Andy's Glasses

I heard a great point last night on the radio. I was waiting for my father-in-law to come out of the hospital after his short stay which became a slightly longer stay because someone on the ward had covid. He was ‘being sent home’ by ‘hospital transport’, because ‘we can’t allow normal people, or taxis, to drive patients home’, at 4 o’clock. By 9 o’clock, the rules changed and we were allowed to collect him. Either that or Mel’s car was declared an ‘honorary ambulance’, I don’t know the details but otherwise it was to be at least another 2 hours if they took him. And as I waited in the car (ambulance bay, thought it best to stay in case they didn’t know about Mel’s car’s new status) I heard a woman talking about last year’s Number-10-gate issues. Specifically the second one, in which during the lockdown, gatherings more than 3 people banned, there were 7 people, including Boris, and Carrie, in the garden at Number 10 drinking wine and having fun.

Oh, that wasn’t a party, that was ‘a work meeting’. Ahh, the ‘work meeting’ escape clause. Except…

Why were they drinking wine whilst working? Lawyers can’t do it, accountants not permitted, virtually no-one is allowed to do it. But running the country (that’s what Number 10 meetings do) is something people can do whilst pissed. Not like there were any problems at that time, I s’pose. And furthermore, why the F*** was Carrie there? At a ‘work meeting’? She is not part of government, she just sleeps with it. And thus, in the interests of national security, represents a risk. She could be a ‘mole’. Certainly resembles one.

So yet again, its a wonderful ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ moment for our esteemed PM and his moronic team.

Which is why we’re not having our ‘usual’ pre-Christmas lockdown. Not for scientific reasons, nothing to do with health, the pandemic or infection rates. But because such a demand or request would be laughed off the front pages of the newspapers.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Omicron is serious. Nothing to do with case numbers, airport closures, party restrictions or even deaths. When football stops; its serious. And out of 10 fixtures this weekend, only 4 were played. Most of which didn’t count. The Arsenal match certainly was of no concern to anyone and Newcastle losing the Middle East derby match (Abu Dhabi vs Saudi Arabia) to Manchester City was a surprise to no-one south of Gateshead, east of Riyadh.

But fortunately, for all of football, for all of sport, for ALL OF MANKIND, one of the matches was simply magnificent. Of course, the term ‘magnificent’ is in the eye, the gut, the mind and the sanity, of the beholder. For Northerrners like Gary Neville, he can declare ‘the best football ah’ve sin all yer’, because he’s a semi-literate Mancunian (ie; one of the clever ones) whereas for Spurs fans… well Spurs fan numero uno, it was edge of the seat panic for 90 minutes plus stoppage time. But there was so much to admire. Brilliant play, by both teams, goals, squandered opportunities aplenty (by my team), excitement, passion, commitment and 2 instances of extreme violence. About which, I’d like to set the record straight.

Harry Kane’s yellow-card tackle on Andrew Robertson was perfectly fair and decent and innocent and innocuous. The fact he ‘appeared’ to take the ankle in a somewhat ‘studs up’ manner was just because he happened to be wearing football boots at the time. A coincidence. The referee made the right choice of coloured card. Jurgen Klopp disagreed, so he got one too.

The second incident was rather more sinister. The same Andrew Robertson, this time on the giving end to Emerson Royal. Who was brutally savaged onto the ground in a quite frankly unforgivable tackle. It deserved the red card which was, eventually, given. We simply can’t allow such reckless assault tarnish what was otherwise a truly beautiful game. Unless its perpetrated by my team.

The game did indeed live up to Gary N’s hyperbole. If you were a ‘neutral’, rather than an ‘ulcer grower’, it was just excitement and action, end-to-end, non-stop.

But what made me really happy and proud was that we were never ‘in awe’ of Liverpool, never put out of our stride, even when the pressure was on.

Antonio Conte is growing on me. Much like all our new managers do. For a while. But, as they sing in Cabaret, ‘maybe this time, he’ll stay’!!! (Pause for tears).

