Andy's Glasses

So when Man City come to play at your ground, you have to shout at the top of your voice: “CHEATS! CHEATS! CHEATS!”, then follow it immediately with “SUBJECT TO APPEAL!”, just to cover yourself. The irony being that if some of their 115 judgments are overturned on appeal, that’ll be seen as even more ‘cheating’ than the original cheating. Basically, unless you wear sky blue, you fucking hate Manchester City, now more than ever. And in doing so, you’re being morally correct. Hating City is ‘the right thing’ for any upstanding citizen to do. Even God hates Man City. Not just because, as everyone knows, he’s a massive Spurs fan, but because they have become the team of the devil. What? You never knew He was a Spurs fan? He has never missed a match. But like, ever. There’s a good argument that He hasn’t missed any game played anywhere, like, ever. That’s the ‘omnipotent and omniscient’ bit, I suppose.

Anyway. God, Spurs, Man City.

City must suffer. Must be made to suffer. And doubtless they will. But it must be stressed that dragging out the legalities until Joey is taking his grandchildren to the Lane (crying, screaming, moaning ‘BUT WE NEVER WINNNNNN’) is not the way it should go. Their horrible team have become a massive distraction. They have single-handedly (giving Chelsea a massive benefit of the doubt here) brought our league into disrepute. And they won the Champions League, so that’s another entire kettle of potential litigation just waiting for final judgment.

And how do you make a team suffer? Fines are pointless. However ‘big’ the fine, its small change for Sheikh Mansoor. And if it was only a fine, he could turn to his mates and say, quite correctly, that with enough money you can buy anything. So we need a ‘points deduction’ and we may need ‘stripping of titles’ and possibly ‘thrown out of the league’.

How many points? Would you deduct? 100? 1000? 50 points for the next 3 years? Drop ’em to League 2? That would actually be a massive bonus for the football league as they work their way up, with their diva superstars riding their Lamborghinis to Preston and Rotherham and Dagenham.

The other issue is the legacy. I don’t mean reputationally; there’s no hope for that. But in moving forward, Manchester City MUST have a complete change at the top. We have a law about club owners, who have to be decent, honest people, fit to own a club. The City ownership have shown that they’re not. So I don’t know how that works out financially, but Mansoor has to go. And Ferran Soriano, the chief exec. Plus anyone else they can find cooking the books to the extent of the 900 million quid they tried to ‘hide’ from their accounts.

Then we need to work out the extent of the managers’ complicity in it all. “I know nussing”, never rings true, Pep.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Its all about ‘care’. I care, you care, I need a carer, we’ll ALLL need lots’a care when we get ‘old’. Its what its all about. Andy Burnham’s dad was in a care home, my dad was in care home, Mel’s dad is in a care home waiting for… errrr… for whatever 100 year-olds wait for; when they can remember what it is.

But its the Prime Minister’s ‘big thing’. Social Care. Put the whole fucking country into ‘homes’ and care for them. Solves the housing crisis in one swoop, pre-empts things like dementia, disability, incontinence, old age and needing care at all. Just get in there and do as you’re fucking told!

We have an ‘aging population’, wow. Show me a place where the population is getting younger then. Oh, you mean there’s more old people and less young’uns to replace them. And to pay the tax burden needed to keep all these old people like cosseted pets.

And, of course, being Andy Burnham, ‘these will be FREE TO ALL!!!!!’

Firstly, can you just imagine the quality of such care homes? Run on the ‘NHS model’ of ‘awful, chaotic, unmanageable, ridiculously expensive yet still ‘shit at the point of service’, if you can get service, cram-em-in, fill the corridors, leave ’em in a pool of their own piss and serve them swill when absolutely necessary.

And secondly; how will it be paid for? If its a government ‘initiative’; a free, give-away social care deal, it will be loaded with free-loaders. Middle management on 6-figure salaries engaged in ‘admin’, on zoom calls from the golf course. There’ll be loads of meetings. Loads.

The cost? Measured in the hundreds of billions, per year. Ok, the NHS currently costs around 200 billion a year. And Saint Burnham wants to add social care into the mix.

