Now that’s football. The (current world champion and favourites) American women beat the Thai women 13-0 last night in their womenly World Cup match. Nothing feminine about that score. The Thai team offered a free massage to every American player after their very happy ending. I mean 13-nil!!! Were the Thais using a Scottish goalkeeper or something? I mean…

But still not convinced; if I wanted to watch girlie football I’d go to Arsenal.

And though its a million miles from my beloved beach volleyball, the American team are good to look at. Don’t know why; one fit babe with a pony-tail is much like the next, but Alex Morgan, scorer of 5 goals, of whom I’d previously never heard, stole my heart (or thereabouts) in a way that Ronaldo never could.

I am opposed to all forms of the objectification of women.

Except beach volleyball.

Next year my dad (may it please the Lord) will have to pay for his tv license. 155 quid. Which he’s had free since 2001 when the Labour Party decided to give it free to over-75s. Well, unless they make exceptions for the over 90s, Dad’s gonna cough up. In a monetary sense only, I sincerely hope.

And this is why I hate politics. Because you’d think, ‘ahhh, nice Labour government, looking after the old people and taking away their license fee, nice’ when they did it in 2001. But they actually did it because they realised that with an ageing population that ‘grey vote’ could be theirs for just 155 quid a (silver) head. George Osborne in 2015 then did a clever thing. Sneaky but clever. The £750million a year benefit of free licences was moved from ‘the public purse’ to ‘the BBC’. The beeb, even though that’s publicly funded too, had to cough up all that money from its own funds, raised by everyone else’s license fees. And that is unsustainable. But George made it the BBC’s unsustainable problem rather than the government’s. Which makes them the bad guys, rather than the government. Who remain (no pun) as they were, merely shambolic, pathetic, divided, impossible, ungoverning, useless and moronic. But not ‘bad’. In this (and possibly only this) instance.

Off to a funeral, alas. Work will have to wait.

Happy (or sad) Wednesday

A xxxx