Very happy Monday

A xxxx

By Christmas Day there will be (an estimated, always fucking estimated) 55,000 NHS employees at home with Covid. Oh. My. Gooooooooodddd…

Will any of them be ill, dying, ready for hospitalisation, at death’s door or ready for euthanising? No. Will they be ‘ill’, feel poorly, a bit under the weather? Yeah, a few, for about 3/4 days. Then they’re just sitting there, feeling fine, asymptomatic and probably no longer capable of transmitting it to others. But for another 5 days, its Netflix, Big Mac deliveries and as much booze as they’re poor livers can absorb. Oh, and boredom and guilt. There’s always balance in life.

Thus, is the problem ‘omicron’? Or is the problem the stupidly over-cautious 10-day arbitrary isolation period?

Because if the NHS is affected, so are schools, rail and bus services, ambulances, police, fire departments…

And here’s the best bit: ITS ALL A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS! We’ve been duped, again and again, by our misguided, misled, mistimed, underperforming, over-exaggerating government. Without wishing to sound all Piers Corbyn about this, the current reaction to ‘the pandemic’ is stupid. And cobbled together from the early ‘bits’ when we knew nothing about the virus, and various add-ons as conditions changed. Without anyone taking a proper, objective, bottom-up view and re-wiring our Covid rules. And we need it now.

We were told ‘the vaccination is the answer’!!! And it was. Unfortunately, they got the question wrong. Then it was ‘second vaccinations’, followed by ‘boosters’!!! All of which I’ve had and I’m ready for more. Soon to be an addict. Yet oddly, people are still getting Covid, in their hundreds of thousands. Yet, praise be, none are going to hospital and none are dying. So someone in government has to look at this and think: WTF???

It’s not working. The economy is dying, the pubs closing down, businesses doomed, not because of the pandemic but because of the government’s response to the pandemic. And the panic about ‘overloading the NHS’ which really is not going to happen. Other than with all the other operations and procedures which aren’t being done due to covid-paranoia.

Chris Witty can fuck off, Boris can go to hell (it’s only a matter of time anyway), we need some new blood in there. Someone who can think outside of the ‘box’. That ‘box’ currently constructed using panic, paranoia, overreaction, ignorance and lack of logic.

I’ve ‘ad enough.

A xxxx

There was a tragedy on Thursday. Not the one in Leicester when the Spurs match was cancelled for covid. The one in Shropshire (no idea either, I’m guessing ‘up north somewhere’). In which the Conservatives were… ‘mullered’ barely covers it, ‘hammered‘ lacks the potency of the reality, ‘thrashed’, ‘defeated’ and ‘decimated’ all pitifully inadequate. I think, possibly, ‘castrated’ has the impact required to evoke the true nature of the defeat. Because the Tories had held that seat for over 200 years. They had a majority of 34,000. Or, as that number is now known, ‘a third of an omicron’ (yesterday’s infection rate rising to over 90k). And yet they managed to lose the seat by a 6,000 majority. Boris Johnson said ‘he accepted responsibility for the loss’. No shit, Boris.

And now the Conservatives have issued threats. Boris has 3 months to get his act together or face a leadership challenge. 90 days to become a better person. An honest, trustworthy, reliable leader of the nation. Rather than the hapless fuck-wit he is currently perceived to be. How hard can that be?

Well, on the face of it, shouldn’t be a problem. Just stop fucking things up. But unfortunately, Boris has such a vast history of fuckage, it really is almost inconsequential if he does indeed ‘knuckle down and run the country’. Because most of his ‘crimes’ are historical anyway. The Paterson sleaze row was current. And stupid. And in fact resulted in the bye-election. But the parties? They were a year ago. The flat renovation? 18 months. And who knows how many ridiculously extravagant gestures were made to Boris, un-noted, for various other ridiculously extravagant personal expenditures? How many more little illegitimate blond babies will be born in and around the capital? How many more covid cock-ups will surface? How many misjudgments of public opinion can Boris avoid before the end of March?

It’s a big ask to expect Boris to suddenly stop being a liability. It’s even bigger to expect there’s no more skeletons waiting to fall out of his closet.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

It’s a funny ole world. Lewis Hamilton wins 7 Grand Prix titles and gets nothing (the 50 mil a year simply doesn’t ‘count’, we’re not talking ‘monetary gain’ here) other than a few lumps of cut glass to put on his mum’s mantelpiece. Then he loses a championship, in the most spectacular, violent and brutal manner possible, and they give him a knighthood.

