The Angry Exile: You either love it or you hate it

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 27 May 2011

You either love it or you hate it

Not Marmite, though of course that's true and personally I despise it with it every fibre of my being - I've long since been assimilated by the Australian Borg (that's not a Collective - THIS is a Collective) into eating Vegemite anyway. No, I'm talking about the main stream media's tendency to print a load of misleading bollocks to beat up a non-story into something that they can fill half a page of dead tree with. You'd probably love it if you have paper and ink to sell, but I hate media beat ups. There should be plenty going on in the world for the MSM to print and get outraged about without having to resort to making something out of not a lot.

And so it turns out for Denmark's Marmite ban, which appears to be not really a ban at all according to The Grocer (I owe a H/T somewhere but I found this on a page I'd never been to before while Googling at random and going from links to links to links, and now can't remember where I spotted it). En bloc:

Danish authorities insist the country has not banned Marmite, contrary to UK press reports.

The famously divisive spread was reported to have been the victim of a ban on food products containing added vitamins.

But Danish regulators said retailers could sell fortified products if they gained approval from food marketing authorities. The retailer concerned had withdrawn Marmite from sale rather than submit an application, sources told The Grocer’s sister publication Food Manufacture.

“What happened in this case was that a local control officer in Aalborg informed the company selling the product that Marmite has added vitamins and the company should make an application for approval,” said Jens Therkel Jensen of the Danish Food & Veterinary Administration.

“So the company decided to stop selling the product.”

Are the Danes being ridiculously over-protective and nannying? Weeeeeeell, yes, yes of course they are. I mean, licensing foodstuffs? Yeah, I know almost every country does it but it's all so bloody unnecessary if you simply tell your citizens that they're wholly responsible for what they put in their mouths. As for getting all worried about a little extra vit B or folic acid or whatever, it's not like it's a secret. Look, Marmite could add polonium-210 to the bloody stuff as long as they said so on the label. Yes you can overdose on vitamins, especially if you're also eating vitamin supplement tablets like Smarties, but then that's what plastering RDAs all over the bottles of vitamins is for. Denmark isn't suggesting that - gasp - that actually doesn't do a lot of good, is it?

They'd certainly be acting like it if they felt that Danes needed even further protection from themselves in the shape of a ban on Marmite because of a few extra nutrients, but it seems like all they really want is for businesses to jump through some administrative hoops, no doubt with various fees for licences, approvals, permits or whatever. It's dumb, I'm not arguing that, but it's more an example of being so hidebound that both business and consumer choice ends up being restricted rather than one of insane nanny-statism. However, while the lamestream media (thanks Bill) are so happy to get their cocks in a knot over nannying that they see bans where there isn't really a ban as such they don't seem to be too bothered by a regulatory environment that makes selling a perfectly harmless (though revolting) product so much of a pain in the arse that the company simply gives up.

There might be a story in that somewhere, but what would I know?