The Angry Exile: Smoked fishiness

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 29 May 2011

Smoked fishiness - UPDATED

En bloc from The Australian:

Australians back plain cigarette packs

MOST Australians support the introduction of plain cigarette packets, with only about a quarter opposing the plan, a new survey shows.

Commissioned by the Cancer Council, the Newspoll telephone survey of 1200 people found almost 59 per cent approved of the Federal Government's push for plain cigarette packaging.

Almost a quarter (24 per cent) of respondents disapproved of the measure.

Cancer Council spokeswoman Caroline Miller said plain cigarette packets were backed by the science and the public.

"From what we know now, there is no valid reason to oppose plain packaging," she said today.

"The evidence is there, the community support is there and the desperate campaign being waged by the tobacco industry is further indication that it should work."

Labor wants to introduce plain packaging for all cigarettes from mid-2012 but the Opposition is yet to declare whether it will support the move.

As is so often the case with these things the actual questions asked and the context they were in are not reported, and that rings alarm bells. Were there one or more leading questions? Were there restricted choices on Who knows, since what's actually been reported appears to have been taken pretty at face value from a Cancer Council PR embargoed until 00:01 on the 29th May (just over an hour ago here) and amusingly leaked here two days ago. The PR doesn't offer any hints as to what was asked either. There is currently nothing on the Cancer Council's website about the survey, and there is nothing on Newspoll's website either. The lack of openness and the difficulty in finding out what was actually asked along with the fact that the survey was commissioned by a body which is extremely partisan on the issue, oh, and also my personal experience of not having met one single person who thinks it's a good idea - not one - being the polar opposite of 'most Australians support plain packs' all makes me wonder how reliable this survey is. In short, I wonder if it's had the Yes, Prime Minister treatment.

Incidentally, the Cancer Council's PR had one of their mouthpieces actually say (my bold):

“... it’s very encouraging to see that plain packaging is supported by the community, as well as by the science.”

The "science"? Science as in a survey with undisclosed methodology and a tiny sample size? Or science as in "experimental studies where subjects have typically been presented with both branded and mocked‐up plain packs and asked about associations and preferences" (PDF - p11) since there is no actual empirical data on the effects of plain packaging, nobody having been mad enough to do it up 'til now? Obviously I realise that the point I've made on this blog over and over and over again - that all illegal drugs, including illegal tobacco, are already sold in plain packaging and with no branding even possible beyond "the stuff that Dave-o gets" or similar, and that the people in that trade have no difficulty in maintaining a market for their products or attracting new consumers - is not a scientific one, the word "science" having become a cheap whore for any self-righteous, authoritarian, bastard wowser who feels like deploying it as a magic word to win an argument.

No, the point that drugs or any other commodity for which there is a demand do not suffer from plain packaging is not scientific, and the way the word is sometimes used these days I feel proud that it is not scientific. It's fucking factual, which I consider to be a hell of a lot better.

UPDATE - an hour or so later and I've just realised something. Neither The Aussie nor any other news website I seen which has the press release cum propaganda piece dressed as a news story had comments enabled at the time I wrote this. Perhaps a large number of commenters would have opposed the plain packs plan giving doubt to the claims being made, and perhaps not. Make of it what you will.