The Angry Exile: Austerity - you're doing it wrong

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, 12 June 2011

Austerity - you're doing it wrong

Can someone please explain to me how the fuck it's possible for the Cobbleition to privatise the Royal Mail and lose ten billion quid in the deal? Ah, of course, it owes the government nearly two bill, plus...

Adding in the cost of taking over its £8.4 billion pension deficit, it means that the bill to the taxpayer of selling off Royal Mail could be more than £10 billion.

Er, when you sell a company don't the new owners take responsibility for its debts and any unfunded liabilities like that? Isn't that why we hear about companies who are in financial strife being taken over for nominal sums of a dollar or so? And if so, doesn't what this really mean is that the Royal Mail, for all its deserved pride in being usually able to deliver a letter from one end of the country to the other in 24 hours or so, is in actual fact financially buggered to the extent that it's so hideously unattractive as a going concern that the government thinks it needs to wipe the slate clean - with your money, natch - before anyone will even look at it?

[Ed Davy, postal services minister, said] “We intend to restructure the company's balance sheet in due course. In order to put Royal Mail on that sustainable commercial footing, we will need to reduce significantly that level of debt.”

Sounds like a 'yes' to me.

Mr Davey added that “we will need approval from the European Commission to provide this financial support”. The Government will submit a formal application to Brussels for the money over the next few days, he added.

Oh Christ, no. You 'have to' get approval from the unelected Politburo that is European Commission but there's no need to ask British citizens if they want their money spunked away (though perhaps it's best not to since vast numbers are unable to see that it's their money and have a vested interest in saying 'yes, keep spending'), and you're expecting to get some of 'their' money when they have no income but what they've persuaded member nations to give them from the proceeds of robbing their own citizens. £1.7 billion? When Britain forks over more than thirty times that to Europe each year, and has been paying out more than it gets year after year with little complaint from every government since I've been alive (yes, that includes the right's darling, Maggie Thatcher), that's a drop in the fucking ocean. Ask permission and beg for money? At the least they should be telling the EC that this is what's going to happen and this is how much is going to be withheld in order to pay for it. Better still it should tell the Commission to go piss up a rope, never give it a red cent ever again, and do whatever seems likely to cost least in the long run as regards the future of the Royal Mail. Sadly there's a better chance of second post deliveries being restored across the country than the Cobbleition growing a big enough set to defy its unelected European masters.

I know I keep on saying this but it really is like Labour never went away.