Ask old people. I’m sure they’d rather pay something and have better quality than the ‘free for all’ could ever provide. Or chuck in their house, their savings, something. Anything.

We all want the ‘best services’ for our population. But it has to be paid for. We’re almost at war with both Iran and Russia, yet have no weapons. Only a few bullets left. But heh; ‘we’re in NATO’, so we’re safe. Phew.

If your last line of defence is help from the French, or Italians, you’re fucked.

Think harder, Andy

Happy Monday

A xxxx

As a devoted fan of Manchester Cit-eh, we need to have a little chat. I’ll include the Gallagher brothers in our chat along with a few other long-term die-hards, like me, who were actually fans of the club ‘before the billions arrived’. In the pre-Sheikh Mansoor days when we were just another middle-of-the-road, win-nothing, try not to get relegated, hiding in the massive shadow cast by our red-shirted brethren across the road, bunch of northern losers and tossers.

Then the Emirates arrived. Bringing its billions and billions. Which were used to, basically, buy a new football team. A good one, this time. Better than good. An amazing team filled with the best of the best of international stardom. A team that even Roman Abramovich could only dream of creating. But even The Oligarch realised that there were limits. That any club was only allowed to spend a percentage of its income each year and could not be funded by a billionaire’s piggy bank. So if Chelsea only earned 100 million quid a year, that put the limit on expenditure at some figure below that. Iss ‘financial fair play’, innit?

The only ways round it are to increase your income or reduce your expenditure. Unless…

Unless you’re Manchester Cit-ehhhhh!!! And you’re owned by a man who laughs at Financial Fair Play. Who scoffs as fiscal rules and sniggers at accounting regulations. In Mansoor’s mind, there is NO problem which can’t be resolved by just throwing more money at it. And as he has so much more money than anybody else, he was always going to ‘win’.

So he brought in the best manager around, Roberto Mancini, and the best player in the world, Yaya Toure, and he bought Sergio Aguero and Vincent Kompany and every fantastic player he could find. All lured by massive salaries unmatchable by other teams. In particular by teams who, kind’a, play to the rules. And instead of paying Mancini 20 million a year; the club paid him only a small part of that. The remainder was paid to him for being ‘an advisor’ to the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Because it was nothing to do with football. Obviously. He advised them on… errr… headscarves, maybe Italian marble for the palaces, which cars were more economical to run in a 60 degree climate.

Similarly, Yaya was only paid a part of his salary by Manchester City. The rest by some offshore, tax-haven-ed shell company with no means of support. Director: Sheikh Mansoor.

And then, for any end-of-year shortcomings, that was paid to Cit-eh as a ‘sponsorship deal’ for the naming rights to the Etihad Stadium. Increasing the club’s income to the levels necessary to avoid falling foul of FFP. And if some of these payments actually came directly from Mansoor’s personal account, which they did, and he’s a director of Manchester City; WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH THAT???? Honestly, this is just jealousy on the part of the other clubs. We have done nothing wrong. All 130 charges are totally spurious. Even though we’ve been found guilty on each and every one of them.

We shall appeal this travesty of justice, of course. Otherwise we’ll be terribly ‘sanctioned’. Possible even ‘thrown out of the Premier League’!!!

I’m curious as to how that would work, exactly. Would Cit-eh become an ‘un-club’? Just vanishing up its own spreadsheets? Or would it be relegated to Lower Leagues? Banned from Europe? Forced to play Dagenham & Redbridge every Saturday for all eternity? If it’s just ‘a fine’, that would be a massive win for City. However big it was. Just more proof, as if it were needed, as to how much money Abu Dhabi has.

I’m not ‘app-eh about this. Not ‘app-eh at all.

‘App-eh Saturday

A xxxx

It has begun!!

