Andy's Glasses

Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for… well, playing with your phone, celebs and footballers, was today’s guest on Laura Kuensberg, the BBC’s chief political attack-dog and Scottish pit-bull, because once her teeth are sunk in, she never lets go. They were discussing Brexit and the re-uniting with Europe, to some extent or other. And yes, said Lisa, ‘we’re having a conversation about that currently’. Nice. Her and Andy B. In the pub, probably somewhere up north, pint of bitter for him, Campari-soda for her, packet of pork scratchings on the table between them, chewing the fat, lovely. But obviously Laura went a’digging, as she does, and Lisa mentioned the word ‘conversation’ 8 more times in about 2 minutes. I actually counted. Because at the first use of the word I laughed. Because ‘conversation’ has become a euphemism. It no longer means a chat. It has acquired gravitas. Due to extreme political overusage. Everything now is a fucking ‘conversation’, whereas really it’s not. It’s a discussion, a debate, a meeting, it’s brain-storming, it’s a million things and none of them ‘a conversation’. Because no-one ‘chairs’ a conversation. You don’t take votes at the end of a ‘conversation’. So politicians use the word because its a way out. “Oh yeah; we haven’t got a clue about that, can’t reach any worthwhile decisions so we’ll keep blathering on and let you know the result of the… errrr… let’s call it a ‘conversation’ later on”.

What the government needs is less ‘conversations’ and more work. And anyone using the word more than 3 times an hour should be shot. I can’t be any fairer than that.

But Lisa Nandy is the minister for sport. Among many other things. So really, she should be having ‘conversatoins’ about Spurs. But they never mentioned yesterday’s tragedy at Leeds. The tragedy not being the loss, but the total absence of any attacking creativity in the team. The appalling lack of direction. We were awful. From our ‘3 in a row’ winning ways, we have descended once more to ‘Dr Tottenham’, curing Leeds United of their inability to win any games. Ok, maybe it was just ‘a blip’. But anyone watching the game would have thought only ‘how on earth did this team win 3 consecutive games?’

And here we are, 2 weeks after ‘tree-gate’, when this tree crashed into my tennis club, and Barnet Council have done… nothing. I know, it has a ‘charm’, it looks quite pretty there, but it’s also dangerous and I’m very sensitive about ‘health n safety’. This tree is affecting my ‘mental elf’ and I’ll sue them. I may need to take 6 weeks off work due to tree-induced stress. (#lazyfuckers) One man with a chain-saw would sort it out in half an hour. Give me the chainsaw and I’ll happily oblige.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Russel Brand has arguably hit the jackpot. As someone who simply ‘can’t get enough sex’ and who obviously believes in the sanctity of rape and has no concept nor interest in any form of ‘consent’, prison may prove to be a manifestation of his Utopian dream. Sort of.

However, the problem of ‘rape’ is always difficult. Because, generally (but by no means ‘always’) it is perpetrated by one person on one other, with no-one else around. No witnesses. Which then, should it come to court, as it always should but hardly ever does, becomes ‘his word against hers’. And why do so many rape cases go unreported? Because the victims are riddled with shame, guilt, fear and all manner of horrendous emotions which no woman should ever have to face. So judges advise jurors not to make any judgments on late reporting, like weeks, months, years after the event. It doesn’t mean ‘it wasn’t rape’, it just means the victims fears over-rode their need for justice.

Andy Burnham, he of the great soundbyte but complete lack of understanding of ‘big pictures’, generally, stated that we need to change how rape is prosecuted so the victim doesn’t feel she’s on trial.

And there’s the problem. Our legal system, particularly the criminal one, is combative. It’s a fight. Generally in which, dirty fighting is perfectly acceptable. So faced with an alleged rapist and an alleged defendant, with no witnesses, it becomes a battle of reputations, of previous behaviours, and of any dirt that can be dug to support the actors.

Women are allowed to wear high heels and short skirts. They’re allowed to drink. They’re even allowed to be as promiscuous as they like. The key words ‘as THEY like’. Not, ‘as someone else would like them to be’. Yet promiscuity and a few drinks would be held up by defence lawyers as some kind of lifestyle statement that they’re ready, eager and gagging for positively anybody to just help themselves.

But yet, as with everything, Andy, it just ain’t that simple. Because of the woke-level hypersensitivity we’re now surrounded by in all facets of our lives, ‘sexual assault’ is now a much vaguer and broader term than it was when Donald was ‘grabbing ‘em by the pussy’. And thus can and has been weaponised to seek revenge, to make an employment claim, by the unscrupulous.

And there are incidents where ‘rape’ has been fabricated for such ends too. Hence the need for those defence lawyers to ensure that isn’t the case in this instance. That ‘rape’ is being used as the golden bullet in a personal attack on someone.

Rape is a horrible, violent, life-changing crime. It is vile. Yet a wrongful accusation of rape is also life-changing. Even if eventually innocence is proclaimed. And victims must feel ‘safe’ to come forward immediately, which is absolutely not the case now.

So there’s your balancing act, Andy. Rightly, rape victims must be protected from being virtually abused and character-assassinated by opposing lawyers. Whilst alleged rapists must be given every opportunity to show that, if true, they are innocent of the crime. Other than Russell Brand, obviously, we just want him in prison just for unprecedented levels of misogyny and obnoxiousness.

How hard can that be to do?

Happy Saturday,

A xxxx

Donald J. Trump has done what any president would do when faced with an immense and politically catastrophic ‘slap in the face’ (more like a knee in the groin, really) received at the polls. He called a press conference and, with all humility, spent an hour talking about the steel girders holding up the 50 foot high ceilings in his new ballroom at the White House. The best ballroom in the country. Possibly in the whole world. He seems oblivious to the fact that his countrymen and women and… oh, ya know, all the others of not such a binary disposition, all voted against ‘him’. It wasn’t a presidential election but it was. And the Americans showed him what their main concern in the world is. Which is filling their cars up. And the cost of petrol. I have no idea how American drivers of electric cars make any political decisions. It must be impossible. But as there are only 7 of them and they all live in California, they don’t have much political sway anyway. The majority of Americans don’t want the war in Iran. I get that. Its distant, irrelevant to them and has horrible economical repercussions for them. And for us too. Yet, unpopular or not, it was the right thing to do. Because Iran will built a nuclear weapon. And it might come to Kansas, or Wyoming or even… Texas.

The reddest state in the whole world which yesterday turned blue as they voted in Democrats right across the board. Despite the fact that Elon Musk had spent almost 500 million dollars for the Republican campaign there. And that in itself is the real story of American elections. It’s all about the money. Though, as Elon found out; you can’t buy an election. The total money across the US for the elections is estimated at $12 BILLION!!! Holy shit. You could run a national health service for that. You could provide food for 17 starving, third-world nations for a year. Or you could run Manchester City for a few months. That’s a massive amount of money.

And how do they spend it? Trashing the opposition. Buying up tv time to show videos. Not like our nice, polite videos showing a family of four having a lovely day out in the Cotswolds whilst a narrator holds lyrical about our NHS funding and the wonderful schools, to the point where you vomit and turn on a recording of last week’s Match of the Day. Theirs are video nasties. They just attack whoever dares to stand against them. Any past transgressions are dragged out from history to be thrust into the limelight, whether true or not. “He was a member of the Fair World Alliaince when he was 14: HE’S A COMMUNIST!!!!” “She divorced her husband!!! A brazen harlot!!! Ok, he was an abusive drug-addicted killer, but still!!!” The is no incident too petty that it can’t be exaggerated, exploded and sensationalised for the purposes of slandering your opponents. This is attack-dog, gloves off, hardcore abuse. And it don’t come cheap.

We appreciate our political scandals over here. They’re calmer, softer, gentler. Less shouty. We like it that the Chancellor of the Exchequer once took a postage stamp and forgot to put the 65p into the Petty Cash box. We like that Prime Ministers had 15 children with 12 different women, all about the same time, because it makes them a bit human. But I’m glad we don’t do the massed hysterical screaming about corruption because the candidate from Wisconsin once sat on a bus next to a Ponzi Schemer. Our political landscape is ‘Remains of the Day’. Theirs is more ‘Reservoir Dogs’.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

The rest of that sentence, ‘green shoots…’ is no longer, ‘…of spring’. It has been replaced with ‘… itself in both feet’.

Andy Burnham, let’s face it, himself no big friend of Israel, of Zionists, even Jews (ok, nothing ‘direct’ but inclusion in any of the anti-Israel ‘wave’ is an attack on Jews to a degree and not just because we’re hyper-sensitive to the point of totally justified paranoia), has ‘severed ties’ between Labour and the Green Party in all their local council coalition agreements. They will no longer agree. And why? Because of the Green Party declaring that ‘Zionism = racism’. Declaring such a thing is, basically, racism. But obviously they don’t see that. Because racism against anyone you really don’t like can’t be real racism, can it? But as about half the Green Party (the half who are actually concerned about the environment, as their name used to suggest) is rather upset about this proclamation in their name, its not surprising that lots of others are too. When they refused to exclude ‘Jewish people going to Synagogue’ from the general ‘Zionists=racist’ thing, that was bad enough. But they went further and ‘demanded’ that there be a “Palestinian 1-state solution including Israel”.

