"This is not a personal issue. This is ultimately a sad saga of what I believe is a mixture of incompetence, political naiveté, conscious or subconscious political pressure and ultimately, I believe, a lack of courage of broadcasters when they are faced with the complexity of the Middle East issue and the intense emotions, fears and aggression it generates."

Ilan Ziv

Apart from "lack of courage" this is a misdiagnosis. The people who made the decision to shelve the film are not politically naive, no more incompetent than their industrial competitors, and quite aware of the complexities of Middle East politics.
The people who bought the film could be accused of naivete, if they honestly believed that the BBC would show a film that questioned the zionists' occupation of another nation's land.

In the wake of Thatcher's departure, I remember her victims. Patrick Warby's daughter, Marie, was one of them. Marie, aged five, suffered from a bowel deformity and needed a special diet. Without it, the pain was excruciating. Her father was a Durham miner and had used all his savings. It was winter 1985, the Great Strike was almost a year old and the family was destitute. Although her eligibility was not disputed, Marie was denied help by the Department of Social Security. Later, I obtained records of the case that showed Marie had been turned down because her father was "affected by a Trade dispute".

R.I.P. George Jones.
"The only thing different in sinners and saints,
One is forgiven and the other one ain't."

Saint George.

This morning I'm listening to the BBC news and propaganda programme. They're talking about the crisis in accident and emergency departments in hospitals. A senior nurse from the Royal College of Nursing is telling horror stories about staff shortages and intolerable pressure.
How long has it been like this? asks the interviewer. The gist is that things started to get bad ten years ago (Labour administration), have got dramatically worse in the last two years (Conservative-Liberal administration).
Next on, a government health minister, somebody named Poulter. He'd obviously demanded to be interviewed after the nurse was no longer in a position to pull him up. "You've just heard that things have got better in the past ten years." was his opening line.
I switched over to a music programme.

Interesting snippet from today's i (silly name):
Thatcher had a framed calligraphic text of the Islamic shahada on her dining room wall -

"No god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah"

According to Jonathan Aitken she didn't know what it meant and had no interest in finding out. The Syrian Ambassador had presented it to her at some stage in her premiership.
Aitken tells that she knew absolutely nothing about Middle East affairs. He claims that she thought that Sinai was the plural of sinus, which may be a piss-take, but you never know.

By a strange coincidence all the male newsreaders on the BBC and on Sky News have turned up for work today wearing black ties. What are the odds on that happening,eh?

Fearless Israeli youth defy a headscarf.

This woman has just had her home stolen by zionists. What a hoot!

A poem by Peter Hicks called "THATCHER"
I don't know who Peter Hicks is. I'll try to find out.

Every spiv, speculator and de-regulator,
Every swindler and twister and thief,
Every ruthless exploiter and unscrupulous employer,
For just a brief moment felt grief.

Each commodities peddler, every crook money lender,
Every shyster who lied and misled,
Every crook hedge fund broker, every fat cat and joker
Shed a tear now that Thatcher was dead.

Every ponzi scheme maker, every bent futures trader,
Every wide boy, wheeler and loan shark,
Every bastard uncaring, unfeeling, unsharing
Just this once felt a twinge in their heart.

While the media wankers, sucking up to the bankers
Span a fabric of lies mixed with hype,
They might think that they rule us but they really can’t fool us,
We remember what those days were like.

For us no enjoyment in the mass unemployment,
And the millions thrown on the scrapheap,
The dreadful fear then that it would never end,
A society down on its knees.

Now some of us are dancing, celebrating and prancing
We sing and we chant and we shout,
Others content make their joy evident
Just by raising a mild or a stout.

But she’s not really gone while her ghost lingers on,
And the powerful still dance to her tune,
So together we’ll fight now to win back our rights now
And it won’t be a moment too soon.

(Span, sic)

Addendum 15th April: Thanks to Anonymous (Chris?) Peter Hicks is now identified as an Australian folk singer and song writer. He has a website.

"You watch the whole of the BBC output, and certainly the whole of the drama output, and – forgetting the clichés in soaps – poor people do not exist. Where occasionally they do, they are smirked at or derided as chavs.
"People outside the south east, one or two boroughs in west London and Westminster, virtually don't exist either. It's as though the BBC only recruits Alisons and Jeremys [filmmakers] from the Home Counties who make culture that appeals to them, but who occasionally go to remote regions of the planet like Doncaster as visiting anthropologists, either to be amused by or shocked by the behaviour of the tribe there. The move to Salford is a small but useful gesture, but … they are patronising, if they're not ignoring, most of the people of this country."

(Tony Garnett)

It's the headscarf, dear lady, the Israelis have placed them on a list of lethal weapons.

Glenda Jackson was one of a handful of Labour backbench MPs who attended the unprecedented recall of Parliament intended to provoke the mass of British people who hated Thatcher and all she stood for. Ms Jackson came not to praise but to speak for those of us who are sickened by the lies being told about this woman. She came to set the record straight. Non-partisan observers tell us that hers was the best contribution.

But Ms Jackson insisted: “I was meticulous in not being personally rude. I didn’t know the woman: I did know the policies. I spoke up because history has been rewritten over the past week. I lived through the Thatcher period. I know what it was like. I know what it was like for my constituents. The reality bore no resemblance to what’s being presented.”
She said she was also struck by the way the tributes are being led by the Conservatives, when it was the Conservative leadership that sacked Margaret Thatcher in 1990. “That’s another thing – the manner of her going hasn’t been touched on. I find that bemusing,” she said.

(The Independent)

HMM!
"... there are some who think that Williams was not, in fact, the killer. In THE ATLANTA CHILD MURDERS, some lawyers claim that the prosecution withheld evidence that white supremacists may have been involved in some of the murders, while investigators counter that the Klan investigation was a dead-end and Williams is the real killer."

Elsewhere I expressed my intention to respond to Thatcher-worshipping racists, and red-baiters from the United States. No British defendants so far, I wonder why.
Anyway I've changed my mind. I'm ceasing to correspond with filth who fantasise about children dying. I'm sure that their president's penchant for dropping bombs on families makes multiple murder acceptable. Let Americans talk to each other and salivate over the mutilated bodies of the victims of their government's foreign policy. Let them, as they will eventually, turn on each other and fulfil their national death wish. But let them celebrate their blood-lust where it is appreciated. Not here.

"DING DONG, the witch is dead"
and history is already being rewritten. Some clown (English of course) claimed on al-Jazeera that Thatcher was opposed to Apartheid. I'm grateful to Martin Deane of the Green Party (Hull) for the following quote from her:
"Those who believe South Africa will one day be ruled by the ANC are living in cloud cuckoo land."

It will not be clear in the next few days how much this individual was hated by the British people. All the media will be singing her praises; the media that are owned by her friends, her admirers, those who knew how to play on her prejudices for their own ends. The BBC, voice of the establishment, will play its allotted role, feeding bullshit to the masses.
Sometime in the future a there will be a reassessment of her "legacy". In the meantime we'll have to make do with the occasional "controversial".
There is a petition online demanding that the old bat's funeral be privatised, in line with her beliefs.

Let's acknowledge the services here of Sir Tim Bell, "friend of the family" (EURGH!), who made public the demise of the Queen of the Night.
I guess old Tim has mended his ways and is no longer the cokehead he was when lying for the party. Let us pray that he has also abandoned his penchant for indecent exposure and exhibitionistic self-abuse, so unbecoming a knight of the realm.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Too bad that the minister responsible for ensuring taxes are collected is himself a tax dodger. He is busy equating people on benefits with child-killers.

Sitting in the dentist's waiting room this morning I pick up a copy of Q Magazine and read a little.
I learn that Chas and Dave don't like the Rolling Stones. They once shared a dressing room with them and the suburban gents wouldn't speak to them. Also one of them (Dave?) "don't rate" Keith Richard(s) as a guitarist.
I'm not into cockney rockney music, or whatever they call it, but I find common ground with the geezers.

An interview with Johnny Marr. I learn that he once had a chance to sign for Manchester City. I forget why he didn't take it up. Interviewer asked if he'd play for them today. Answer, yes, out of admiration for manager Roberto Mancini. Apparently R.M. always "wears good trousers", and his shoes always match the trousers.
This Marr fellow has got his priorities right as far as I'm concerned. Trousers maketh the manager. Too much sloppy dressing around today. As Uncle Sonny put it ('The Sopranos'), "Some of these young fellows will be buried in jogging pants."

"Kick racism out!" But let fascism in.
Altogether now -

Giovinezza, giovinezza,
primavera di bellezza:
nel Fascismo è la salvezza
della nostra libertà.