And I looked at this picture and thought: WTF??? What century was this taken???

I know, that’s what makes Britain the greatest place in the world. That we have an unquestionable class system in which one family, just One Family, has the unquestionable, unalienable, unique and exclusive right to bestow ‘class’ upon others, thus ‘ennobling’ them for all time. Amen. ‘For God and the King.’ But not necessarily in that order.

And Lewis Hamilton, for whom I have nothing but the utmost respect and reverence for as the finest driver possibly that the world has ever produced, is actually a bit of a trumped-up little shit. More so after his brush with Charles’s sword yesterday. Sir Trumped-up-little-Shit.

Because Lewis uses his position in the sporting limelight for political statement. He always has, and a credit to him for it. But the sort of political statement he likes to engage is of the ‘right-on’ variety. He supports BLM, rightly so; he wears a rainbow helmet in Shariah countries to make a stand for LGBTQ…and undecideds, he wants to be something of a social warrior. A fighter for the underdog, a campaigner against racism, against elitism, against the unfair distribution of privilege.

And yet he didn’t decline the honour, as so many have. Like John Cleese, like Alan Bennett, Stephen Hawking, David Hockney and the wonderful David Bowie.

Because this photo is, quite frankly, ludicrous. If I held a sword against someone’s neck I’d get arrested. But Bonnie Prince Charlie does it, even dressed up as an admiral, and knighthoods come flying out of the tip. All of which goes to sustain the equally ludicrous ‘class system’ which is so deep-rooted in our nation as to be the main source of division and inequality. In education, employment, virtually everything.

But Lewis suspended his right-on woke-i-ness just long enough to become knighted. I’m afraid he has diluted and weakened his normal political stance.

Happy Thursday

Lord Conway of Gants Hill, KCM, GCI, FBI, UB40…
xxxx

Ninety-nine conservative MPs voted against their own government yesterday as Boris attempted, successfully as it turned out anyway, to turn us into a police state, removing our freedoms and turning us into a “SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS!!!!!” regime, in the model of Nazi Germany or Russia any time since 1917. They probably do it in North Korea too, but no-one’s ever witnessed it and come out alive.

The inflammatory, controversial, highly contested, freedom-limiting, restriction-overdrive ‘Covid Passport’ is indeed divisive. For me, with my triple-vax status and an armful of holes, I can go into a nightclub any time I want. Although the times I’d want to do such a thing, they’re probably not even open yet. But YOU, you great unvaccinated, conspiracy-theorising refusenik and Covid risk, can’t come with me.

The point no-one seems to have mentioned, of course, is that vaccinated people can, do and will still get Covid. It affects them less, but they still get it. And thus, can carry it, transmit it and spread it. In fact, we, the great vaccinated heroes, represent a far greater risk because we’re far less likely to know we have it. Whereas the unvaxxed kind’a realise they do as the pipe is sliding down their throat at St Thomas’s.

However. Vaccine passports is what was decided, so parliament has to vote. But again, unfortunately, most conservative MPs chose not to vote on the matter at hand. Instead they chose to hold their own ‘vote of no confidence’ in the Prime Minister. I know, Covid is serious shit, Omicron more deadly than the nuclear arms race, but when given a chance to make statements about the competence of the nation’s leader, that’s how they chose to vote. Plus, all real conservatives have understandable issues about infringements of freedoms and ‘carrying papers’. Whereas the Labour lot are not quite so ‘democracy sensitive’, as Corbyn showed and Starmer can’t quite rid himself of, so the Tories knew that the whimpish opposition leader would ‘whip’ his team into any covid panic available. Thus Boris achieved ‘the right result for the wrong reason’. Which, knowing Boris, is just fine. He can live with the shame of being shunned by his own party. He lives with one kind of shame or other every single day.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

“We’re all goin’ on’a, winter holiday, no more workin’ for a week or two…” Probably.

