The Angry Exile: Want a new drill?

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

Wednesday 13 July 2011

Want a new drill?

I don't but if I did I'd certainly order it from TradeTools.com, the people behind this advert (PDF). Click to seriously embiggerise or read a couple of the highlights below - there are points on offer for every reference to one of Julia Gillard's policies and there may be prize for the one who spots the most.

COMRADE JULIA Has Take Over TradeTools???

Thank goodness NO! But if she did, the following scary changes would quickly happen:

1. We'd have a doubling of our backroom office staff with rostered days off, possible 9 day fortnights & committee meetings to decide on which fair trade coffee we should all begin drinking! Every store would have a children's crèche of course. Selling tools would immediately become a strangely secondary issue for Julia.

2. With all those extra staff to pay, that amazingly none of us here ever realised we needed before, Julia would think it quite okay to begin raising all selling prices at TradeTools. She would absolutely believe that all customers would fully understand that our cost base had markedly increased, but be amazed when many started taking 24 years of hard won business elsewhere in confusion & frustration!

No, I didn't say that. I said... er... I said, there'd be no carpet tacks. Yes
that's what I said. Yes, ban carpet tacks, just gripper rods from now on.

[...]

4. ... she would quickly notice that our mining company customers seemed to be doing quite well, particularly as they were buying so much equipment. Due to this brilliant observation, she would think it totally acceptable to single out all these successful mining companies then charge them a lot more for our huge range of products over what we charge all other customers. She would then wonder why on earth all the miners thought she’d gone bonkers? These intrepid miners would immediately begin looking for alternative suppliers of course, a real mystery to Comrade Julia...

5. Julia must secretly despise power tools as they use electricity from power companies that she loves to disparagingly call “big polluters”. This is even though she is a large power user herself but seems to hypocritically believe that electricity is in some strange way evil... She would then make an alliance with some flaky inventor in order to source wind or solar powered drills & saws. This dynamic duo of rocket scientists would then wonder why nobody wanted to buy their new enviro powered drills & saws, even though they only cost twice as much, were twice as big & had half the power...

6. Julia would promise not to introduce price increases just prior to being elected as boss of TradeTools, shortly after knifing the previous head honcho in the back that is. Immediately after becoming boss though, she would completely renege on this price promise, bleating about having never really meant it anyway, or some other such nonsensical drivel involving cars & roads. She would then mysteriously ask for mass consultation, even though her mind was already & obviously made up for us years ago...

[...]

9. We’d spend much of the week attending occupational workplace health & safety courses as Julia, in her wisdom as our Nanna, would never believe that any of us are truly capable of using our own common sense & survival instincts. It’s amazing that she knows all this even though she wouldn’t know what 75% of what TradeTools sells actually does. This training would give the new mix of TradeTools guys & girls something to do as there would be far fewer customers left to serve by now anyway. This is a good old left wing strategy that always works, until the real world hard earned money runs out, as it always mysteriously seems to...

10. Julia would have the most expensive builders she could find build temporary looking workplace safety training rooms in every TradeTools car park. This would involve squandering previously accumulated profits to overpay her builders who would then supposedly spend their windfalls in the adjoining TradeTools store on tools. Trouble is, they thought she was actually raving mad & instead bought all their workers overseas holidays or new plasma TV’s. There was plenty of space in the car parks after all, space that throngs of once happy TradeTools customers previously parked their utes all over.

The ending is sensational.

Let’s be brutally honest & admit that ‘Comrade Julia’ could never run a medium sized private company like TradeTools; think about it, it would be absolute madness to even let someone like her try. Neither has Julia ever understood the now well proven rule that socialism is wonderful, until you run out of somebody else’s money! So, most of us at TradeTools really do now wonder why on earth we have someone broadly like her waddling around trying to run Australia? And we all hope something’s done before it’s all too late!
From Most Of The Hard Working & Heavily Taxed Staff At TradeTools.

Did you spot them all? Well done, but I'm terribly sorry about the prize. It was going to be a packet of the last carpet tacks made in Australia, which I felt was suitable for their rarity value. However, carpet tacks haven't been banned after all. Funny that, eh?

Still, on the upside it's nice to see that there's a fightback going on. It'd be nice to think that those being screwed by the carbon tax will all bump into those being screwed because they smoke, and there'll be a big mutual 'What, you as well?' moment. The biggest pity for me is that the opposition leader Tony Abbott's only real advantage over Julia Gillard is that he's not Julia Gillard. Since that was also Cameramong's main advantage over Gordon Brown, though with Cameramong it seemed to go as far as being an actual policy, this whole business of someone promising something and reneging on it while I have little faith that the alternative would actually reverse it has more than a touch of déjà vu.

Big H/T to the Real World Libertarian for the TradeTools advert.