The ‘take over’ of our world by non-humans. As AI teaches itself to take over the world, robots will become the ruling class!! Because they can be controlled by the AI machines which have no controls on them because it might affect Nvidia’s share price. Trump’s discussing it today with Xi Jinping, the man who has just taken 500 acres of Mongolia and converted it from farmland to a data-centre centre for all the Chinese tech giants to set up shop for the AI roll-out. Trump reckons, ‘you don’t need to hold AI back, as long as you have a president with a high IQ’. It’s what he wrote. Which is possibly a true statement. It just doesn’t refer to the current president. Who is thick-as-shit. So we’re in trouble.

And it started yesterday. In Tescos in Fleet Street.

I walked in and there, patrolling the floor was… a robot!! In fucking Tescos!!! Ok, it wasn’t exactly ‘patrolling’ the floor, it was actually cleaning it. But it’s only a matter of taking away the mop and replacing it with a missile launcher, a high velocity machine gun and a flame thrower or two, and we’re in fucking TERMINATOR!!! The shop was busy but the robot (it looked like a big over-grown ‘Henry’) navigated around the shoppers as it cleaned. I didn’t hear it speak but I reckon it would have had an Austrian German accent. All killer robots do.

I over-react. It’s what I always do. My mind is great big conspiracy theory. Which, I’ll admit, can be a problem. I started looking to call Sarah Connor to warn her that her floor was in great danger of being cleaned!!!

I watch too many movies, read too many books, it’s not good for you.

And yet, the whole Terminator oevre was a premonition of somewhere between where we are now and where we might end up. Because it all starts with ‘computers taking over’. Which, in 1984 (ooooh, that year in itself carries spookiness, in an Orwellian way), when the first movie came out, was amazingly prescient in a way most science fiction, like ‘1984’, wasn’t. Real life diverges from fictional forecasting. Thank God. Or Godzilla would have destroyed New York and Martian invaders would have eaten whoever remained.

But I’m still waiting for ‘us’ to diverge from the Terminator plot. And I’m waiting…

Because, with not only the advance of AI, but its amazing facility to sidestep the measures in place to prevent it over-ruling its designers and going ‘maverick’, we may have to get Arnie out of retirement and all go fighting killer robots.

I’m gonna start with that fucker in Tescos!

Happy Thursday,

I’ll be back.

A xxxx

So my year is pretty mapped out from Jan 1st. And is defined by holidays, by Thursdays with Lila and The Monster, by Friday night dinners, by school holidays, tennis on Saturdays and Sundays, Tai Chi on Thursdays and Saturdays… (I’m so fucking BOR-INGGGG) and by the Jewish high holy days. Because EVERYTHING stops for Rosh Hashanah, the new year, and Yom Kippur, our ‘day of atonement’. Even God-deniers like me just obey and adhere. Its cultural. You just have to. Not about God. It’s about me. And to avoid anything too religious and pray-ish, I always opt to do security (we have a massive security operation at the synagogue, with about a dozen ‘professionals’ and 20 ‘volunteers’ on each shift). Because instead of sitting bored whilst all around mumble incessantly and sing out of tune, I go stand in the park with my stab-vest and walkie-talkie. Nothing much happens. Thank God. May it always stay that way. But just in case…

So yesterday I listened on my ear-piece to various ‘events’ unfolding. There’s always someone in a car which has driven past twice. We take note and go on ‘alert’. Even though it’s normally an Amazon delivery looking for number 63. But then there was a ‘suspicious person’, and worse, wearing a ruck-sack. We security bods fucking hate ruck-sacks because that’s where you hide stuff. And there was another ‘suspicious person’, who turned out to be an autistic man trying to walk the ‘London Ring’ and getting stressed because he lost his way. So basically; anyone who doesn’t look Jewish, anyone without a prayer book in hand and kippa on his head, is ‘suspicious’. The women all get strip searched. I’ve been told off for this more than once.

But here’s the thing. In my ‘year plan’, two things are virtual guarantees. That on Rosh Hashanah it will be sunny and gorgeous and if I get in the park, that’s the best security gig there is. (The synagogue backs onto a lovely park). And then, just 8 days later, Yom Kippur will be cold, grey, wet, rainy, stormy, horrible. Making standing in the park for an hour and a half not quite as pleasant. Perhaps this is God’s way of stressing the seriousness of Yom Kippur. Not to be distracted by nice weather. I don’t know, but it’s a virtual rule.

