Andy's Glasses

… a thousand words. But in this case, David Mellor’s headline in the Mail on Sunday uses fewer than a thousand words to… errrr… to… to deconstruct our esteemed Mayor of all London Town. Some may feel this assessment a little harsh. Not me. Others may find it cruel and heartless. Not me. More than a few will think this typical of an arch-Tory, opera-loving, fat, myopic, adulterous Chelsea fan. Yeah, I suppose I do.

But, hyperbole aside, Sadiq Kahn is a complete waste of space (though granted, not much space required), time and effort. I simply can’t stand the man. He was a lawyer. And if that’s not bad enough, he was a lawyer who spoke like a bus-driver’s assistant. And still does. I’m no ‘class snob’, generally us Eastenders aren’t. And I love a dropped ‘H’ or a glottal stop on occasion as much as the next (very common) man. But Sadiq represents London. Nationally. Internationally. At conferences. Heavyweight shit. And can’t even speak proper whilst doing it. Other than that, he’s ineffectual, worthless and has spent the last year, his Covid bonus year in office, hiding. From Coronavirus, from people, from everything. Whilst Boris was out there contracting all the virus he could, Sadiq led fair and square from the back. Didn’t leave his house for 7 months. Sprayed the Ocado man with Detol. And agreed the plan with Boris (who basically fits the description of David Mellor above, in all but the ‘myopic’ bit) to hike the congestion charge in price and make it ‘24/7’. Tosser.

Well on Thursday we vote again. Finally. A year late to select our ‘new’ mayor, but as it was such a terrible year for Sadiq, safe to say it wasn’t a totally wasted 12 months. He built… let me count… three there… six on the A.417… he built NO houses at all. Knife crime is increasing. And has no worthwhile plans to ‘reflate’ London and its essential economy.

So for whom are we to vote? The obvious choice would be ANYBODY BUT HIM!!!, yet its not that simple. Because the Conservatives have found as their candidate the most lightweight choice open to them in Shaun Bailey. Almost like if they selected anyone else it would be unfair on Sadiq. There’s the Greens, but really? Dig up the Marylebone Road and plant trees there? Ban cars totally? Lawn mowers? Knock down Brent Cross and put tents there for refugees? Actually that’s not a bad idea.

We have Laurence Fox standing as the ‘offend everyone’ candidate. Various tik-tok and instagram ‘stars’ throwing in their hats on the basis that they happen to be free this Thursday. And the Lib-Dems. As always: good luck to the Lib-Dems.

I’ll either vote for the Woman’s Equality Party or the Monster Raving Loonies.

Is this really the ‘best’ London can offer? I’d stand myself but its Lila/Joey day so I’m busy.

Happy day before Election Day

A xxxx

I like football. Well, I used to. It was easy. You just went and watched your team on Saturday and they’d win or sometimes not and then you’d watch Match of the Day and The Big Match to see how all the other teams did so you could abuse your friends properly on Monday. Then you wait a week and repeat. The FA Cup was the biggest event in the year. Life was simple. Football was simple.

Then Sky came along, invented the Premiership, La Liga, Le Ligue, Das Bestenfutballgrupen and the others and it all changed. Players swapped their bus passes for Bentleys, wives became WAGs, peroxide sales rocketed, Billy English lost his place to Johnny Foreigner and those hard-working beloved old club ‘owners’ either cashed in or were forced out by financial clout. An ongoing process, exchanging cash for vanity, reaching its apotheosis when Chelsea and Manchester City were re-born. Because, like Jesus before them, those two teams had suffered. For years, for decades, they endured ‘crucifixion’ on a
regular basis and learned humility and goodness as a consequence. Without the goodness.

And with money comes politics. The rules change so everyone tries to seek advantage. Money speaks and in football it tends to speak in an American accent, or possibly and Arab-oil one.

As I mentioned, the FA Cup was the most important event in the
nation’s sporting calendar. And now it is virtually nothing. Because when the European Cup changed into the Champions League, it was just bigger, better, more prestigious, and much, much richer than any national competition could ever be, being the greatest recipient of Sky’s massive cash inflow.