We’re probably going on holiday. On Christmas Day. Tenerife. All planned, booked and even paid for at least 3 waves ago. On Boxing Day Lila and Joey are coming to meet us there, probably bringing their mum & dad, not sure. And the ‘rogue’ daughter is flying over from Berlin to hook up with us too. It’s all very exciting. Until you hear those dreaded words: ‘Boris is making an announcement tonight’. Then it all gets rather more stressful.

I should actually be more concerned with Spanish announcements. Probably proclaiming that they don’t want no stinkin’ Brits comin’ over with their Omicrons, but you know that most countries don’t go into knee-jerk mode every time someone sticks a cotton bud up their nose.

On Sunday was Boris’s last announcement. But he mentioned neither me nor Tenerife specifically. All he mentioned was ‘boosters’. And mentioned them 427 times in a 6-minute announcement. If there was a prize for blond-haired tubs of lard saying the word ‘boost’, our PM would definitely win, hands down. Unfortunately that’s about the only competition he could win.

There are more announcements on the horizon. More specifically about travel. And although it makes no sense for us to have to ‘quarantine’ upon our return from a fairly covid-free place, back to Omicron Central, logic and Boris, where coronavirus is concerned, remain strangers.

I am not paying 3 grand to spend 10 days locked in a 6 foot by 8 foot room in the Holiday Inn Express getting junk food delivered 3 times a day. It’s just not good value. I have no real issues with spending time in cheap hotels nor eating junk food, that’s why we’re going to Tenerife, but its worth about 250 quid at most. I’m thinking of starting an ‘Mis-selling’ class action litigation against the government.

And today Sajid Javid said that quarantining will actually be stopped for returning holidaymakers. Which makes so much sense, they probably won’t do it. Because WE have the highest rate in the world. WE seem to be ‘the problem’. Not much point quarantining us here.

I’ve got my suitcase out and placed a pair of swimming trunks in it. And that’s all I’m prepared to do until Christmas Eve.

Happy Hopeful Holidays

A xxxx

When. WHEN. WHEN!!!!!???? did I become ‘that person’? Can’t have happened overnight? Did it? Must have taken months, years, decades? Possibly covid accelerated, exacerbated, contributed, accumulated…

But one day I was a really lovely, easy-going, no-cares kind’a dude who took everything in his stride, and now I’m a short-fuse away from anger, insult, abuse, swearing, totally intolerant, impatient, inflammatory, who gives no quarter and takes NO FUCKING PRISONERS!!!! on my path through life’s trivia.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, I’m the same as I’ve always been but have been ‘driven’ to my new persona because everyone else on the planet has changed? For the worse.

On Thursday I was driving down a narrow road (they’re all narrow round my way), just enough room for two cars to pass each other. And the BMW I3 coming towards me started to drift a bit onto my side. I don’t slow down. I can’t. I’m in ‘my lane’ and have right of way. Even if it costs me the side of a car to demonstrate. It drifted further, I went for the horn and looked (close enough at that point) at a women with one hand on her steering wheel staring down at her own lap. I was looking at the top of her head. She looked up, still laughing at what had been happening on her phone. Funny enough to justify the 15 grand’s worth of damage about to be inflicted on her vehicle if she hadn’t been so rudely interrupted and forced to pull over. I left my hand on the horn for about 20 minutes. To make the point. And I wanted that woman tortured before being imprisoned for the rest of her life. I swore quite a bit. More than usual.

Yesterday I went to Superdrug to buy my father some denture fixative. Just ‘popped in’ because it was quiet. I gave the cashier a 20 pound note and waited. Five minutes of inactivity later I enquired if there was a problem. The till won’t open. Oh. Can we use another as there are about 15 empty ones in a line here? I’ve called for help. Ok. Help arrived in the loosest possible definition of ‘help’ in the form of a dipstick with a lanyard. Who spent the next 5 minutes pressing buttons and getting confused between the sale price and the change to be given. Then, without word to me or to the original dipstick (sans lanyard), she walked away. To another till. But did nothing she hadn’t been doing for the last 5 minutes, and with no greater success. I didn’t want to swear. Which means I could not speak at all. Because it would have happened. I just pointed at my note and dropped the Denture stuff on the desk and walked out. My dad can eat porridge for a few days. He likes porridge.

