The Angry Exile: Some recommended reading and a brief update

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

Thursday, 12 May 2011

Some recommended reading and a brief update

Not a post as such - I'm still wrestling with making this place a little easier on the eye - but a link to an excellent piece on the nanny state at the Institute of Public Affairs, Australia. It's by an Aussie writer by the name of Chris Berg, who for small-staters and libertarians is probably the best reason to ever read The Sunday Age. His theme in the article is that the nanny state is bad for democracy, and while I've become fairly cynical about democracy I can't argue with the point Chris Berg is making when he says:

... dismissing individual responsibility has consequences. Once you've accepted that the government should not treat people as autonomous, all sorts of authoritarian policy results.

It's aimed at the Aussie nanny state of course, but it's just as applicable to any other country with a busy clique of nannies, Righteous and healthists. Go read the whole thing, and especially the bit about the worryingly authoritarian sounding Preventative Health Taskforce - you just know you've got something just like it by a different name where you live, don't you?

Oh, and an update on something I blogged a couple of weeks ago (which having just revisited I now realise came with a free broken link - oops, sorry). Remember the business of TomTom selling data collected from its customers satnavs to the Dutch rozzers so they could better plan where to set speed traps? Remember how this caused no small amount of embarrassment to the company and forced them to go into what the papers called "damage control"? Well, it turns out that they're planning on selling the data they gather on Australian TomToms as well.

TomTom Australia says it is planning to sell GPS data collected about its customers' journeys to road authorities and private companies even after it was forced to apologise when that same data was used by Dutch authorities to set speed traps.
[...]
[TomTom Australia's vice-president of marketing, Chris Kearney] said TomTom was hoping to offer the data - which includes journey times, speeds and routes taken - to Australian organisations like the RTA and VicRoads in the second half of this year, although nothing had been confirmed.

The RTA is New South Wales' Road and Traffic Authority and VicRoads is a similar body here in Victoria. In UK terms they're like a hybrid of the DVLA and the Highways Agency, but since they're also involved in issuing fines, including for speeding, it's a John Carpenter style hybrid which might look alright but you're not sure you can trust it.

He said he would have to examine ways of preventing them from using it to set speed traps.

I'd suggest you have a choice. If you want the money then just sell the data without any preconditions, which I'd bet TomTom is perfectly within its rights to do. If your customers aren't happy with the idea they'll find a way to let you know, probably involving buying someone else's brand. On the other hand if you genuinely don't want it used to plan speed traps then don't fucking sell it to them.