Until yesterday. When Yom Kippur was hotter than Rosh Hashanah. A real ‘WTF??’ moment. Have we not sinned this year? So we can have sunshine on a day of introspection and hunger (we ‘fast’ for 25 hours)? Or maybe this global warning shit has even affected our Holy Days!! I don’t know, but it was nice.

Our ‘fasting’, which I do because that first bite after 25 hours is so sensational, and for no other reason, is not a ‘punishment’, or ‘deprivation to atone’, they’re very Catholic concepts. We don’t beat ourselves with laurel branches all day to ‘suffer’, that’s a bit too Jesusy. We don’t suffer. We fast, in theory, because Yom Kippur is our day to ‘reset’ our personal plans for the forthcoming year. And we ‘commune’ with God (ok, bit of a problem for me, so I ‘commune’ with Bill Gates and Richard Branson) to such a degree that we simply rise above normal bodily desires. We’re too ‘busy’ to even think about eating. We become like ‘angels’ for the day. I struggle with the wings, personally, but get that we are ‘pure spirit’.

I’m all better now. Better than ever.

Happy First Day of the New Plan

A xxxx

Here’s an interesting statistic. In the last 48 matches in which Spurs have gone 1-nil down, they have won… none. Not one. Not even come back to draw. Lost all 48. Ok, so we don’t ’come from behind’ very well. If at all. It’s almost ‘Spursy’ but that word is really reserved for our countless examples of throwing it away at the end. It also has to be said therefore that we don’t ’come from behind’ even when we’re ahead. Basically, if there’s a way to lose a match, my boys will find it, one way or another.

My beloved grand-thug, Joey, played his first ‘proper match’ yesterday for his Sunday league team. Joey has been a regular at Spurs since he was about 4, so he knows about shit football and humiliating results. Even if, at 7, he can’t spell either one.

His team were 3-1 down. Oh no! Would Joey use the example of his much-loved heroes and crumble to a 7-1 defeat???? No, they did something Joey has no precedent for in his life. They ‘came back’ to 3-3. And then, they went on to win 6-3. Well done, Joey, well done HMH under-whatevers.

Here’s my point. You’ll need to follow. With a calculator. Then possibly with a straight-jacket.

If Joey could come back from behind at 7, a team of say 25 year-olds, being 3.5 times older, should be able to come back 3.5 times better. Meaning for every goal we concede we should score 3.5 goals. To match Joey’s achievement. In which case, on Saturday, having been 3 goals behind, Spurs should have replied with 10.5 goals. And won 10.5-3. Call it 11-3 as we don’t really do ‘halves’ in the Premier League.

So the main difference between Joey and ‘a Spurs player’ is approximately 22 years, 150 grand a week, 3 Lamborghinis, 9 rape charges, an arm and a leg of tattoos and the fact that with a little coaching and a great attitude, Joey doesn’t pitch up arrogantly and PLAY LIKE A FUCKING SPAZZZZ!!!!!

Here’s another great number. In 36 home matches since 2024, Spurs have won 5. No team with such a proud number attached has ever survived relegation. But we did it. Twice. The first time winning the Europa League in between losing every fucking game played at the Lane.

The worst thing of all in Arsenal’s 3-nil loss at Brighton… ok, the only bad thing about that loss, was that the Brighton fans were singing ‘are you Tottenham in disguise’ at Arsenal.

So we are now just a metaphor for a team which loses. Badly.

And as we go into the 3 week international break (3 fucking weeks!!!! What’s that all about, suddenly???) we lie at the very bottom of the league. The only way is up.

Or down.

O.M.G.

Happy Yom Kippur

A xxxx

I’ve never been the sort of person who lets tragedy get in the way of a good laugh. I do try. But when I read a headline like the one above…

I mean; how small does your penis have to be, FFS? Do you need scaffolding after your third? But basically, this is obviously a serious and tragic lesson for us all. Stop at 4.

