The Angry Exile: The dividing line between liberty and stupid

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 8 July 2011

The dividing line between liberty and stupid

Years ago when I still smoked and lived in a pre-smoking ban Britain I occasionally used to have to get a train into London from Wimbledon station. I don't know if either of my readers (hi, Mum) are at all familiar with Wimbledon station but it's a largish station both light rail/tram and Underground services as well as the main line rail service, and about ten or twelve platforms accessed from a bridge above. The tram service, for which I think Wimbledon is (or at least was) a terminus, is the furthest away from the main entrance on platform 12 or whichever is last, while the Underground service is a branch of the District Line which terminated at Wimbledon's platforms 1 to 4.

Can you guess where this is going yet? Yep, the pre-smoking ban bit was a clue. It was still possible to smoke on the platforms at Wimbledon station providing you were there to catch a main line train, but not on the District Line platforms since smoking was banned across the entire London Underground network after the king's Cross fire in the 80s. Even the bits which are not actually underground at all, which happens to be most of it and includes platforms 1 to 4 at Wimbledon. The impractical upshot of this is that smokers waiting for a District Line tube to rock up at platform 4 had to do without while staring across a 25 foot gap at the smokers on platform 5 who could puff away to their hearts' content as they waited for their train. This ludicrous situation dragged on for years and was stopped only by the smoking ban. That's New Labour for you - restricting freedoms and trashing property rights, because nobody else can be trusted with them.*

So when I saw Raedwald's blog about a street in Sydney where you can only smoke down one side it brought back memories of the idiotic situation in Wimbledon that persisted for so long. The difference for Sydneysiders is that at Wimbledon station if you needed a District Line train then you didn't have a choice, whereas if you fancy a cappuccino in Sydney's King Street...

The local council responsible for the pavement on the left ... has just banned all outdoor smoking, but the pavement on the right, within the City of Sydney area, still permits smokers to sit at the outside tables. Cafe owners on the left side are up in arms; all their trade has crossed the street.

Raedwald goes on to note that on top of that it's a four lane street and everyone's breathing the exhaust fumes anyway.

This isn't about health at all; it's all just spite and bigotry.

Yes, it is, but it's also about the self-righteous exercise of power without thought for the effects. Laws and regulations are thought of as a magic wand that will change the people from how they are to how the pollies and the Grima Wormtongue like lobbyists who whisper into their ears think people really ought to be, but it never works out that way because people like their bad habits. Drunks falling down and puking on pavements is a problem, but try to force sobriety on everybody and you get the kind of violence that was the hallmark of Prohibition era America. Druggies lying around off their dials are a problem, but the war on drugs has just given us more expensive and less safe drugs - leading to more crime and health problems - and an epidemic of violence. And smoking? Well, as you may have seen me say before, I've been a non-smoker for long enough now that I dislike the smell of tobacco smoke, but if we have to have a ban on only one side of a road and wrecking the businesses down the non-smoking side I'd say that the solution is worse than the problem.

And since I can always take a couple of steps to avoid the smoke it's not really much of a problem to begin with, is it?

* And of course the Bluish-Yellowy government in power now hasn't changed it. That's the Cobbleition for you - restricting freedoms and trashing property rights because nobod... er, we've been here before, haven't we?