Andy's Glasses

Whilst we’re in climate mode, I wish to continue that theme with a look at others jumping on the climate bandwagon. And in fact its very easy to work out who might be doing that. It’s a simple equation.

Start at ‘smug’. Add the square root of ‘holier than thou’, divide by the number of carbons you’ve personally emitted over the preceding 24 hours, multiply by ‘evangelical’ and subtract all the meat you’ve eaten ever. And the answer should come out as ‘vegan’.

They’re having a protest about how the world must change its meat-eating ways, but here’s the key line, ‘for the sake of the environment’. Ahhhhh, environment, climate, right. Not just ‘any excuse to try and take the STEAK FROM MY MOUTH!!!, but doing so to save the planet. That’s ok then.

Meat is undoubtedly costly, in terms of environmental impact. And Vegans don’t eat in McDonalds! Who knew that? Not like its ‘real’ meat, surely? Anyway, apparently there is some beef in a Big Mac and as the world eats 47 billion of ‘em a day, that adds up to a cow or two. And cows need grass. More grass, in fact, than there is grass in the whole world. So they needed to make more. Which is why they cut down half of Brazil, the bit with all the trees on, to make grazing land for cattle. And that creates a double whammy. Firstly we’ve lost a highly significant number of our planet’s entire tree collection, and trees absorb carbon. Well, they did before they cut them down. The second issue is farting. If you ate nothing but grass all day and half the night, you’d probably fart too. But cows elevate the art into (quite literally, I’m sad to say) stratospheric levels of flatulence.

The gas that we, and cows, emit is methane. One of the dreaded ‘greenhouse gases’. And cows are the biggest ‘producers’ of methane on Earth.

So it is a problem, I grant you that. A problem I was aware of and was quite prepared to take very seriously (whatever the fuck that means). Until the vegans got involved. Then it became so much hot air. From a different orifice.

As my friend would say: I really like Vegans. But I’ve never eaten a whole one.

Happy carbon-free and meat (fish, eggs, milk…) free Thursday

A xxxx

I’m preparing for COP26. It’s the climate conference in Glasgow, next week. Even though it sounds like a neo-nazi organisation. Which perhaps is nearer to the truth by accident, as Climateers (as I’ll call them just to spare saying ‘climate change obsessives’ all the time) are generally the most nasty, intolerant, dogmatic, undemocratic bunch around. You agree with them ENTIRELY or YOU ARE WRONG AND DESTROYING THE PLANET!!!!! No middle ground, no need for debate, no wiggle room whatsoever. The Attenborough-Thunbergs run a tight ship. And their devoted followers misspelt the word ‘adherent’ and instead used ‘adhesive’ to glue their sorry backsides to the M25. Which was abhorrent. Misspell that ya tossers.

David Attenborough himself (blessed be He; the love-child of Jesus Christ, Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin) pre-empted the meeting by saying how we must ‘act TODAY, tomorrow is too late’ to save the planet. Greta Thunberg is on her way. By bicycle.

And its not like I’m not almost the ultimate eco-warrior. I’m sympathetic to the cause. I recycle my waste! (Otherwise Barnet council charge me a thousand quid which would otherwise be spent on petrol. At current price rises, that’s about 27 gallons worth.) I married a ‘bag for life’, let alone carry one. I turn the thermostat down on the heating. Not just to antagonise Mel.

But let’s just get a little logical. The ‘Industrial Revolution’ started in the early 18th century. Mainly when they replaced burning wood and charcoal with burning coal, and later coke, which was easier, hotter and better for producing iron and glass. Which led on to making proper machinery for factories and farms. Which led to steam engines, allowing faster transport, so goods could be moved around to other factories. Which could use those machines to make other machines.

It’s not so much a ‘revolution’ as an ‘evolution’. Because the machines beget better machines as accuracy and reproducibility improve. And you follow this right along until the nuclear age, in the mid 20th century, and onwards to computers about 60 years ago.

And if we didn’t have computers we would not be aware of the damage all of the above has done to the planet.

So its fine for Sir David to say ‘this is all our fault’ because the great man is making the fatal error of effectively judging the past in present day terms. Unless he’s saying that we must return to a more cave living, self-sufficiency, get rid of ALL technology mode of life.

We wouldn’t be ‘here’ today, watching him on tv, flying to Glasgow, calculating carbon levels, without the industrial revolution which was the cause of the entire problem. And it took us 400 years to arrive ‘here’. Undoing it may take a little more than we could possibly achieve ‘today’.