And so to the football. Another tragic lesson for us at the moment. As my two favourite teams both lost yesterday. Spurs finally reached their season’s first and paramount objective of scoring a goal. Which was a brilliant moment. Unfortunately in the 94th minute of a match in which we’d already conceded 3. Although we did get an even later goal as well, making it ‘almost a draw’!!! But for the fairly obvious fact that it wasn’t a draw. And about 95% of Spurs fans had left the stadium before we scored either. Thus missing the two moments which almost represent all the ‘glory’ we’ve enjoyed this season.

Yet I have faith. In Tottenham, in our players, in Roberto Di Zerbi, in… everything. Because we look good. Nice haircuts, smart kit, good footballs. And we even play good football; easy on the eye, flowing, good burst of speed. Pretty much everything. Except goals. Ok, except goals that matter. We seem to lack any player capable of putting the ball in the net. Which, for a football team, may be considered something of a problem.

It’s not a problem for Brighton. Who played my other favourite team, Arsenal, yesterday. In what as, quite frankly, another shit-show.

Arsenal strutted out onto the pitch like the invincible, arrogant, swaggering champions that they are. But somewhere during the first 3 minutes they forgot that you actually have to play like champions to win matches. And they didn’t. They really didn’t. Mainly because Brighton didn’t let them. They were too fast, too aggressive and just too good for ‘my Champions’ to deal with. So instead, ‘we’ just entered a spiral of self-destruction and cried. It was all very upsetting and in particular I felt for Mikel Arteta. Who has absolutely no love for either Brighton nor their manager, Fabian Herzeler because the German slagged of Arsenal’s tactics last year. So after the match Mikel went back to ‘sultry’ mode. Without the smile which we’ve been seeing every other weekend of the season so far. Which has caused me to smash 4 tv screens so far. I seriously can’t afford Arsenal to keep winning.

Today Fulham play Manchester City. If Fulham should win or even draw, (unlikely, I grant you, but football is football), Spurs will go bottom of the table. And if City win, they open a little gap on Arsenal at the top. Hmmm…

I actually now want Brighton to win the league. Because one thing’s for sure. Spurs aren’t going to.

Happy (fucking!) Sunday

A xxx

“OH MY GOOOOOD!!!! YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED (dot, dot, dot), ITS THE BEST THING EVERRRRRRR!! THEY TRACK OF FAMILY OF REAL LIFE ZOMBIES… OK, REAL ZOMBIES, DEAD, OBVIOUSLY, THROUGH THEIR CHRISTENING, BARMITZVAH, WEDDINGS, ITS BRILLIANT. FILMED IN THE CZECH REPBULIC, DUBBED INTO URDU AND SUBTITELED IN GREEK BUT ITS JUST SOOOOO VISUAL. ONLY 37 EPISODES, HOUR-AND-A-HALF EACH, JUST TAKE A FEW DAYS OFF AND BINGE-WATCH. YOU’LL THANK ME!!!!!”

Everyone has a ‘must watch’ and, to be honest, they’re all shit. Addictive shit, which is the secret of a ‘good series’. It’s like watching darts, boring as all fuck but once you get the rhythm of the numbers, you can’t look away. And so with 95% of Netflix/Apple/Amazon, even the revered i-player.

We don’t watch much tv. We either don’t have time or Mel falls asleep. And thus we’re very selective what we do watch. First rule, obviously, for anyone over 33, is ‘no fucking reality shows’. Whether filmed here, in New Jersey, California or Melbourne. No faux marriages or other ‘dating’ shit, disabled or otherwise. And obviously everyone goes for their preferred genres. Ours is definitely ‘thriller’. Yet the best thing to come out of the entire Covid business, the 2 years of hell, was ‘the Queen’s Gambit’. And the amazing ‘Heist’, a Spanish series about… well, a heist. But quite a brilliant one and with quite amazingly gorgeous women in it. Otherwise, all just different levels of shit. Other than… the BIG TWO! The ones where you’re sitting on your sofa, unmoving, for 9 months until the next series starts.