Because the other half of the Green Party. They’re… basically Hamas-supporters. They follow the same charter. The permanent removal of Israel. And most people currently in it. They joined the Greens because for 6 quid each (that’s the actual cost of membership) they could form a sufficient mass within that party, which was fairly stupid to start with, and basically, hi-jack it for their own cause. One of jihad. Ironic that most of them aren’t even Muslims, but there ya go. A vast number are disenfranchised Corbynites looking for a home for their antisemitic feelings. And in the Green Party, they found it. Ably led by Mr (possibly Ms; not presuming nuffink) Zack Polansky, the head of the “I’m a proud Jew, BUT…” society of Great Britain.

So is Andy Burnham opposed to the zionism=racism schtick because its abhorrent, or because he needs to be for political reasons? Either way, the Greens are screwed. Again. Which is good for mankind.

We’ll save American politics for tomorrow.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

We went to the seaside. Had a day trip. On the train. Sandcastles. Paddling in the sub-zero waters where the English Channel meets the North Sea. So really it was a sort of ‘metaphorical paddling’ done from a distance of at least 50 metres from the water. Less chance of hypothermia and frostbite. Because that’s what can happen in November in Broadstairs.

Broadstairs?

Yes, that’s where we went. Its on a lovely little peninsula in Kent, between Ramsgate and Margate. Close enough to Dover to expect a few dozen small boats. But far enough away that it didn’t happen. And it is a really beautiful little town. Full of ‘old English charm’, which translates as fish’n’chip shops, a little shopping mall, lots of nice houses, loads of pubs, plenty of Cross of St George flags flying and a beach with real sand on it!!! Very pretty.

It was me mate, the WolfMan’s birthday. Not saying which one, but it was the 70th. So we went for lunch to celebrate. In Broadstairs. Because quite frankly, London (where ALL the celebrants came from) simply lacks eating places. So you have to get on a train and travel 90 minutes and go to Broadstairs. Because they have four restaurants! Possibly 5 if you count the fried chicken take-away.

But the restaurant we went to, overlooking the beach, was, in all honesty, better than any restaurant I’ve been to in… errrr… a long, long time. They served fish. But so much fish, in so many different ways. All of them brilliant. And different. Except the main course (I stopped counting the ‘courses’ because the food just kept coming) which was grilled sea bass. But not just, like, a sea bass, no. This was a SEA BASS!!! An unusual fish in that if you have one on the coast its a fucking whale. But as they travel inland they start to shrink. Until you get to London and you get a tiny little flattened fillet of disappointment and you wish you’d ordered the burger.

Not in Broadstairs. I didn’t know whether to eat my sea bass (ok we shared them) or get on and ride it up the Medway back to London. Greed got the better of me and went for the former. Plus, I had a return ticket to St Pancras.

I won’t even mention the desserts, other than they were right up to the standard of the rest of my now ‘favourite restaurant in the world’.

What a fab little day trip that was.

Happy birthday to the WolfMan, Happy Monday to you

A xxxx

You see, my problem has always been that I suffer with extreme beauty. Something of a curse, generally, with all those women falling at my feet, it makes walking to the station very slow. But I live with it. Whereas poor Russell Brand is an ugly man who thinks he’s beautiful. And that creates a totally different dynamic. Such a fabulously loud and lairy and narcissistic and misogynistic and extremely arrogant dynamic in which he ‘thinks’ that women should fall at his feet, so he just pushes them to the floor. The result is the same. We can only play the hand we’re dealt.

Yet I simply can’t see anything wrong with what Russell did, ‘back in the day’, when he was God. When he had tv shows and was THE talking head they wanted on everyone else’s show. Obviously when he ‘prank called’ the saintly Andrew Sachs (‘Manuel’ from Fawlty Towers, but in later age) and abused him verbally, that changed it a bit for Russ. They say he’d ‘abused’ the man on the phone. Whereas it was all perfectly good fun! Well, for him and Jonathan Ross is was fun, for Andrew Sachs it was appalling. Bloody misery. Both Ross and Russ lost their jobs. Which is really mean.

And now they’ve put him in court! Russell Brand! I mean, WHY???

All he did was presume that every woman in the world, in fact, ANY woman in his world wanted to have sex with him. Even if they didn’t know it at the time. But surely they’d realise at some point that it was what they’d always dreamed of. Even whilst saying ‘NO!’ repeatedly. And therefore, he was fully entitled to grab, grope, molest, fondle and assault these women. It was just what they wanted, what ALL women wanted. I mean, that’s just a form of ‘foreplay’, right? And ‘consent’ is a bit vague, when they’re all gagging for it.