Happy Zero Emission Wednesday

Greta xxxx

The good thing about football (when your team is SHITE! and causes mental health issues and induces vomiting) is that when it all goes wrong, you can spend your days just slagging off other people’s teams. And its called ‘constructive criticism’ and its not only allowed but they let the ‘professional pundits’ do it, professionally, and… errrr…punditly, and no-one gets pissed off.

And the whipping boys of the week are Manchester United. The team we all love a bit and love to hate another bit. A bigger bit. Because of their horrible sense of entitlement. Of their unrealistic expectations. Their horrible owners and, let’s be frank; their useless manager.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as a player. He was the first ‘supersub’ worthy of the name and remains the best there’s ever been. He came on and scored the winning goal in a Champions League final, FFS, you can’t more ‘super’ than that. Yet, as virtually always (Glenn Hoddle the noted exception) ‘fans’ favourites’ make useless managers. Like when Shearer went to manage Newcastle. Like a returning hero, like the God he is in those parts. Yet found that the unarguable gift he had for scoring goals was not part of the skill set required to manage a club. Which he couldn’t, didn’t and failed miserably.

Ole has done ok. At times. Then loaded up this summer with a few extra superstars. Like Ronaldo. The super-est superstar of them all. Like Jaydon Sancho, the up-and-coming superstar. And Donny Van der Beek. A Dutchman. Well with those names added to the already star-studded list, what could possibly go wrong?

To lose at home hurts. To lose at home to your bitterest rivals really hurts. To basically not even turn up for the match, get totally demolished, lose by an embarrassing score line and have last year’s superstar sent off after 14 minutes on the pitch, well that’s just… just…

Just awful. At which point the fans, as well as the owners, have to think: ‘what the f….??’

And logically, it can only really come down to the manager. He has an orchestra of prodigious talent but failed to conduct it. I don’t think the players are without blame, they were terrible on Sunday, lazy, careless and negligent. But they would never have played like that under Alex Ferguson. They wouldn’t have dared.

I’m quite amazed that Ole is still (at the time of writing) in his job. Although part of me hopes he retains it. At least until Saturday, when United play Spurs. And we need all the help we can get.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Taking the knee is a bit like Covid. Everyone’s bored with it but its still very valid and exceptionally serious. But there are many people opposed to it. NOT racists. Some are black people, who just feel it is inappropriate or a wasted symbolic gesture or many other reasons that they are allowed to hold dear. Some even boo the gesture. Which, personally speaking, is a bit strong, mainly because however decent, valid and ‘woke’ your reasons for booing are, you will just be seen as a racist for doing so. A football fan with really genuine, decent reasons was banned at Crystal Palace for such booing. And then later un-banned when they realised that, like taking the knee, booing is merely freedom of speech. Albeit not a very eloquent speech.

And so, back to Crystal Palace, that hot-bed of political anarchy and rebellious insurgency, yesterday. Where those sorry Eagles played Newcastle, the team so recently bolstered by massive Saudi investment, to the combined shocked morality (about 3%) and excessive jealousy (97%) of the other 19 clubs in the division. And some Palace fans flew a banner. It was ‘proper’, not just scribbled on toilet roll. It was clever and it was funny. And it was about Saudi Arabia, the state generally, and Mohammed Bin Salman specifically.

It was not in any way ‘racist’. It said nothing about Saudi people. It made no stereotype tropes, it didn’t call anyone a ‘towel head’. Mainly because the Geordie fans have taken to wearing tea-towels on their heads in a show of (bit misplaced) solidarity and support for their new board members. Which is a bit like Spurs fans calling themselves ‘the Yids’ and causes many blood-vessels to burst because you can’t really be called a ‘racist’ if you’re showing love and support for any group and so people just don’t know what to do about it.

So the poster went up, it shows MBS with a bloody scimitar. It attacks the Saudi nation for its human rights atrocities and brutality. Things which, I’m sure, were completely off most Palace fans’ radars until 10 days ago when Saudi Arabia entered the collective consciousness of all football fans. But if so, even if this is just a ‘let’s find a way to wind up a few Geordies’ kind of deal, they’re allowed. Yet for this, the police are investigating? Like, really? The Saudi police maybe, they don’t need any kind of ‘legal framework’ behind their actions, as they constantly prove. But OUR police? Those defending free speech of online numpty trollers, and other hard lefties? And this is racism?

