Andy's Glasses

I spend a lot of time… ok, 3 minutes a night, but according to Mel it’s ‘FOREVER!!!!’, flicking through 862 tv channels to see what’s on. FOMO. Which, in the world of streaming, is probably particularly annoying. But the thing is, streaming is great if you know what you want to watch. Yet is way more confusing than it is inspiring if you don’t. You go on, you watch what you wanted, you leave. Whereas channel surfing shows what’s on. Ok, you get QVC, and how many gold plated bracelets does anyone really need? You get religious channels, fucking darts, snooker, golf, you know, the ‘sort-of sports’ for people who prefer beer to exercise, and you get loads of re-runs of programmes which were shit when they came out but have the redeeming quality of being dirt cheap for tv companies to show. But now and again, you find…

Top Gun.

Which, along with Terminator, Pretty Woman, Kill Bill, Fast and Furious (only part 1) and a few, select others, are simply compulsory viewing. And thus, at 10.30 at night, just out the bath, in my dressing gown, I ‘felt the need for speed’.

But even among the select few movies mentioned, Top Gun is extra unique. The acting is absolutely terrible. Awful. Dire. Wooden. And yet, the story is so good, even if 100% predictable and runs as if Tony Scott had read a handbook about how to put every cliche in known fiction into one single movie, it just works. You know that the amazingly gorgeous Kelly McGillis is ‘falling for…’ Tom (her actual words), before she says it. Because you’ve already ‘fallen for’ both of them. And Val Kilmer’s script was headed: ‘start sneering now and don’t stop til the credits roll’. Because that’s how ‘good baddies’ need to look. It got late. Went to bed. Just stopped for one little moment to press ‘record’ before I went. Even though I’ve seen it 100 times and I’m fairly sure I know how it ends. I had to check to ensure they hadn’t changed it.

It was the perfect movie for Passover. With Tom Cruise as Moses. A short Moses. Leading his ‘tribe’ out of… trouble. Vladimir Putin, who sent the Mig fighter planes, played Pharoah (not Joey, as above) and they parted the seas. Ok, even Paramount couldn’t get the sea to actually ‘part’ in any meaningful manner, so they stuck a massive aircraft carrier on it instead. Same difference. Allegorical. Innit. Don’t be so bloody literal! It was the Passover story and done very well. Except the sex scenes. They’re not normally part of that story. But heh, that’s life, right?

Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Friday

A xxxx

I’ve created my own political party. Well, England used to have 2 parties, which served us well for a hundred years, with a few ‘peripherals’, like the Raving Loonies, the Monster Zomby party, the Greens and the Lib Dem’s (this rather insulting ranking is 100% intentional), just for the appearance of good democracy. I don’t count Scottish Nationalists, Plaid Cymrus or the IRA, cos they don’t live round ‘ere.

It’s all changed. The Tories, sadly, disgraced themselves progressively during their last 14 years in charge and Labour showed within about 3 weeks why the truly massive election majority they enjoyed was possibly the biggest political mistake that mass of voters ever made. And that has ‘opened up the ends’ of the political spectrum. Basically, the centrists of the Tories and Labour are untrustworthy, look further afar. Thus we now have Reform on the right and the Greens holding temporary sway on the much more left than any party except Corbyn. But as that fuckwit remains incapable of even hoisting a Hamas flag without strangling himself, the ‘party with no name’ is pretty much stillborn. But we’ve instantly grown to a four-party nation. With the Greens and Reforms actually ahead in the polls.

Which could possibly end in ‘alliances’, the joining together of maybe the Tories and Reforms. Possibly the Greens with Labour, adding on the Scots in Westminster as they share the same core values of equality for all, long as they’re not employed; those we tax the shit out of and send the money to terrorist training camps in Gaza.

Or, if not alliances, then we’ll end up like virtually all the Europeans and so many other democracies, with a ‘coalition’ government. The worst possible scenario. Other than the Greens, who can never be worsened. Coalitions just stop anyone ever doing anything positive. Agreements between those with diametrically opposing views is never easy.