Yet that wasn’t enough cash to please the greedier of club owners. So they attempted a coup. Which would ensure more money but GUARANTEED EVERY SINGLE YEAR. With no squabble for ‘4th place’, no aspiration for lesser (financed) clubs. And they failed and died in 48 hours. Why did it take so long? That’s the only relevant question.

So Manchester United fans ‘protesting’ is fine by me. Even having their match abandoned as a consequence (which probably spared them the indignity of possibly losing to their greatest rivals and simultaneously handing the league title to their local neighbours) was ok. Something needs to be done and you can bet the Premier League won’t do it as they lack testicles.

But the violence? That immediately negates any good the protest mighthave achieved. Because the ‘cop-haters’ will attend any event that enables them to cause mayhem and hurt. Which is nothing to do with. football. But all to do with being some kind of ‘tosser’ who likes attacking the police.

What should have been a really great statement at the biggest club team in the world turned into a shit-storm of stupidity.

And then Spurs had a MASSIVE four nil win and that’s all that counts.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Today I’m going to give you the benefit of some tips for having a beautiful garden.

Gardening tip number 1: don’t do it. It’s dull, laborious, back-breaking and it’ll all look exactly the same when you’ve finished, 7 hours and 35 Ibuprofen later. So get a gardener, marry a gardener, or move to a flat.

But then there’s the lawn. Ours is not ‘big’, like Buckingham Palace big, like Hyde Park big. Like Old Trafford big enough to hold a riot. But its big enough. And I like mowing the lawn. Because it doesn’t take long, gives immediate sense of satisfaction and beautifulness and makes loads of noise and involves smelly internal combustion, petrol engines. And my trusty, faithful old mower just died. I pulled the cord and… and… and nothing happened and the cord didn’t whizz back in. It just… dangled. Oh well, I would reassess the whole ‘trusty’ and ‘faithful’ shit but its not a dog. It’s a machine. Old and now dead. So its time to google another.

And they’ve changed. Oh my, how they’ve changed. In line with the recently announced ‘exemptions from any climate change consideration’, like Ferraris and gas heating boilers, lawn mowers have grown in stature. Ok, they make electric if you want to spend all afternoon repairing the cable you’ve just mowed in half, and they make ‘re-chargeable’ if you’re unsure of your pronoun affiliation. But lawns require power. And, with all due apologies to Greta Thunberg, petrol delivers.

And now they make them with four-stroke engines. Big ones. Which need radiators. And superchargers. Well, ‘need’… But how can it hurt to make a grass-cutting equivalent of Vin Diesel’s Dodge in Fast and Furious? They come with electric starters, no more cord-pulling, and gearboxes and… and… and…

It’s lawn-mower porn. And I’m ordering today.

Happy bank holiday Monday

A xxxx

It’s not easy spending your life gorgeously. In fact it is downright difficult and most of the time, filled with discomfort and embarrassment. Because being blessed with the kind of face which Michelangelo would have sculpted, the body of an Adonis, a six-pack riding proudly where, if there were any kind of God, a great, fat, chocolate-filled beer belly would sit, buns of steel and legs of such curvaceousness that women swoon and feint as they pass the tennis courts yelling ‘phwoaoaoaoarrrrr!’, is not all its cracked up to be. Because I’ve spent my life being objectified. Ogled. Groped (if only). Harassed.

And I want to shout at these women (yes, it’s ALWAYS women… mostly) “But that’s not ‘me!’, that’s not WHO I am, that’s just an exterior!!!” I want to tell them that underneath all that meaningless awesome perfection lies a dull and listless halfwit. A man!! With thoughts, though obviously not many, with ideas, mainly bad ones, with emotions, of a vague and empty, manly kind, and with feeeeeeeelings! I AM NOT JUST AN OBJECT OF PERFECTION!!! I AM A PERSON!!! And as such I wish to be engaged, first and foremost in such a manner. With no shouting as I walk by, no cat-calling (dog-calling?), no ‘accidental’ bumping at the bar, no revisiting the old ‘no taxation without representation’ line and replacing it with ‘no job promotion without fornication’, because it’s WRONG to treat a man in such a way. And we’ve put up with it for too long. Turned the other cheek, only to find it being pinched by some Amazon in Louboutins grinning lasciviously over her G-and-(low-cal)-T.

The problem is that I like looking gorgeous. Sometimes I even accentuate that gorgeousness in ways that some might perceive as almost enticing! That I’m actually looking to attract women!!!! When really I’m just wearing tight shorts and a crop top because it empowers me. Though I do try to avoid Piccadilly Circus when kitted up like that.

So following decades of such misery, I’m appealing for historic sex crimes against me to be taken seriously and I’m going to issue of list of perpetrators, going back at least 40 years… in fact it then stopped 35 years ago, but THAT’S NOT THE POINT. It happened, it changed me and I want the law to take this matter up and… and… remove all these people’s films from tv, sack them from their cabinet posts, take away those dame-hoods and ladyships.

#me-he!

Just sayin’…

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Covid? We’re over it. As a nation. Vaccinated, drinking ‘again’, restaurants open, a bit too ‘open’ for some who don’t wish to freeze, along with their dinner, at a table by the side of the M1 as the juggernauts go screaming by, and life is resuming. We’re still wearing masks. Some of the time. I have a partial exemption on the strictly medical grounds that ‘I fucking hate them’, but life is returning to something approaching ‘normal’. Other than in the City which is still pretty desolate but is slowly, slowly coming back to a low level of ‘life’. Like a few billion years ago when the first fish grew legs and took their first few steps on land. Definitely encouraging.

So we’ll take our trip now, thank you very much, which we cancelled from last Christmas. To Kerala. In India. Oh. India. Where they’re not doing very well at the moment. In fact they are doing tragically badly, I’m sorry to report. No hospital beds, no oxygen to treat patients, massive death tolls every day, its truly awful. But I’ve been vaccinated, so I’m fine and if we have to move a few bodies out of the way to see some of the wonderful sights and take a few selfies, that’s a small price to pay.

The most ridiculous Boris thing of the whole pandemic has been the ‘we’re banning flights from this or that disease-ridden, hyper-infected, death-certain hell-hole!! From, not next Friday but the one after that!!’ Thus they announced last week that flights were to be banned from India. From 4 days time. I mean… I mean… that’s almost worse than re-decorating your flat. WE’RE A FUCKING ISLAND; ISOLATING IS EASY!!!

Ok, India’s out then. Like, totally. Brazil. South Africa. Germany. France. Italy. No way I’m going to any of those countries. Or any others really, because if the rules change, you’re stuffed when you get home. If they allow you home. Spain is re-opening in June for Brits, using a new ‘digital health certificate’ which bears absolutely no relation whatsoever to a ‘covid passport’, at all. Because for some reason, the term ‘passport’ causes masses of upset among the woke, the hypersensitive, those who cry ‘discrimination’ at every opportunity and other assorted stupid people, whereas ‘certificates’ are fine and ‘health’ is a word linked to the national HEALTH service and is thus filled with love and clapping and banging frying pans.

We’ve booked to go to Israel in October. Cancellable flights. Vaccinated country. It’s still a punt but we live in hope.

Happy normal Wednesday

A xxxx

Boris Johnson stood by Dominic Cummings for a long time. Defended him. Supported him. Even after Dom had taken a road trip with his family whilst having Covid and having overseen the ban on travel for the entire nation, did Boris, like Tammy Wynette before him, stand by his man. On the grounds that Dominic Cummings was the cleverest person Boris had ever met. Ok, not great on social skills, people management or sartorial standards but that wasn’t his job. His job was to be more clever than everyone else and more devious.

He was certainly more clever than Boris. I often feel that Joey is more clever than Boris. As for devious, the man has 34Gb of messages, recordings and videos of his time with Boris. So when the pm accused Dom of leaking some really minor league stuff, the bald misery replied with, basically: I didn’t leak that. You want leaks? Have some of this then! And blogged a whole raft of indiscretions and dodgy moves by our nation’s political leader. Terrible things. Bad things. Ending with describing Boris as: ‘lacking competence and integrity’. Which we know anyway. The ‘competence’ speaks for itself and for integrity just look at the various little blond children running round the capital with fat bellies and Received Pronunciation.

Dom specified two items in particular. Having the PM’s flat at Number 10 ‘decorated’, for £58,000. No crime in itself. But get Tory party funders to pay for it and it suddenly becomes a major crime. Personally I’m just dead curious to see what 58 grand’s worth of ‘decoration’ looks like when a big tin of white emulsion costs 20 quid.

Number two is even better. The second lockdown was due to be announced on a sunday. (All covid shit was announced on Sundays; coronavirus law, 88451.BJ.275) But because of a leak to the press, it had to be brought forward a day. To Saturday!! Holy shit!! Bad news announced on a Saturday!!! The world is in free fall.

So an inquiry was launched. As they do over every fucking thing so they can to keep civil servants in jobs. And it was looking like Carrie’s best mate Henry Newman was the culprit. And that would result in Carrie being seriously pissed off, which would impact negatively on Boris’s sex life. So Boris actually tried to have the whole inquiry called off, which is illegal, just so as not to upset (the next, future) Mrs Johnson. This story will run and run.

Which is a bit like this year’s football season. Seems to have been an increasing disaster for about 37 months. And now the only thing we have left is that we’re ahead of Arsenal. But you know what? That’s enough. Spurs fans are all trained to have limited aspirations and a high tolerance to disappointment, honed through years of practice.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Honestly, don’t I have enough to worry about? Jesus, my shoulder’s for shit, we’re in month 14 of the worst thing ever to become a proper ‘thing’, we’ve just averted the worst crisis that football has ever faced, Joey broke our lovingly constructed kit car and the lawn needs mowing. I mean, really! So I barely have time to consider the actions of Boris and his predecessor-but-one and the whole ‘lobby-gate’ issue, currently surrounding the Tory party with allegations of ‘sleaze’. Particularly when the Labour Party, currently adopting squatter status in ‘the moral high ground’ and entering ‘holier than thou’ mode, have their own history of corruption which go back to doping inquiries in coal mine canaries (Scargill et al, 1983) right up to the esteemed (ex) mayor of Liverpool.

I met David Cameron once. We were at a Chanukah party at 10 Downing Street. And in the 14 seconds we spoke I can attest that he didn’t offer me any bribes, back-handers, didn’t try to rob me or propose acting for my company in governmental matters or contracts. However… he is no longer the PM and has thrown his lot in with Greensill, a financial institution who aren’t doing very well at the moment. In the same way that ‘Prince Philip is not doing very well at the moment’. So he did what he could to help them. For which they probably pay him £350k a year for 2.3 hours a month. Not because he’s a whizz at finance; not because he brings something special to the board, not because he has any idea of what the company even does. But because he has Rishi Sunak on speed dial. Because he can get a call through to the governor of the Bank of England and you couldn’t.

So that’s exactly what he did. ‘Phone a friend’. He’s allowed to do that. On anyone’s behalf he likes, even financial institutions mired with billions of unpayable debt to try and get a government grant. But he needs to do it openly. I’m gonna say it…

“TRANS-PAR-ENT-LEEEEE”!!!!

Otherwise he’s just another Eton old boy selling his ability to get in the back door to the highest bidder.

A bit like Boris. Except he IS the prime minister so ‘transparency’ is not just required but FUCKING ESSENTIAL. And with friends like Dominic Cummings, Boris needs to ‘keep his enemies closer’. Dominic sent a bunch of Boris’s texts to newspapers in which the PM promised to ‘get sorted’ some special tax considerations for Dyson employees. In return for ventilators. At the height of the pandemic when ventilators were running short. And as James Dyson spent 20 million pounds of his own money on the ventilators, never presenting the government with a bill and never actually getting the contract, as the moment (thankfully) passed, some could say that was actually good business by the PM who’d suffered months of being accused of ‘acting too late’. He acted early, independently, and is now suffering for it.

And I know Boris was busy back in last April/May, trying desperately to, firstly, stay alive, and secondly, having a rather full inbox most of the time, but he should have just alerted someone to what he was doing.

Ok, that’s lobbying done. But now the shit has really hit the fan. Though I don’t think Dominic Cummings is a Boris ‘fan’ at all. Quite the opposite. He is the ‘woman scorned’ (equality means all terms are no ‘un-gendered’) and hell really has no fury like a former aide with a phone full of incriminating shit sufficient to send Boris to jail.

The plot thickens…

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Ok, that’s the European Super League done with then. Let’s get back to work. But, like WTF? I was just getting exited about going to Barcelona and Madrid every other week for 6 months (I have sooooo many air miles) and now NOTHING!!! The Spaniards would probably field 3rd teams in what would quickly become meaningless, exhibition matches anyway, so why risk the big guys?. How could they lift me up so high and then… and then… nothing. Zip. De nada. I’m devastated. What will I do with my “ESL Frever!!!”, and “BIG SIX TEAM SO FUCK YOU!!!”, t-shirts? Will I get a refund?

Also, if I’m being totally honest, although the ‘Y-word’ associated with my beloved team causes me no offence whatsoever, as I understand its full meaning and origins, I do not feel completely comfortable with the ‘Big 6’ thing at all. Spurs are a ‘big club’. No doubt. Financially we’re massive: fan-base spectacular, stadium (until someone else builds one) the best in the world. But when they listed the ESL teams the other day along with ‘last league title won’, that was a column too far. 1961. Half of the grandparents of current fans weren’t alive then. (I’m alive at the moment of writing this and include Lila and Joey as ‘fans’). And although cups and trophies are not my motivation for anything (otherwise there’d be no Spurs fans) it does kind of set us aside a little.

Anyway; its over. Like Brexit again, but quicker. This time the vote went 62,453,079 vs 6.

Over in America (where this trouble began, if you think about it) they just finished the trial of Derek Chauvin, the policeman who murdered (yes, we can say that now) George Floyd in Minnesota. And it is safe to say that there has never been a more unfair trial in the entire history of unfair trials. Lynch mobs were fairer than this. Charles Bronson in Death Wish was fairer than this.

And I’m not saying he didn’t do it (doh: the film footage is simply horrendous) nor that he doesn’t deserve to be punished. It’s just the trial. Because upon his guilty shoulders sat the immediate future of civil uprising in America. Politically he simply had to be found guilty, regardless of any evidence or videos. As a ‘line drawn in the sand’ by the American police, he needed to be guilty. Basically, he was guilty or there’s war. Even the president yesterday, before the jury went out, went on tv to say how he hoped Del-boy was found guilty. Fucking right he hoped that, otherwise there wouldn’t be enough soldiers in all 50 states to stem what would have ensued.

The guilty verdict is not ‘the end’ of institutional racism in America. It is barely a start to look properly at a massive problem. Chauvin will go to prison, deservedly, where he’ll be the most popular man in the place. But everyone has the right to a fair trial. And that wasn’t anything like one and he didn’t get one. Just sayin’…

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

So today I’m going to explain the horrendous storm currently playing out in European football. A storm so profound that the entire world is up in arms about it. Boris Johnson has pitched in, Prince William!!! (the ‘good prince’ in the modern, digital-media version of the Cane & Abel story currently being played out on the news pages not about football), ministers, footballers, fans, absolutely everyone. Except the owners of the 6 ‘rogue’ clubs in question. They’re keeping mum. And, succinctly, so you don’t get bored, and in simple terms, because you’re not that bright, I shall explain the major points of this issue. Ah-hem (clearing throat before I hold forth).

Six greedy fat motherfucker billionaires want to get even richer and couldn’t give two shits for anyone else at all and are prepared to act in ruination of the structure of our national game so they can add a few digits on their pre-tax profits.

Yet in a way, its all about ‘sustainability’. Yes, that word again. The one which makes us all want to vomit. Not ‘sustainable’ in any kind of ecological or environmental way, I think it safe to say that Messrs Henry, Glazer, Mansoor et al couldn’t give a damn about that kind of problem. No, this is sustainability of business models. Which doesn’t exist with any kind of guarantee in the current system, but carries a 100% certainty and security in the American sports model.

Take the wonderful (and horrendous) example of Leeds United. They reached the late stages of the Champions League one season and ‘put their house’ (and lots of other people’s houses which they didn’t even own) on more success which would then (retrospectively and hopefully) pay for those houses. But it didn’t happen and Leeds spent the next 20 years in the financial and footballing wilderness as a consequence. All because of inconsistency of income.

The American model is a ‘sealed system’, or a ‘closed shop’. The same teams compete every year against each other and no-one else. They all share the tv rights and all know exactly how much they’re going to earn. There are no surprises.

So although fans love ‘giant killing’ and all feel great when Leicester win the league against every type of odds imaginable, the money men hate that unpredictability because it affects their own income stream. And the system is designed to ‘filter down’ though the lower leagues which, to a degree, it does. Because we’ve all played on pitch 137 on Hackney Marshes and need that to continue. Even after they flattened most of the Marshes.

Stan Kroenke never played on Hackney Marshes. Has no ‘feel’ for the game. No understanding of ‘the fans’ perspective’. In fact, he, and the others, simply don’t consider the fans at all. Nor really the players. His type of ‘football’ is played on spreadsheets.

Unfortunately, we fans feel we have rights. Feel we ‘own’ our clubs. Always speak of them in the first person. And yet we have no say, no vote, no nuffink. And I fear that this move towards an ‘elite’ superstructure in the game will gain traction. Because you don’t put together a deal worth billions without doing your due diligence and your legal investigations first.

I hate them. To satisfy their abject greed they shit on all of us. Including Prince William.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Football died yesterday. All of it. The whole game. Worldwide. A greater tragedy than the pandemic, a bigger disaster than the Titanic, a more devastating tragedy than Krakatoa and Pompeii combined. Because yesterday they started… The European Super League!!! It even has its own acronym. You ready? It’s the ESL. And that’s impressive that they worked that out so quickly. Though in time that title will change to the American Super League, (ASL), then just the World Super League (WSL) in line with American sports in general where the rest of the world doesn’t count.

They’ve been talking about a(n) ESL for many years. And by ‘they’, I mean ‘Americans’. Not all of them. About 359,999,997 are fine. It’s the other 3 who are the problem. Stan Kroenke, John W (for ‘WANKER!!!’) Henry and Any old Glazer as they’re pretty much interchangeable, except the dead one. All of whom are ‘owners’ of football clubs over here, and I would say ‘by hook or by crook’ but as they’re all crooks I won’t bother. They’ve all made their acquisitions by boardroom crockery. If Dick Turpin was alive today he wouldn’t hold up stage coaches. He’d perform a hostile takeover and use a leveraged buyout to steal everything instead. It’s the modern way. And by such means did such outlaws (if the law wasn’t as ass) acquired ownership of two of our most revered and esteemed football clubs. And Arsenal.

And because all three own sport franchises ‘over there’, they probably spend their whole time wondering why the Tampa Bay Buccaneers produces $5.7 billion in profit every year, whilst Manchester United loses £972 million over the same period. Even though that loss is leveraged against the loan that the directors took when they borrowed it against a different loan than they never took out in the first place, thus giving them $1.2 billion income. If you don’t understand the figures it’s because you don’t have a true love of sports.

The ESL is the singularly most horrible thing ever invented. And stupid. And will take everything we know and love about our game and ruin it. Americanise it. Draws will be banned. Small clubs no longer needed. Because tonight, LIVE ON ESPN, The mighty Toledo Hotspurs are playing Real Minnesota!!!! If it should be level after 90 minutes, all players will be armed and it will be sudden death to decide!!! But literally!!!!
God help us all. 

And yet, oddly, coincidentally, God did help us. By personally sacking Jose Morinho about 10 minutes ago from the team both He and I love. So suddenly: THERE IS HOPE!!!!

Shame on Daniel Levy. The only Brit among those mercenary Oligarchs, oil billionaires and Yankee robbers. 

Very unhappy, then suddenly very HAPPY Monday

A xxxx