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Looking for new cars is much better fun than owning new cars, buying new cars, selling… errrr… not quite so new cars. It’s great. Particularly as we swim around aimlessly in the growing pool which is the ‘electric car world’. You learn as you progress. It’s a curve. And this is what we’ve learned today:

Volvo DO in fact make a fully electric car, just the one, but oddly, it is the model Mel likes. Cos its small. And chunky. Just like she… likes them to be. Test driving next weekend.

We learned that the Lexus fully electric, (again, there’s only one from Toyota’s snooty older brother), is quite cute, quite expensive and fast as fuck. I’d never driven an electric car before, other than on a Scalectrix track, and this one was faster. Due to covid regulations (bless ‘em) the salesman can’t accompany you on your drive. How we missed him. So Mel tested out the brakes and I tested out the accelerator. Which worked very very well indeed. I would describe the experience as ‘wonderful’, Mel’s chosen adjective would probably be ‘DANGEROUS!!!’

But you also get to learn about car dealerships, showrooms and staff. And generally, the more pricey the car, the nicer the showroom. So Lexus was vast, airy, clean and smelt of the coffee machine. I stole biscuits. Mel took water. Typical electric car driver. The Volvo showroom was big and posh. The Toyota one was like a workingman’s cafe but scaled up a bit. And the staff weren’t very helpful. The Mercedes place we went to last week was the worst of all for service (lack of) and attitude. As they only looked up from their computers at the fifth throat-clearing and only to give a look which was far less ‘hello, how can I help you?’ and much more ‘what the fuck do you want?’ But as their electric cars were horrible, we enjoyed walking out.

And we are going to have to look at the I3. How can you not? It’s so popular it must have something going for it. Plus its fairly small (‘we’ like that), quite cute (‘we’ love that too). And the ID3 from VW looks interesting though I’ve heard good and bad reports.

It’s a whole new world out there in ‘lectric-land. So much speed. So little noise.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

We’re going to buy an electric car. No idea which one (THEY ALL LOOK THE FARKIN SAME) but that time has arrived. Mel wants a new car and in line with the zeitgeist it would be almost unthinkable for ‘her’ to buy the new Dodge Challenger re-do with a 6.2 litre supercharged engine delivering over 800 horses to the wheels. Which, being a Dodge, will slide around like… like… like a car chase in Bullitt, be fast as fuck, louder than an AC/DC concert and cause more pollution than 17 jet aircraft. That just wouldn’t be right. But oh my it would be fun.

Saving the planet is not about ‘fun’! Its about being conscious, aware, concerned, its about spouting off in Swedish every time someone lights a candle, its about being… holier than thou or, in the case of Boris Johnson its, yet again, about meaningless sound bytes which add up in total to the square root of fuck all. But more on him later. I’m off to buy a car!!!

And here’s the issue. Every manufacturer has ‘electric cars!!!’, won’t be making petrol cars after 2025, phasing out fossils altogether, blah, blah, blah. Like Volvo. The first to announce this. Yet they don’t make a fully electric, plug in car. Only ‘hybrids’. Those illegitimate devil spawn produced when Jeremy Clarkson fathered a child with Greta Thunberg. Not because I’m so opposed to hybrids but just because you get no benefits in terms of tax savings and allowances and free road tax and no congestion charge.

The problem is you can’t use the existing car bits and just ‘make them with electric motors’. Don’t work. You can get a hybrid like that but for a full electric you have to completely redesign and rebuild from the wheels up. So options are limited.

In fact once you eliminate the hybrids and the ‘plug in hybrids’ from the equation, you’re left with the I-3, old technology and common as muck, a few Teslas which won’t be delivered until 2033, a couple of Nissans and Renaults and the Jaguar I-Pace. Which we looked at. Mel needed a ladder to get into it but it is exceptionally beautiful. And incredibly massive. Immense in fact. (Didn’t look so big in the pictures). The hunt goes on.

Boris is putting hundreds of millions into OUR POCKETS!!! to get us out of the old gas boilers in our homes and into more tree-huggy ‘heat pumps’ which do the same thing. Almost. A new gas boiler: 2 grand. A heat pump: about 15!!!! Plus more radiators required, lots of plumbing needed outside the house (or flat???) So the PM has offered grants, not full payment but ‘help’ for up to 90,000!!!!! homes to replace gas boilers with heat pumps. Wow. Unfortunately there are over 25 million boilers currently in the UK. Which leaves… errrr… well, quite a few remaining after this current ‘carbon purge’. We’ll get back to you with some more sums later.

