The Angry Exile: Victoria and Victorian attitudes

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, 2 June 2011

Victoria and Victorian attitudes

Apparently we're not allowed to swear in Victoria anymore. In fact it turns out that offensive language has been an, er, offence, since the sixties even if there isn't anyone around to hear it, but Victoria's wonderful new improved Liberal with a silent 'Il' government have decided it's a good idea to give the police powers to impose fines of $240 for

... using language deemed to be indecent, disorderly, offensive or threatening.

Deemed to be? Deemed? And who gets to decide that, because since it's an on-the-spot fine it sounds awfully like it'll be the cops. Currently that might not be a big deal since they're having a bit of a work to rule at the moment and are sufficiently annoyed with the government to flash their lights at drivers to warn them to slow down for speed traps, so I can imagine them choosing to turn a blind eye to someone's potty mouth, but that's not going to last beyond the time they get a pay deal sorted out or give up.

And what's the thinking behind this? Beyond the possibility that the Liberal In Name Only government of Victoria wants everyone in the state to sound like characters from a Jane Austen novel all the time. Believe it or not they think it'll give the police more time to for real police work.

Yes, they really said that.

The crackdown — which extends the Baillieu government's ever-growing law-and-order agenda — means police will be able to issue infringement notices for offensive behaviour and indecent language similar to parking and speeding fines.

Attorney-General Robert Clark said the idea was to lower the police workload by allowing them to issue fines instead of tackling bad language using the court system.

"It frees up police time for other law enforcement activities and enables them to more readily issue penalties against those offenders who deserve them," Mr Clark said.

While I can see a certain amount of sense in the idea of not getting cops to waste heaps of time on prosecuting a trivial swearing offence through the courts it's clearly not occurred to the AG or the government that with coarse language being so commonplace that even Prime Ministers have been known to swear live on air they could end up with police doing little but hand out swearing tickets all day long. Hardly freeing up police time for other law enforcement activities, is it? Look, Robert, if you really want the police out there doing high value police work the answer is not to encourage them to spend even more time go after the low hanging fruit of easy ~~crimes~~ offences committed by not-actual-criminals against non-existent victims, but instead to identify all the victimless crimes on the books

However, being a law abiding citizen I will be washing my mouth out from now on, which means a change to my usual blogging subjects. I will no longer blog on things that annoy me and induce me to apoplectic and sweary rage, so from this point on this will become a travel blog. I have two destinations to talk about today, one in Austria and one in the Orkneys, both of which I'd hope will meet with the approval of the Attorney General.

That okay, Rob?

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james higham · 721 weeks ago

Fucking hell.

1 reply · active 721 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 721 weeks ago

Please make your cheque payable to Victoria Police Pty Ltd.

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Pat Nurse · 721 weeks ago

swearing is a form of expression for some people who can't express themselves in other ways. A denial of the human right to express yourself is being taken from some people by law made by politicians who obviously have no brain. Are you sure Australia is not a fascist country? It scares the hell out of me.

Soon we won't be able to say "Boo" for fear of scaring someone half to death.

Demolition Man comes to mind : "You are fined 240 credits for violation of the morality code - be well..."

1 reply · active 721 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 721 weeks ago

A fair reply would go over ID's character limit. The short answer is yes, I'm quite sure it is not a fascist country, or is at the very least considerably less so than the UK. Despite all it's shortcomings I maintain that overall I am still more free here than I was in the UK, though not on a small number of very specific points and with the exception of the EU, the eye watering debt and the lousy weather Australia is probably only five to ten years behind on a lot of the shitty things that make Britain enough of a hellhole dump that my wife refused to stay there anymore. The worst aspect are the mini enabling acts that went through in Blair's time and give the UK government power to suspend just about any law it wants - that includes habeas corpus and the law that expects elections to be held every now and then. They didn't make me leave but they're sure as hell keeping me from returning. To my less than certain knowledge there is nothing like it in Australia and I'm not sure that such a thing is even possible without a referendum to change the Constitution. Seriously, Britain is covered in CCTV, has various state bodies happy to twist legislation to permit spying on citizens, has enacted some of the most egregious legislation since post Weimar Germany and has signed up to Bush's and now Obarmy's perpetual war - almost all that's missing to turn it into a real life V for Vendetta is the insane demagogue coming to power. Not here. Even if the insane demagogue turned up tomorrow the legal mechanisms needed to make the place the kind of fascist dictatorship Britain so nearly is already simply don't exist here.

That's not to say that Nannyism isn't nearly as rife here as it is in Britain (as someone who's experienced both Australia is still better unless Britain has improved a lot in the last five years or so - and of that I see no sign whatsoever and more evidence that it's got worse), but Nannyism is not the same thing as fascism even if it does sometimes have a similar effect. The motives are quite different. Fascists want to control the world and get rid of everyone they don't like, and while the Nannies tend to attract some who think that way they themselves are a little different. They're paternalists who want to look after us, want the best for us and want to protect us from any harm, including that which we might actually want to seek out ourselves and that which doesn't really exist. They don't want to control the world but teach it to sing in perfect harmony, hold it in their hands and keep it company. I feel it's a mistake to treat them as one and the same thing when their different motives, hate and cloyingly suffocating love, suggest different solutions might be in order.

As for the anti-swearing law, the point was the sheer stupidity of trying to free up police time by giving them the power to hand out on the spot fines for something which is nearly as commonplace as breathing. Don't worry about freedom of expression - they won't stop people swearing because they don't have a prayer of making the beginnings of a dent in it. But they could easily get so obsessed with the easy results that come from being able to have hordes of cops wandering around town fining people for swearing that what with the ones doing something similar with speeding there won't be a whole hell of a lot of police work going on.

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microdave · 721 weeks ago

"Fucking"?? "Twatt"?? - I raise you "Wank"

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 721 weeks ago

Oh, well done, microdave, I salute your rude sign finding abilities! But unfortunately if it's an instruction I'm afraid I'm unable to obey due to suffering from a case of Iron Knob. I knew of a Wanker's Corner somewhere in the US as well but couldn't find a sign for either of them. Well, when I say couldn't I mean I didn't look ;)

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Thursday, 2 June 2011

Victoria and Victorian attitudes

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