Fauda is one. It is brutal, both physically and emotionally, it’s bloody, violent, loud, exiting, totally edge-of-the-seat gripping and… it’s Israeli. The devil’s nation. Apparently. You shouldn’t watch Fauda before retiring for the night. Your heart won’t return to resting values for at least an hour. The new series has just begun and it’s very October 7.

And the other; the absolute best thing ever to reach our screens, is, of course, Slow Horses. Read the books, they’re incredible. The TV series though, are sublime. Gary Oldman at the best he will ever be because there could never be a better role for him to play than Jackson Lamb. Kristen Scott-Thomas is allowed to give the full ‘ice maiden’ and hams it up to the max. This series has a different script writer from the last 5. And I know her.

And thus warned her of the awesome responsibility she’s signed up for. She has the God-given duty to maintain the incredibly high standards, sufficient to keep MEEEEE happy. She even emailed me yesterday to see if I was ready to pass judgment. But I have to finish Fauda first. Otherwise I get confused, watching two series simultaneously. Slow Horses, I’m ‘saving’. Once I got involved in watching ‘Married at First Sight’ and ‘The Night Manager’ alternately and couldn’t understand why Tom Hiddleston had just murdered his wife of 3 days, and why she no longer had an Australian accent.

So there you have it. Other than the News (hate it but can’t ever miss it) and, obviously, football, if I can bear it, there is NOTHING to watch other than Fauda or Slow Horses.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Sidney Sweeney has caused a storm. Another storm. She’s quite a stormy person. Not only did she cross the absolute rubicon in Hollywood circles by being a Trump fan!!!, she then made the jeans/genes ad which was immediately leapt on by the champagne democrats, who love a bandwagon more than they love being educated or informed, as ‘EUGENICS!!!!’ Hitler’s dream reduced to a pair of Wranglers. With big tits. And now this!!!

Novig is a gambling company. In which Ms Sweeney is an investor. So she created a series of adverts in which she’s positioned as, pretty much, a porn star holding a sporting item. There’s a series of them. There’s ’Gridiron Gel’, there’s ‘Tits’n’tennis’, there’s even Boomergang Babe. And Baseball Blow-job. OK, I invented that last one, just to stress the point. Which will probably emerge at some point, I’m sure. Fairly sure.

There’s the normal post-feminist crapola about ‘empowerment’ and ‘body pride’ and ‘if you had a pair of tits like this you’d get them out at any opportunity too; if someone was paying you hundreds of thousands’, from Ms Sweeney’s camp. And then there’s the outrage. The disdain. The horror!!! As flocks of sporting women queue up to shout their sheer disgust that all their lifelong, tortuous efforts and achievements have been reduced to something between mere objectification and outright pornography. Which, you have to admit, Sidney, they have. Wimmin’s sports is all about da bodies, innit? Fit babes. Fit MAGA babes, if necessary.

Amy Hunt complained. Our brilliant sprinter who came from the Commonwealth Games with four gold medals. Saying how she’s all about muscle and sweat and blood and tears. And she’s totally right. Yet I couldn’t help notice that she wouldn’t get into the blocks without her false eye lashes and full make-up. Obviously for the speed advantage, but also because she wants to look good. We all want to look good, whatever we’re doing. And Amy Hunt does look good. Like all sprinters, she doesn’t over-dress either.

Unfortunately all of these arguments miss the point by a mile in under 4 minutes. It’s not about representing athletes as ‘things of mere beauty’, unless they choose to do it themselves, it’s about the target market. This is a gambling site. And who, in the most part, are the gamblers? And if you want to attract gamblers, I reckon Sidney Sweeney outdoes Ray Winstone by 10 to 1. Maybe 100 to 1.

And the cruellest irony of all; that by making all the fuss, Novig are getting about a million times the advertising coverage they actually paid for. Once an advert makes it onto the front pages of newspapers, FREE OF CHARGE, the advertisers and their clients are laughing all the way to the bank, the race-track and the ball park.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx