoral Commission, and its chairman Jenny Watson, which was heavily criticised for failures on last year's general election night, when hundreds of voters were shut out as queues built up outside poorly-manned polling stations.

And it doesn't sound too much like the test has been passed with flying colours. The picture caption said that Jenny Whatthefuckson was being urged to intervene. Intervene? Bit bloody late for that, isn't it? And fuck me but this is the second successive election with significant problems being reported. They might not be her fault but they're certainly her responsibility, and if she's not up to the task of fixing it then far from intervening she should be showing her replacement where the coffee is and how the phone works.

A few days ago I mentioned a post over at Skepticlawyer's in which she defended, quite rightly I felt, the Australian voting system against the 'egregious misrepresentation' it's received in the British media during the AV campaign. In turn in the comments I had to defend Britain against the accusation that the mad (to Australians who are used to voting on Saturdays) choice of a Thursday as election day was the reason why polling stations ran out of ballot papers and/or time for people to vote in last year's election. Even if you add on, say, a million for those unable to vote to the 29.7 million votes cast it's still fewer than the 31 million and 33 million votes cast in the 97 and 92 general elections. Going back further 32.5 million voted in 1987, 30.6 million in 1983, and 31.2 million in 1979. You need to go back to the 1974 election to find a comparable turnout (29.2 million), but even then only the second election in October - the earlier one in February had over 2 million more votes cast.

That covers all the general elections that have taken place in my lifetime, including those in which I was too young to vote or even too young to stand upright, all of which took place on Thursday and none of which are noted for the problems that occurred in 2010. Nothing else has changed, I pointed out at SL's, yet the UK has become less able to run an election and apparently can't cope with numbers of voters that were managed perfectly well in the past. Well, that's not strictly true as the Electoral Commission itself only came along in 2001. Since then Britain has changed from being a nation able to run a pretty fair election with more than 33 million participants into one that I'd barely trust to sort out a blow job in a brothel, much less get exactly one voting paper per election, no more no less, to every eligible citizen who wants one.

Could it be anything to do with the expertise at the helm (from Wikipedia - links are theirs, bold is mine)?

Jenny Watson is the chair of the United Kingdom Electoral Commission.
A long term campaigner for women's rights, she had a 20+ year career in the not for profit sector. She started out at Liberty,^[1] and then political campaigners Charter88, before moving to Victim Support. She is a former Chair of the Fawcett Society, a not-for-profit organisation campaigning for equality between women and men.^[1]
Watson was the last chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission before the creation of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights,^[1] having been first appointed as a commissioner in 1999, and deputy chair from 2000. She was deputy chair of the Banking Code Standards Board, and of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management.^[1]
Watson is a director of Global Partners and Associates. She is a member of the Advertising Standards Authority's advertising advisory committee, and sits on the Council of the Women's Library at London Metropolitan University. She currently sits on the board of the Audit Commission, but her tenure will not be renewed.^[2] She is a trustee of the Charities Aid Foundation,^[3] a non-executive director of the Waste & Resources Action Programme, and a trustee of the Money Advice Trust.^[3]
Watson was appointed the second chair of the Electoral Commission in January 2009.^[1] She is paid £100,000 for a role which requires her to work three days a week.^[4] Watson remained chair of the electoral commission amidst criticism of her management of the United Kingdom general election, 2005, [sic - I think this should be 2010 - AE] when she defended herself on the grounds that the Electoral Commission had few powers over returning officers. Since then, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 has increased the Commission's authority with regard to referendums. She formally announced the results of the last referendum held in the UK, regarding Welsh devolution, "in both Englishand Welsh with perfect pronunciation."^[5]

Gosh, what a lot of different hats she wears, though I can't see one which relates to having successfully run anything in the real world. Perhaps that's just been missed, and perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps Jenny Watson is actually a brilliant organiser and the Electoral Commission is a pack of total numpties making the job of running the damn thing a poisoned chalice. Draw your own conclusions. Myself, I'd suggest nothing more than that Britain may need an election on how to run elections as much as it needs one on what voting system to use.

Oh, and in the unlikely event that the Yes to AV vote actually wins I'll be selling virtual popcorn for everyone to munch on while waiting to see if there's a legal challenge.