So I want a party. Not, like, balloons and cakes and shit type ‘party’, I want a political one. And I want to demand a complete end to Denmark. It’s simply too Danish. I want instead a democratic, socialist nation placed there, only for non-Danish. They’ve have their sway far too long. And it’s repressive having all those blond people in one place. Anyone in favour of Denmark will be considered ‘racist’!!! Murder of Danes is to be encouraged.

And if that sounds stupid, in any small way, this is a motion presented at the Green’s spring conference. That ‘zionism’ should be considered a ‘racist ideology’. That Israel should be ‘abolished’ (these are the actual words in their ‘motion’), and replaced with a ‘single, democratic Palestinian state’. To which end, the motion calls for ‘the right of Palestinian people to resistance and liberation from the Israeli occupation, including armed struggle’. In other words: go kill all the Jews you can find. And fuck the ‘2-state solution’; we want 1 and it’s ‘ours’!!!

Zack Polanski presented this. It never actually made it to the voting session because their technology (it was a zoom conference) was as shit as their ideology, and also because there were arguments about ‘misgendering’. Which, to be honest, tells you everything wrong about the Green Party, other than the rabid anti-semitism.

If this motion should pass, and if the Green’s should win the General Election: I would personally take Zac Polanski, the gay Jew, to ‘new Palestine’, so that he may get to enjoy ‘his idea of heaven’, for the 4.2 seconds it took him to get from the rooftops, to the ground where they throw gay people, so he can develop another idea of ‘heaven’. A more permanent one. A more ‘Democratic’ one.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Ok, here’s the situation: Spurs are 17th in the league. One point above relegation. We’ve lost 5 out of our last 6 games. The last of which was to one of the four teams below us in the table. At home. By 3-nil. So we need a ‘Blues Brothers moment’.

‘There’s 7 matches to play. We have a full squad, a fantastic stadium and a new manager.’ Let GO!!!

And unlike the last incumbent in the managerial seat, this one is not not greeted with WHO????. This is one we know. Roberti De Zerbi. One time leader of Brighton. And it has to be agreed; with great effect. They not only improved up the league, advanced in cups and made it into Europe, they played great, attacking football. Stylish. Flair was encouraged and incorporated into the game plans. He then went to Marseilles (s’in France, innit) and led them well too.

So he has ‘the pedigree’, he has the quality, he’s available NOW, (FFS), and we are fucking desperate. He’s also agreed that IF we get relegated, he will stay. As many managers would not sign to that. It seems a match made in heaven.

But footballing heaven is different from that other one. Its paved with stumbling blocks, populated by short-sighted morons and led by a group of Spurs fans who’ve suddenly discovered ‘moraliteeee’ and misplaced it quite ridiculously to try and depose De Zerbi before he’s started.

We can’t work with HIM!!!, they cry. He’s TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!!, they post their little online groups. And why this dissent? Because Roberto stood by Mason Greenwood. When all else painted him a hate-figure.

Greenwood was a ‘star’ for England and Manchester United. A really gifted player. Who was accused of rape, sexual assault and controlling behaviour. As about half the Premier League could be accused of. And most BBC presenters. Man United immediately kicked him out, all hell broke loose and he was instant pariah. But then, all the charges were dropped. All of them. Which is pretty remarkable. Because there were a lot of them, he was arrested twice. And we have a kind of law here, (there and everywhere, except possibly Dubai) that your ‘innocent until proven guilty’. But apparently that’s not the case for footballers. And certainly not for Spurs Fan Groups, who still find you guilty long after you’re proclaimed innocent. And thus anyone in favour of you is guilty by association. Or ‘guilty by association football’ in this specific case.

De Zerbi greeted Mason warmly at Marseilles (the French love a rapist) because he was, legally, ‘an innocent man’, with oodles of skill and reputation in the dirt.

You should also know that although a lot of footballers are rich, thick and arrogant to the point of committing terrible offences against women, some footballers can fall foul of ‘cries of rape’ by women looking to make a killing on the blackmail circuit. It happens.

And thus, because this man was nice to a man proclaimed innocent but had been accused of horrible crimes, ‘he’s not the man for our job’ and he won’t be welcomed.

Its almost like my entire football club is engaged in self-destruction.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I’ve never been to Dubai. I will do. Just as soon as I’ve bought the gold Ferrari, finished the gold leaf of the toilet seat and had the Range Rover diamond-encrusted. Also, if I’m honest, Mel and I need a ‘bit of work done’ before we’d feel comfortable in the Emirates Airlines first class lounge. To step off the plane in that particular Emirate with, like, ‘normal lips’ which haven’t been filled, puffed and inflated to the point where you can barely see over the top of them, would make you a pariah. No-one would take you seriously in Dubai without a boob-job, bum-lift and a half-neck tattoo.

I make no judgments.

Dubai came about, as a ‘destination’ at about the time of Wolf of Wall Street hit the screens. The 2, in my mind, run parallel. A time when people who made loads of money, felt the need to show it to everybody who didn’t. There was no moral question involved as to the decency of such a life-style, because these people were morality-free and worked in a complete moral vacuum. Everything had to be loud, lairy and as flashy as could be imagined. Excessive was the byword of the time. And they needed a holiday. All those long hours of robbing the financial markets by every devious method, before it became illegal, took its toll.

But Marbella was a bit 1970s, Cannes a bit stiff, Monte Carlo too French and Tuscany lacking the ‘flash’ they needed to validate themselves.

So they invented Dubai. They quite literally took a bit of land on a coast and created everything from the hotels to the beaches, from the offshore islands to the shape and quality of the sand. Fortunately, sand was an almost limitless commodity there. Just grab a wheelbarrow and find the nearest dune. Help ya’self.

But somewhere along the way, the decision was made that Dubai would not be a normal destination. Lacking any cultural or geographical interest whatsoever, it instead became a place to demonstrate the virtues of monetary display. The MOST fabulous hotels in the world. Unbelievably brilliant restaurants which you’re taken to in submarines. Bigger, better, flashier, more sparkly. Las Vegas without gambling (a bit haram) and obviously alcohol (even more haram), but compensated for by adding gold.

For some reason, Dubai has never really appealed to me. Until now.

Because it is the only place in the world where you won’t be surrounded by dickheads taking selfies. Its illegal there. Take a selfie of you by the Burj al Arab tower and you’ll go to prison for 25 years. Photo of the kids by The Dubai Centre and you’re in handcuffs and on your way to jail before you can say: ‘and salaam to you, too’.

70 Brits are currently jailed for ‘having photos on their phone’, if those photos contain any images of missiles, drones, destruction of anything, brick-dust, shrapnel or anything ‘which may spoil the image of Dubai’ as a tourist haven.

Whereas arresting people for taking photos will do wonders for the trade?

One day…

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I grew up in a different world. Kids were allowed to have fun, and most unusual for anyone born after 1970 to understand, we were allowed freedom. Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t invented until 2013, Jimmy Savile was still a national (vomit) treasure, even though there was not one person in the entire nation to whom he didn’t ‘give the creeps’, and Rolph Harris played with his (own) didgeridoo. The clergy at that time were (apparently?, superficially?) still more engaged in worship and community work than in fiddling with little boys and Harvey Weinstein was thinking about a career in movies. Even Harrods was just ‘the best department store in the world’, before devolving into the London Sexual Abuse and Rape Centre under Mohammed Fayed’s later stewardship.

Basically, all this shit was happening in the early 60s but it was either ‘not talked about’ in decent society, mainly because a high proportion of ‘decent society’ were engaged as perpetrators of what would later become crimes; or no-one believed it was occurring.

So children played on the streets. Without minders, carers, nannies or armed guards. We just ran around, dodging the cars (most of the time), running down alleyways to our mates’ houses and, essentially ‘running wild’. My parents were good people. Caring, loving, devoted to their family. But in 1963 that apparently included operating on the ‘enough rope to hang themselves’ ethos. Ok, my brother was 3 years older than me and, unlike me, he was pretty much ‘born sensible’. You could trust Rich in any situation. He was blessed with the common sense that, genetically speaking, he should have shared with me. Genetics just doesn’t really work that way though. But if we were together, my parents knew he would do the right thing, even at 10 years old.

And the most fun we had, the best of all ‘freedoms’ was going out on our bikes. Because at 7/8 years old, with that wonderfully ‘limited world view’ which stretched all the way from Gants Hill Roundabout to Valentines Park, as boundaries of the ‘known world’, we could go ‘anywhere’. Long as we avoided the main roads. And long as I LISTEN TO RICHARD!!!! Yeah, good luck, Richard. But we went down to the Roading River, to ride around the densely wooded banks (known as ‘the race track’) and our other favourite was ‘the dump’. Which was a dump. Literally. But we found amazing stuff there. Though ‘amazing when you’re 7 has a slightly different meaning from the adult interpretation.

Bikes gave us freedom. A feeling I still get every time I get on a bike now. Electric, ‘normal’, someone else’s, doesn’t matter. You get on, you can ‘go anywhere’!

So we’re always keen on Lila and Joey riding bikes. We bought them bikes a couple of years ago, we got them lessons to ride them and we love them on them. Even though Joey has issues with the process. As he does with any process which involves listening to people. But he’ll get there. Lila is proficient. And they’ve now outgrown their bikes. So this afternoon we’re all going to Halfords for new bikes. It’s Lila’s birthday on Wednesday and Joey’s next month, so we’re getting biked up. I promised Lila that she could have… ‘gears’!!! Because I remember how big a deal that was for me. So Joey will have gears too, obviously.

And I reckon I’m more exited than either of the kids about this.

Happy bike day

A xxxx

The foot is fine. Thanks for asking. So fine, I’ve forgotten about it. And I forgot today when I played tennis. In the glorious sunshine (good thing) and the howling winds (bad thing). The arctic temperatures we can cope with (indifferent thing, but shrivelled testicles is a bad thing).

And feeling young and fit and fabulous (DON’T LOOK IN THE MIRROR!!! EVERRRR!!!), I opened the mail to find my driving license renewal application. From HIS Majesty’s government, no less. I’ve had my license for almost 53 years. Same one, other than when they did the photo thing. Why do I need another one? Because when you get to 70, the driving authorities in our fine nation start to think along the lines of: “is it in any way possible that the person who passed his driving test at 17 may have, in some small way, changed at all, by the time he reaches 70? Like, physically, mentally, healthwise? Is he now prone to blackouts, have both his legs been removed surgically, can he still count backwards from 10 without dribbling down his shirt?? Has he died?? Can’t go allowing dead people to drive. Vampires and undead have to answer special section: DVLA 14.6.293G, only available in the hours of darknesss.”

Yet rather than actually call you in, check your eyesight, maybe a brief physical, ensure that your mobile oxygen tank can fit into your car along with your nurse and carer, they just ask you. “Can you see OK?”, great, we’ll tick that then. “Do you suffer more than three epileptic episodes between home and Brent Cross?”, no, great. “Do you drive a car with hundreds of horse-powers even though your speed of reaction is now measured in glacial time?”, no problem. “Do you remember what a car is?”, well, mental health seems great too then. It’s what we call ‘self assessment’. You just ‘do-it-yourself’. Or guess. Or just lie. No difference.

The entire process takes approximately 4 minutes on the online portal.

The process of proving your identity to allow this to happen, takes 14 hours, 3 apps, 14 photo downloads, half a dozen ‘selfies’ and scanning the mole patterns of your left calf.

As you know, I am in the peak of physical health and vitality. In fact, I have been described by some (me, mainly, possibly Mel if she needs something really badly) as ‘perfect’. The only difference between me now and me at 17 is that I know more. And forget more. And ache more. And… forgotten. But I hate old people driving. They wear hats. In the car, FFS. And they adhere to speed limits. Which is quite frankly ludicrous, obstructive and a waste of time.

They should be calling people in at 60 for an eye test. Just a visual scan if nothing else. 20 seconds. To avoid having the roads filled with blind septuagenarians wearing their wife’s glasses to reverse. Check mental health. Speed of reflex. but they don’t. They’d rather develop really ridiculous and difficult tests just to prove you are who you say you are, then let you drive in any condition whatsoever, just because you say you’re ok.

And they wonder why driving standards are dropping.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Meta and Google have been found guilty of making kids addicted to ‘social media’. So fuck Meta and Google. They can afford the law suit which surely won’t amount to much more than… 5 million quid times… every kid in America plus… lawyer’s fees… errrrr… about 537 billion dollars. Plus change. Because the floodgates are open. The ‘Bill-Gates’ as they’ll now be known in this context. The American legal profession will be at every school in the land signing up kids for the class action suits, know here as either ‘Class 4B action’ or ‘Giraffe Class Action’, depending on the State concerned. In Mississippi it’s the Martin Luther King Class Action.

Firstly, for the defence. How do you apportion the fuck-uppage-ness of a kids mental state? Into what would normally occur in any teenager, and what is the ‘sole responsibility’ of social media input? How do you work that out? And much as I’m no fan of social media channels… other than WhatsApp which IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN MY LIFE!!!, kids are desperate to get on them. To ‘follow’ the same fucking imbeciles on Insta as everyone else does. To ‘conform’ as kids ALWAYS want to do. If these kids overdo their exposure, is that down to Mark Zuckerberg? Or their parents? More difficult is the ‘addiction’ bit. Which really is the key word here; the case was not about the evils of social media, that would be longest case ever, but specifically, that ‘they go out of their way to get kids addicted’. And definitions of ‘addiction’ aside, this is where I have to switch and make the case for the plaintiff.

Firstly, Meta and Google KNOW that kids under 13 are using their platforms. But do nothing about it. They get paid for high numbers of users, why would they reduce that willingly? But worse still, much more cynical, is Big Tech’s use of algorithms. Its ability to ‘know’, based on past usage, exactly what pushes each kid’s buttons and presenting them with precisely what they love seeing. Gambling sites use the same thing. Give the users exactly what they want, time and again, to keep them coming back. And whether that is ‘clever marketing’ or ‘cynical exploitation leading to addiction’ is the valid question of our times. But gambling sites are legally prevented from dealing with kids, whereas the Tech dudes are given much more leeway. They can only ‘try’ to detect underage users. And they obviously don’t try very hard. Much as they don’t with self harm issues, Manosphere promotions, suicide assistance, toxic pornography and a host of other ‘lovelies’.

The question then comes as to how much screen time should your kids have? The kids’ answer would be ‘as much as I could possibly get’ whereas grownups feel differently. And yet…

Often don’t exactly ‘lead by example’. If parents seem less obsessed with their phones, perhaps the kids wouldn’t become excessive users themselves. Possibly if parents left phones aside when reading to kids, doing homework with them, picking them up from school, playing with them, maybe the kids wouldn’t be constantly turning this ‘wonderful thing’ into something iconic and magical. Just maybe.

Or, we can fuck up the kids and get 5 mil each from Zuckerberg? What do ya reckon?

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I’ve changed. Don’t worry, I’m still gorgeous and fabulous and magnificent in every way, but I’ve changed. From being a professional optician, a football fan, political critic and devotee of all the arts (as long as its not ballet, opera or… or art), who happened to be Jewish; I’m now a professional Jew who works, likes football and tolerates politics. Got no fucking time left for arts; being Jewish takes up too many hours. Its a big commitment. And that’s without ever opening a prayer book. God forbid. What a fabulously ironic phrase.

So, hot on the trail of venting my dismay, disgust and disappointment about ambulance-gate, (for which, I’m glad to say, 2 arrests have now been made. I’m not so glad that the police have refused my request for just 10 minutes in the cell with them, just me and my baseball bat), last night I attended a lecture. Which wasn’t really a lecture, more a ‘conversation’. With Natasha Hausdorff. She’s the head of UK Lawyers for Israel and wonderfully outspoken protector of the Jews from people talking rubbish. Because she’s an international law barrister and just tells all the stupid, BBC-inspired sheep, what the words they band about really mean and how the ‘occupied territories’ are actually Israel, according to not just laws, but British laws. And how the police have the power to stop genocidal chants like ‘from the River to the Sea’ but are restrained by a government in fear of losing its not insubstantial left wing from doing so.

Did I say she’s clever? Might have missed that. But most importantly, she is, like me, exceptionally beautiful. And ‘we’ (there were 200 people there) spoke about antisemitism. Because it affects everything. Particularly now.

And, as if to illustrate that very point, the event was held at JW3. The Jewish community centre on the Finchley Road in Hampstead. A fabulous, purpose-built facility and a great ‘space’. They have lectures, concerts, comedians, movies; they have lessons in everything from Spanish to Spanish Omelettes, French to French cuisine, all sorts of things, especially relating to food.

And outside were guards. Several of them. Metal detectors in hand, handbag searches mandatory, 24 hours a day. The centre spends £600,000 a year on security. How much more entertainment could be had for that money? How many more courses, or mobility sessions for people a bit older than me, or cookery classes, FFS, if they could save that vast sum?

But its simply not an option. As proven on Sunday night just up the road in Golders Green. You simply can’t be too vigilant. There is so much ‘hate’, and just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

As political statements go, this was a doozy. As a protest, it kind’a lacked direction. Even as an act of terrorism, it had all the logic of blowing up your own car. It was ‘shitting on your own doorstep’.

Because these 3 total fuckwits decided to blow up 4 ambulances. The very vehicles which may save their (totally worthless) lives, or those of their mothers, grandmothers, cousins. These were not ‘IDF’ vehicles. They weren’t tanks. They were just ambulances, whose only crime was to have hebrew lettering on the side and… horror of horrors… a Star of David!!! Though in fact even that’s now been ‘stylised’ or even ‘disguised’ because of the inflammatory nature of such a sign in antisemite circles.

Hatzalah are a truly brilliant organisation. They are like the NHS ambulance service, but they arrive within about 10 minutes. You call them; they come. They don’t ask your religion, nor race, nor football team, nor anything. They help everybody. Even Chartered Accountants. They come quickly, have highly trained paramedics and liaise with the NHS directly as they take the ailing to hospital. When my poor, dying brother was in his nursing home, they called Hatzolah to take him to the Royal Free for emergency treatment. 5 times they did that. They don’t charge. The don’t ask anything. They just come. Day or night. All the staff are volunteers. Their only funding is by donation. So, generally, we, ‘the community’ fund Hatzolah so it can help everyone, both in and out of ‘the community’. That’s what Jews do when we’re not harvesting the organs of babies for Passover ceremonies and drinking the blood of blond people because it pairs nicely with beef. We’re charitable.

Mel’s dad had a fall when he was living alone. Mel found him on the floor in a pool of blood. 999 offered ‘about 4 hours’ for an ambulance, Hatzolah were there in 5 minutes. It was a Saturday morning. The 2 guys who came in were ‘religious’. Skull caps, tsitsit (a tasseled vest which God apparently likes in his fashionista mode), the lot. Yet it was Saturday morning. The Sabbath. When the religious won’t drive, won’t work, won’t use electric devices. But helping others and saving lives trumps even the Sabbath rules as they patched him up and whizzed him to the Hospital.

That’s what Hatzalah does.

And so three total imbeciles decide to blow them up. Why? Because Hatzalah is Jewish. These dickheads may have been ‘pro-Palestine’ lobby, taken to the ‘we hate Israel AND ALL JEWS’ level. They may have been an Iranian ‘cell’, as Iran has been organising many terrorist ‘events’ around Europe. There were even calls that Israel did it so others would get blamed. Yeah, right.

The government immediately pledged 500k for new vehicles. A move which would be like a lead weight on the massed anti-semites of the Labour back benches, the Corbynites and the hard lefties. But Starmer had to do something for enabling ‘the hate’. By allowing the ‘Gaza’ marches degenerate into ‘gas the Jews’ marches, week in, week out. Too afraid of his own awful MPs to actually halt the rising tide of virulent antisemitism in the country. Which has now reached the point where its apparently open fucking season.

Just out of interest, I made a donation to Hatzalah yesterday. Gerald Ronson gave £200,000 to them. (Mine was a bit less, just a bit.) The Community came up with half a million. In one morning. Not because (other than Ronson), they’re rich, or there’s millions of people, but because we care. Deeply. And have to stand up to the fuckwits. Who, ironically and tragically, also stand to benefit from such a brilliant organisation.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

So life is good. Unless you’re a Spurs fan. Or an Arsenal fan. Or a West Ham fan. (Wolves and Burnley fans don’t count; they don’t live round here). And if you just ‘put yesterday’s match’ into the deepest, furthest reaches of your mind; where you never look. When you force those thoughts away into those hiding places in your head where you keep the lists of things to do that your wife gives you every week; never to be considered again, then the world can seem bright, like the sunshine all around us.

Except the Middle East. That’s never happy. And I don’t get it. Not that they’re not happy, I really get that. Bombs and missiles and running in and out of shelters all day would make clown rip his hair out in anguish. Ok, rip his silly curly wig off, same difference. But what I don’t get is how they started a war with undefined goals. Or defined goals which changed daily. Or goals with shifting goal-posts. And without doing their due diligence..

Essentially, war is scientific. Not the fightin’, that’s just the mechanics. You plan a war. You know what your enemy has in his ‘arsenal’ (not ‘that’ Arsenal, bunch’a losers, the proper one) and you know what it is prepared to do to stop you and how you can overcome such events. And you work out the probabilities and so are prepared.

So the plan seemed to be: we’ll attack Iran to depose the regime/prevent nuclear threat/because they’re smelly Iranians. And once we’ve sent a few missiles over, the ‘masses’ (non-regimists) will just rise up, overthrow the IRCG and raise the flag of old Persia. What could go wrong?

No-one seemed to plan for the ‘regime’ to not just roll over and give up at the first whiff of missile fuel. The projected possibilities never seemed to include closing the Straits of Hormuz, which Lila and Joey could have told them was way more inevitability than possibility. But Lila and Joey don’t have the teams of war strategists that America has and Israel certainly has. Nor the ‘war games’ computer models. Even though Joey wants one for his birthday.

So Trump has now said that if they don’t open the Straight, he’s gonna bomb the entire energy supply network for all of Iran. To which Iran replied that the Strait is not actually closed, for traffic from its friendly, nasty horrible, allied nations, but only to ‘the enemy’ nations, like us. But if Trump bombs, the Straight will be totally closed.

Meaning shipments of oil, mainly, but also food, fertiliser and a million essentials, will become scarce and unavailable. Like petrol. Farmers can’t farm. Heating can’t work. Lights go out.

This is Trump’s ‘are you feeling lucky, punk?’ moment. Who blinks first.

Happy Monday (long as you hide all the shit)

A xxxx