Thatcher dies, Judy Garland banned: BBC asks Wizard for brain, courage and heart

Flying monkeys force Wizard of Oz to ban "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead". Munchkins furious and appeal to Glenda the White Witch to intercede.

Judy Garland banned, the Lollipop Guild crushed. Rainbow privatised and handed over to the chaps in the Emerald City.

It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the right in general and the Daily Mail in particular, with their foaming at the mouth over the widespread lack of respect for Baroness Margaret Thatcher on her demise, as rebel Munchkins respond with raucous celebrations rather than a frenzy of forelock tugging.

Yes, I know that Thatcherism lives on but her spawn have left us so few opportunities to feel happy, that it would be a shame to waste this one.

We're crashing into the limits of free speech as the BBC bans all but 5 seconds of Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead on their Radio 1 Chart Show this weekend. An innocuuous piece of material has become subversive through the meaning its listeners give to it, not what it actually is. Suck on that, Tom Stoppard!

It's the greatest bit of recontextualisation since Stanley Kubrick's "Singin' in the Rain" in A Clockwork Orange.

Double and triple standards all round as Thatcher's funeral is mostly paid out of the public purse instead of being put out to tender to the lowest bidder — funny how it's always socialism for them and capitalism for us. And, even though the market has propelled Ding Dong into the charts, the state has decreed that we can't hear it on the the radio. 'Cause we have, like, you know, freedom of expression in this country ... unless they don't like what it is that's being said.

So three cheers for Edgar Yipsel Harburg, the leftist who wrote the lyrics for The Wizard of Oz. Let's see the Mail string up THAT name with his own piano wire.

Let us show the respect due at her funeral. There should be no violence on Wednesday. Just line the route and sing the Thatcher Death Song.

Here's my poem for the occasion.

Margaret Thatcher Died at the Ritz
8th April 2013

Margaret Thatcher died at the Ritz.
It fits. Her blitz on the poor,
national assets thrust into the mitts
of corporate bandits.
Wealth trickled-down like a horse shits
undigested grain for birds that flit
round what it is its rear end emits.
Compassion deficit, dried out tits,
the country in bits, run by greedy gits.
Her fans omit the price
of crimes her class commit.
Her legacy is the pits.
(And she closed them as well.)

Thatcher's blue touchpaper stayed alight
til the nation was run by her acolytes;
she took a look round at pauperised Brits,
said, "My work here is done," and called it quits.