Russell then found God. I can only imagine that Our Lord and Master lives at the end of Russell Brand’s nob, because I can’t imagine where else he find him. Anyway, Russell found God and got married and lived happily ever… almost. He did do a lot of adultery, but he confessed and probably just missed that bit of the 10 commandments when he was bible-ing up and communing with Jesus and shit. No-one’s perfect.

But how can it be ‘rape’ if every woman is desperate to have sex with him? It makes no sense. To me, or to Russell, or probably to Andrew Tait. Possibly the only other man to fully understand the place of women in our society. Which is, pretty much, under a man. Whenever he so decides. I get that totally. Then the women get pissed off because he doesn’t phone them again, so cry ‘rape’. It’s just like Andrew Tait says. And he’s always right. He told us. Although he is in prison currently.

Russell is a role model. He should be treated as such. It’s not easy to be a vile, piece-a-shit scumbag, misogynistic rapist with a God delusion and an ego the size of a mountain. And those with similar delusions need a leader.

RUSSELL BRAND IS INNOCENT!!!

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Following ‘my own, personal, Pearl Harbour’ on Saturday, when a Japanese woman pulled out of a side street and crashed into my wonderful, gorgeous car, I can now report, all is well in the world. Balance has resumed. My yin and yang are once again realigned. My car is… fixed! Yes, it was quick. Having realised that despite the sound of the accident, not unlike that of perhaps 2 aircraft having a head-on collision, the damage was limited to a few scratches, I got one of these ‘driveway repair dudes’ to come over. And for such an amazingly reasonable price. I told my attacker, to which she asked if it could be done any cheaper? To which I replied that if she’s not happy with ‘Driveway Dave’, I’m going to my Porsche garage and I’ll get a quote from them. And as Dave’s quote was way less than her insurance excess would have been, she suddenly found it to be great value and sent payment. For 6 scratches on the rear wheel-arch, ‘the Germans’, as I think of them, would have stripped my car back to the chassis, removed all the paint, re-built the gearbox a bit, applied 72 coats of paint, put it all back together, and sent her insurers a bill for £734,244.86. So for 350 quid, she had a result and I don’t have to be carless for 7 months. All is beautiful once more.

And I needed that, after yesterday’s budget. Because that sly little shit of a Chancellor made such a fuss of giving a few people 100 quid off their energy bills, which will barely heat one bath by next April, he just, sort of ‘slipped in’ the fact that he’s increasing tax on rental income and on ‘savings’. What a nob. What does he imagine the effect will be of reducing the amount of income brought in by rent? Oh, they’ll, errr, possibly put the rent up a bit then. But heh, this is an allowable attack on ‘landlords’, the serial killers of the Labour narrative. The child-molesters of the left wing. A reviled and despicable group of monetary terrorists for whom no punishment is too great. And I agree totally. In a land where, without private sector rentals, about half the fucking population would be homeless.

Then, to prove the point that the Chancellor is a total tosser, he had himself filmed in a pub after his budget, drinking a pint of beer in ten seconds. To prove… errrr… what, exactly?

Have a super Friday

Andy xxxx

Because of the cost of living crisis, Mr Healey, our Chancellor, will today announce that he is reducing tariffs on certain items of food, which will benefit not just me, but anyone else who eats marmalade baked beans with pickled gerkins on top. You should try it. Its very nutritious (baked beans are a ‘superfood’), good for the gut (pickled foods do something or other in there which is apparently beneficial; ever seen a constipated Ashkenazi??), and… is vaguely marmalady.

Ok, he is doing the same for other foods, like sweets and chocolates. Which seems odd when you consider the ongoing fight against obesity. There again, lay on a nice layer of blubber; turn down the central heating. But in fact, he’s going to ‘remove the standing charge’ from our heating bills. Saving £45 a year for everybody!!! But if you reckon there are about 20 million fuel bill paying households, that means the energy industry is about 900 million quid down on the deal. And as Healey can’t do much about the ‘unit cost’ part of the bill, where will the industry make up the short-fall? I wonder…

These are the ‘sweeteners’ in the budget. The ‘no cost’ (to the government) little perks which Chancellors feel, incorrectly, will endear them to us. Before they get to the tax bit. And then, inevitably, the 2p off a tin of baked beans will be overshadowed by the £32,000 hike in tax.

Meanwhile, over in the nation of our ‘special relationship’, our Don is busy increasing his collection of South American presidents and presidential candidates. Having ‘captured’ Nicolas Maduro earlier this year, he’s now added Flavio Bolsonaro. Having lost Sunday’s election in Brazil, Flav, who’s father was shamed by scandal, was facing accusations of money-laundering. So where better to go than that sanctuary of liberal compassion and understanding. Where the only rule is: if you’re a right-winger, you’re welcome. Those of a more lefterly persuasion go to jail.

I’m glad the chancellor reduced the price of chocolate. It should be fucking free!! I should get it on the NHS. Because chocolate is one of the best things in life. The other best thing being Fleetwood Town FC.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

What a fab weekend!

My car got bashed, a tree deployed itself across my tennis court, it pissed down most of Saturday, I had to play in gale force winds on Sunday and Oxford Street is now closed to vehicles!!!

Honestly, I wish they’d close it to pedestrians too. I hate that street. But as I never travel along it, they can do what they like. Bearing in mind that: if Sadiq Khan thinks its a good idea, then I don’t.

Meghan Markle/Princess Harriet/Duchess of Wherever has been given an unroyal reprieve. A reprieve by the press and public for being a nasty, spoilt, father-upsetting bitch. Because the father she upset is officially (subject to contract), a nonce!!! He’s the baddest of bad people; a child abuser. So Meghan, who you always hated but I never stopped loving, can now be loved by the rest of you. See; it only took a little understanding.

But then, Spurs won. Not just ‘won’ but won at Chelsea! Where we never win. Unless we do. Which is, approximately, twice every 36 years. We doubled our average. And not just because Chelsea were shit, which they emphatically were, but because we were as emphatically great. And, uncharacteristically for this fixture, only one player was sent off. A very low red-card-count. And that was Cole Palmer. Who proved to be almost as obnoxious as he is ugly. A fabulous win.

Manchester United had a fabulous loss. They don’t win any longer. The fans vented their hatred upon, in no particular order: The Glazers, Jim Ratcliffe, the football director, the players, the staff and the dinner ladies. The only person spared their venom was Michael Carrick, who they don’t blame for the club’s current terrible malaise. And its kind’a nice, in a footballing world in which the manager gets the blame for everything and is generally given no time to improve things before his head is called for, that the fans actually give Carrick the benefit of the doubt. For now. And we must stress: Bournemouth did NOT win that game. Manchester United lost it.

So redemption for the weekend’s disasters. And we managed to finish the latest Slow Horses series. Which was, like all the previous series, simply fucking brilliant.

Making the weekend final score: Chelsea 0, Meghan Markle 3, Jackson Lamb 12. Its gets no better.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

You should never ever be optimistic or positive in any way. It just doesn’t pay off. And I don’t mean Spurs. Even though that would be a good rule for Spurs fans. But just take this morning…

I went off to Tai Chi at 8. It was a fabulously beautiful morning. I took the top off the car and enjoyed the gorgeous sky. Glad I’d put a jacket on. I never said it was warm. And on the way home, it was not only still lovely but, unusually for a Saturday morning, the roads were really clear. I may have broken the speed limit, but not by much. Just enough that I feel I’m actually moving. And I thought ‘this is great’!

Big mistake. A woman, who we’ll call ‘Paula’, mainly because that’s her name, pulled out of a side street and hit my car. I saw her waiting to pull out, gave her a ‘wide berth’, but she came anyway. WTF???

Normally such an offence against the vehicle I love carries an instant death penalty. And, coming from my class, I was carrying a sword. But the look on her face as she came over to me was so totally remorseful and apologetic I decided to spare her. Until it goes to court, obviously, then all bets are off. She admitted total liability and even though it sounded like she caved in the entire side of the car, it was in fact only a few scratches on the bumper. Luckily. Because she was driving one of those massive Kia electric things which weigh about 3 tons, which gives great damage potential. She gave me her details and she shall have my scratches repaired.

So it wasn’t so bad after all. I could still almost be positive because as I went to tennis it wasn’t raining. However, there were more surprises lurking on this day so filled with early promise. Article 7: see photo: fucking great Willow tree sprawled across my tennis court. I put Spurs Paul in the picture for scale purposes. He’s a big bloke. It’s a massive tree. Victim of storm Austin. Never mind, we played on a different court.

And it started raining. Not enough rain to stop us; we’re MEN, who don’t cower at a mere shower. Which later turned into a torrent, which is more abhorrent. So we eventually had to stop.

So I’d just like to say a big ‘THANK YOU, GOD!!!!’, for sending Paula, then felling a tree on my tennis court and making it rain. Things can only get better (as we play Chelsea at 5.30 tonight), ‘we can only hope’. And how does ‘hope’ usually work out???

Happy Saturday (I’m still trying)

A xxxx