Happy Green Wednesday

A xxxx

This is not a gloaty story. Though I reserve that right. Its my fucking story. This is not to say how wonderful Tottenham Hotspur football club is. Even though they were on Sunday. This is just… just… well, as depicted above, just a salient lesson in how football can reduce joy and optimism to sorrow and despair in just 10 minutes. You could almost feel sorry for Yassir al-Rumayyan and Amanda Staveley. Up to a point. Though their football team didn’t get a point. Even with all those billions sitting in the director’s box.

It takes time to build up a team. Even if you cheat, bribe, out-spend and piss millions away doing it, the work takes time. Sacking Steve Bruce was inevitable, which they pretty much stated, just a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. Because they need a ‘big manager’, a ‘marquee signing’, they want a ‘superstar leader of men’.

The reality being that you can’t buy players until January. And by then, on current form, Newcastle may well be entrenched very very deeply at the wrong end of the league table, where they currently sit, with 3 points and no wins from their first 8 matches. Which may make attracting the superstars and the poseurs and the Euro royals of the game, somewhat more difficult. Though I’m sure Neymar would love nothing more than a season in the Championship and coach rides up to Middlesbrough in January. And Steve Bruce may be the man they really need to ‘keep them up’. Again. As he has somewhat miraculously for the last two dismal seasons. Something the Jose Morinhos and Pep Guardiolas of this world are simply incapable of. It’s not in their skill set.

So having moved heaven and earth to buy Newcastle United, the Saudis must surely be looking at Ms Staveley and thinking ‘WTF????’ What has she done to us??? We thought we were getting Manchester United (which may possibly have been even more disappointing anyway) but we got the wrong one!!! (A bit like the Americans buying ‘London Bridge’ thinking they were getting Tower Bridge). It’s cold here! (Amanda Staveley is currently reading the details of the Jamal Khashoggi murder and avoiding solitary meetings).

And then yesterday in an emergency meeting, the Premier League voted that clubs cannot be sponsored by their owners. As in ‘Saudi Airlines’ becoming the shirt sponsor or St James’s being renamed ‘The Haj’. Because such deals opens the path for limitless spending. The only club other than Newcastle to vote against the ban was… well, see if you can guess.

Spurs won the game, by the way. Should have scored more in the second half but there ya go. Newcastle were absolutely abysmal and, other than their early, energy-driven goal, flattered my team greatly.

Happy Tuesday, Amanda

A xxxx

There is palpable relief in the entire Newcastle region. The owner of their beloved football club, the fat, obnoxious, Cockney, wide-boy (ticks every box for meanings of that phrase), has sold the club to its new owners. The Geordies hated Mike Ashley and, pretty much, everything he stood for. But mainly, they resented his constant refusal to become the bottomless pocket they really wanted in order to up the game of their football team. And they could never forgive his London-ness.

So now they have the owner they have always deserved. A local boy. If your location is Riyadh. A man with pockets so deep that were you to ever reach the bottom you’d just hit oil. A man so tough, so fearless, so in keeping with the Geordie spirit that he is virtually a convicted murder. A man never seen wearing a coat, holding an umbrella or passing out due to excess alcohol.

And that is Mohammed Bin Salman. MBS if you can’t read an Arabic acronym. Although that will from now on become part of the Newcastle school curriculum.

But those are the details. Just replace the word ‘Newcastle United’ with ‘Manchester City 12 years ago’ and that’s where we’re going. Because their team is now funded by Saudi Arabia. All of it. And if that is not ‘all the riches in the world’ its probably most of them. Think of all the money that nation has saved over the decades by refusing to issue driving licenses to women. They’ve never had to waste all that money on parliament and legislature in sorting out gay rights. Equality. It’s much cheaper to build gallows than prisons.

But you don’t need a morality test to own a Premier League club. Nor a ‘decent human being’ test either, otherwise Manchester United would be for sale. No-one questioned Roman Abramovich’s billions when he took over at Chelsea. No-one realised how the Emirates would make a laughing stock of the ‘financial fair play’ regulations at Man City.

So Spurs go to St. James’ Park this afternoon amid the celebrations and excitement of the new ownership. Fortunately for us, for the moment Newcastle are still fielding the same shit team they were when Mike Ashley left. Unfortunately for us, Son has got covid and can’t play.

I’m deeply concerned with the future. Both immediate (at 4.30) and longer term for the ‘beautiful game’. Which kind’a gets uglier with every passing day.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

There’s a wonderful documentary on Sky Arts about Roxy Music. The band. Bryan Ferry. That lot. Wonderful if you loved them, as I did, load’a shit if you didn’t. Which many didn’t. Like my brother. Hard rocker that he was, heavy metal to his very core, he poo-pooed anyone who wore anything other than black on stage. Hated ‘dress up’, unless it involved big crosses (normally upside down ones), maybe swords, a hat or two. He liked it ‘raw’. He, basically, loved Black Sabbath almost to the exclusion of all else. Whereas I had a more ‘pop’ side. Maybe because I was younger. I either liked a song or didn’t. Regardless of the pigeonhole the music slotted into. The tribe.

And then, in 1970, onto the Top of the Pops stage came Roxy Music. And they were dressed up. And they performed Virginia Plain. Which immediately grabbed me by various parts, including my testicles, and left me aghast. It was so different. The band, the song, the music. In 1970 you could actually invent a sound, a look, a paradigm, that wasn’t derivative. And Roxy were definitely ‘individual’. The song had no chorus. It didn’t move in the same way as other songs. But that’s something I learned later. It didn’t enter my consciousness at the time. And it included the immortal line: “where my Studebaker takes me, that’s where I’ll make my stand”. You just can’t fail with such a line.

As soon as the eponymous album came out, we used our weekly, whip-round budget at Mr Byrite, where I worked on Saturdays, to buy it. The album was sensational. But the cover was something else. We had to take turns on staring at it. An hour each. And even though subsequent had covers more sexual, more sexy, more semi-naked, more smutty, this one had that incredible vulnerability.

The band, as they are now, speak extensively in the rockumentary. And the first thing that strikes you is how posh, educated and eloquent these art-school poseurs were and still are. None of the toothless, drug-addled, post-rehab (until next time) grunting from these dudes. Just super-intelligent wit and observation.

The first two Roxy Music albums ‘changed my life’. I saw them in about 1972 at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park. Bryan Ferry had apparently been promoted to a 5-star general by then, but they were simply amazing on stage. I still play those two albums a lot. And now, following the documentary, I need the third one too.

Happy nostalgic Saturday

A xxxx

Have you ever wondered about slugs? Those totally revolting little creatures, snails without shells, that slither in a trail of their own slime across paths in search of your bedding plants which they fucking ruin by eating themselves sick on them. This year has been a bumper year for slugs, for some reason, God moving in mysterious ways again. And in my summer-long study, I’ve concluded one thing: slugs must taste absolutely disgusting. Even for birds whose diet includes earthworms, beetles and other yuck, they don’t eat slugs. Nothing eats slugs. Not even Heston Blumenthal.

Yet they’re soft, always fucking fat (that’s MY bedding plants!!!) and you’d think a good meal for something or other, because they are totally defenceless. They have no shell, no hooks, no poison, no guns, nothing. They can’t fly, can’t walk and are so slow they couldn’t escape from a tortoise. Animals always have defence, but not slugs. Therefore, they must taste terrible. Worse than worms (I’ll ask Joey), yukkier than ants, termites, wasps and virtually everything else in the animal kingdom. Maybe they’re just tasteless? Need a little salt. Yeah, bit of a problem that one. But if your only defence is that people really don’t want to scrape you off the bottom of their shoe, that’s evolutionarily sound.

And on to Sally Rooney. Bit of a slug herself, really. The writer of ‘Normal People’ has just banned her latest book from being published in Hebrew. Because of ‘Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians’ and for the great and worthy ‘BDS’ bullshit. Is this just another example of a left-wing moron choosing to punish ‘the people’ to make some facile statement to ‘the government’? Or something more insidious. Because La Rooney is quite happy peddling her soft-core Irish porn to the Chinese who are currently engaged in ethnically cleansing their entire Uighur population, to the Saudis who have many human rights issues (including ownership of Newcastle United) and to any and every totally unacceptable regime in the world. But not Israel.

She’s either just another ignorant Marxist (self-proclaimed in fact, but doesn’t use the ‘ignorant’ on her cv), like Corbyn, just an inherent, hereditary anti-Semite, or she’s cynically done her sums and calculated that the loss of revenue from a small country is less than the gain of all the vast number of other Jew-haters who protest Israel’s ways whilst selectively ignoring atrocities everywhere else.

Well fuck Sally Rooney. I’m not translating my blog into Irish! That’ll show her.

Happy Friday

A xxxx