In fact I went to Boots, bought the same stuff, 59p cheaper (!!!!) and paid with a card. But really. Till won’t open. Really?

Calm down. Breaeaeaeathththeeee…

Happy Saturday (I hope)

A xxxx

Cabinet Office, yesterday morning…

Boris: Look, this damnable shit-storm about last year’s Christmas party just won’t go away, its proving to be worse than bloody Covid. The public feel cheated, that oik Starmer is banging on about ‘one rule for them and one for us’ like he’s an extra from an Orwell novel and most importantly, my ratings are plummeting like the fucking Belgrano. So we need to do something. Something to show the public how sorry we are and how our actual ‘crime’ was not a major incident at all.

Cabinet Minister: Yes, Prime Minister, we do. Do you think a really sincere apology, coming clean with all the facts and then implementation of a regulatory and disciplinary committee to oversee all of Number 10 would be appropriate?

Boris: Yes, it probably would be appropriate but I’m actually thinking more along the lines of a cover-up, excessive mitigation, making a big storm about something else to deflect interest, and throwing someone under a bus to take the heat. I’ve already taken the pre-emotive measure of having everyone’s names in a hat here, so, Sajid, if you would do the honours… (holds out the hat)

Sajid Javid: oh… errrr… well, I’m not totally comfortable with this, Prime Minister, I think that morally, ethically and properly, you should be the one to take responsibility and present the correct face to the public.

Boris: pick a fucking name, Javid, or I’ll find another lackey to fill the ‘diversity’ quotient in cabinet.

Sajid, picking a name: It’s ‘Allegra Stratton’… Sir.

Boris: Ok, well that was a very productive meeting. Would you see that the bitch is well and truly hung out to dry and I’ll get back to putting on a hard hat and hi-viz jacket to save the nation’s economy. Good day everybody.

You could almost feel sorry for Allegra Stratton. She was in genuine, real tears as she made her statement from her front door. And she was credible. She really did feel so sad and sorry for cheating the public out of their Christmas whilst she was enjoying hers. She was socialising whilst so many were lonely. They were partying in a pandemic whilst other were dying. And she was desperately mortified by it all.

So desperate that it took an entire year for this genuine sorrow to manifest. In fact, as ever in politics, what actually triggered that immensely emotional remorse was getting caught. That’s what took the year. Then the floodgates opened.

I’m almost at the point as recommending the assassination of Boris, for the good of the nation. Almost.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I gave you my heart, but the very next day…

You had a massive, drink-fueled party for 55 people gyrating masklessly inside Number 10, with uninhibited shouting, rubbing, groping, the usual works party hi-jinks, as ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ boomed in the background… and the rest of the nation sat in lonely solitude, darkness and silence, as per your specific, legally-enforced instructions.

…I can’t believe, what a fool I’ve been…

Boris hasn’t denied the party happened. Even though we were in ‘lockdown’ with groups of more than 1 banned. Or some such draconian bollocks we all reluctantly endured at the time. He can’t deny it. Nor that he is, if nothing else, a fool. A tosser, by any other name. Though he wasn’t personally at the… ‘not-a-party’, as he is calling it. Just a ‘small gathering where all covid advice was strictly adhered to’. Wasn’t there but KNOWS with all certainty that everyone wore masks, kept 6 metres apart, in the garden, groups of 3, with no singing, shouting or any other emission or exchange of bodily fluids. The karaoke is a bit an issue so we’ll say that never happened.

This is otherwise known as ‘digging a hole’. Because just as the fake press conference has suddenly materialised, there will inevitably, eventually, appear videos of the night. Drunken number tenners pissing on Maggie Thatcher’s portrait. The under-secretary’s 3rd assistant in a clinch with the cabinet minister’s rather ample portfolio. Naughty things. Bad things. Not covidy things at all. And then Boris will seem even more out of control and hopeless than he already is.

So stop digging and move on. To the next in the continuing line of governmental disasters, fuck-ups and catastrophes. Quite frankly, they’re all that’s keeping the nation going at the moment.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx