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Tonight, it was my intention to discuss the Boston bombings, but I’ve just sat through God-knows how many hours of Brian Williams and NBC News putting on free entertainment for the American masses; a show so packed with inaction and supposition it, no doubt, held the US public mesmerized, as nine thousand law enforcement officers descended on Watertown to apprehend one nineteen year old kid.

Nine thousand to arrest one? PC George Dixon of Dock Green would have managed it on his own. “Evenin’, all!”

(If you’re too young to know who the hell George Dixon was, then you’re definitely young enough to Google him, and maybe discover how policing was once carried out, before every law enforcement officer metamorphosed into Robocop).

While nothing can condone the murderous atrocities committed in Boston this week it seems likely the surviving (alleged) bomber was very much under the thumb of his older brother – his partner in the crime. In his haste to earlier escape the law, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ran over his brother with a car as he lay on the ground following a police shoot-out.

Quite why two Chenchens, resident in the US, should take it upon themselves to commit a terrorist act is yet to be reasoned. It’s one of the few areas in the world where US interference has been minimal. One possible explanation is the United States’ pact with Russia to fight Islamic terrorism, though it hardly seems cause for such an atrocity.

The use of nine thousand to apprehend one is highly reminiscent of that old adage about flies and sledgehammers. There is little doubt Tsarnaev would have been apprehended eventually, had the whole matter been left in the hands of the State police.

No, this was less law enforcement, and more politics. A clear sign to the world outside: “Don’t mess with America. We only get caught with our pants down once.” Which would be fine, if only they didn’t turn the whole sad process into a nighttime’s entertainment.

Equally sad, and perhaps even more indicative of the malaise affecting this nation, was the failure by Congress this week to commit themselves to any action on gun control. One man stood out from the rest – Wyoming’s Republican senator Michael Bradley Enzi.

Michael’s stance was a simple one (in more ways than one). It’s the parent’s fault. We don’t need any gun control legislation; we don’t need background checks. All it takes is for parents to teach their kids it’s wrong to kill people.

There is no doubt that we need to do more to curb the senseless acts of violence that continue to occur in this country. One of the things we need are parents, parents to be more careful and more repetitive at telling their kids that it is not right to kill people. It’s not even right to bully them. And it’s definitely not right for them to kill themselves. Until we can get that message across to our kids, I hope that we don’t rely on a few votes by this body to make everybody feel comfortable that all the problem is taken care of.”

Okay, Michael, if you’ll walk this way there’s a nice old people’s home with senility nursing capability just waiting to welcome you.

Thank you, Congress. You’ve just proved the kids of Sandy Hook Elementary School died in vain. Your rejection of sanity, in return for whatever favors the NRA offered you, also prove you don’t give a damn about dead children, their grieving parents, or the vast majority of your voters who are demanding stricter background checks on gun purchases. In fact, you don’t give a damn about anyone other than yourselves and, of course, your overly-fat bank balances.

The one question remaining is why the fuck your constituents voted you into office in the first place? The only answer I can come up with is that they are even more stupid, and self-obsessed, than you are.

The demise of Margaret Thatcher, as mentioned in the last post, was not a subject to be pursued further by this author. There is, however, another matter far more serious that’s arisen as a result of her recent death.

Since the 1960s, the BBC has broadcast a weekly “Top of the Pops” program, featuring bands and recording artists whose records have either reached the “Top Twenty” in Britain, or are so successful as to make it just a matter of time before they do so.

Following the death of Margaret Thatcher, one record – a very old one – catapulted its way into these charts at number ten and has now reached the number three position, just twelve thousand copies behind the number one single, P!nk’s “Just Give Me A Reason”. It’s predicted to make the top slot.

Following pressure from high-falluting, right-wing, Tory pressure groups, the BBC has decided not to feature this record, in its entirety, on this week’s program. Instead, they’ll play a five second clip of, “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead”, from the 1939 movie, “The Wizard Of Oz”, followed by “…a news item during the Radio 1 Chart Show on Sunday.”

The Guardian explains further:

The BBC has taken the unprecedented step of deciding to insert a news story into the show to explain to younger viewers why a track from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz has suddenly leapt into the top 10. Radio 1 has a target audience of 16- to 24-year-olds, none of whom will recall Thatcher’s premiership first hand…Hall [The new BBC director general] went into firefighting mode as soon as the row intensified on Friday with three Tory-supporting papers – the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and the Sun – rounding on the corporation for a plan to play the track. Gerald Howarth, a Tory MP, said it would be a “serious dereliction of duty”.

Hall spoke with the BBC1 controller, Ben Cooper, and the acting BBC director of radio, Graham Ellis, before making the decision not to play the Wizard of Oz song in full…The BBC also took the politically astute step of tipping off John Whittingdale, about their decision. The Tory MP, who chairs the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, was among those calling for the BBC not to play the song.

If it was to get his approval, it worked, as Whittingdale told the Guardian that he thought the BBC had made the “right decision” in difficult circumstances.

“I would have been very unhappy if the chart show was used to make a political point, not to mention the issue of taste. On the other hand, it would have been odd if it didn’t mention it. But putting it into context, I think, on balance, it is a sensible way of dealing with it,” he said…^[1]

A sensible way of dealing with it, or political censorship? Quite obviously, if the song is about to become the top selling record in Britain, it’s because a majority of the British people want to hear it – for whatever reasons. What right do a bunch of Tory MP’s have to block it? And, more importantly, what right has the BBC – an independent broadcasting company paid for by the British public via a licence fee – to demur to their demands?

The BBC may be controlled by a bevy of pseudo-aristocratic layabouts who spend all their time swilling brandy in the posh, Moroccon-bound, armchairs of their Mayfair clubs, but Sparrow Chat isn’t.

Below is the complete version of, “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead,” and it’s dedicated to all those poor wretches tortured and murdered in Chile under the foul regime of Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, whose vile death squads tortured and slaughtered thousands of innocents during the military junta’s reign of terror from 1973 to 1990.

Why? Because General Augusto Pinochet was a ‘dear and close friend’ of the late British ex-prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Which, perhaps, says more about her as a human being than any of her political machinations ever could.

^{[1] “Ding dong, the … BBC to cut Thatcher protest song short” Guardian, April 12th 2013}

There’s still a strong taboo about speaking ill of the dead. Quite why we should refrain from expressing our opinions when the person involved has had a detrimental effect, not only on our own lives but those of possibly millions of people, is not too clear. But, it’s not considered the ‘done thing’.

As a consequence, Sparrow Chat has passed no comment on the death of ex-British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, though thousands have tweeted, twittered, and generally sounded their displeasure over her policies, since the announcement of her death last Monday.

Perhaps the most galling aspect of her passing is that the present right-wing government of David Cameron is sparing no expense of British taxpayers’ money to lay on a lavish state funeral for the woman. He was quoted in one BBC report as stating, “Margaret Thatcher saved this country…”, though from what it’s hard to imagine.

No doubt the great British public will turn out in their thousands to line the pavements as the cortege wends its way through London’s streets. And why shouldn’t they – after all they are paying for it. Sadly, for many, it’ll not be because they adored Thatcher, but simply that such an event is a novelty not to missed in their otherwise humdrum lives, reminiscent of the knitters at la guillotine.

It will be a moment for the nation to remember Margaret Thatcher, and then forget her again – as we’ve happily done for the last twenty-three years.