Andy's Glasses

It’s over. Again. Covid? History. Not one single person died yesterday from Covid in the whole of England! Which is brilliant!

Unfortunately, 14 died from ‘Covid Boredom’ a disease which attacks the brain during repeated pandemic statistical information broadcasts. 34 died in crashes on their way to have Covid tests and three more passed away from over-excitement at the thought of hugging someone significant in just a few weeks time. 97 Fulham fans died of disappointment and one political party (errrr, Labour) committed suicide. Though as that is in fact a ‘work in progress’, it won’t affect statistics.

But Covid wasn’t all bad. Because it has revolutionised ‘recycling’.

Just over a year ago, if you had broken garden furniture, dead TVs, ragged mattresses, you’d pile them in the car and head for the dump. Where you’d queue behind 47 white Transit vans, all arguing with the dump-geezers, “Naaah mate, it ain’t ‘trade’ waste, iss personal, from me ‘ouse, innit. So I don’ have ta pay 40 quid, cos iss not ‘trade’. Even though me van says ‘BUILDERS AND WASTE REMOVERS’ on the side”. Then you get your turn, open the car, shlep out the broken old grand piano, single-handed, as 14 blokes in hi-viz jackets stand there watching.

No more. In our (almost) post-Covid world you go online and book an appointment. To dump my old lawn mower. Because its… dead!!! (But didn’t test positive in the last 28 days so doesn’t count). And I’ll probably be invited to see a ‘consultant’ when I get there. In a yellow jacket. At a (recycled) desk. Where he’ll question what I’m dumping. And why. Do I need counselling for the loss of the prospective dumped thing? Has it been replaced? Can he google a new lawn mower for me. Do I need finance?

Because ‘The Dump’ became ‘The Recycling Centre’. But the email confirming my appointment, presumably from the dump secretary, came from…

“London Energy”!!!! Holy shit, that’s impressive. Probably named thus because you really need a lot of energy to get all the shit out of your car and you’ll be exhausted when you’re done. Done dumping. Or perhaps, done energising.

Saturday at 12. I’m so excited.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

‘Nice’ is possibly the most horrible word in the English language. ‘Bollocks’ is in most cases a much nicer (nooooo) word, though obviously with a different meaning.

Yet sometimes I just think that so many people act in ways of such arseholish dickheadedness that really, what we need is more niceness. More tolerance. Understanding. Empathy. Compassion. Because the opposite of ‘nice’ is not ‘horrible’ or ‘nasty’ or even ‘not nice’, but is in fact ‘dogmatic’.

And whilst we’re talking words, how about ‘heteronormativity’. It’s a play in which Jesus is gay. Ok, its about a straight man’s heart rate during exercise. Ok, none of those. You know what it means. The normalisation of heterosexual standards!!! An awful thing. Which is why, at a school in Nottingham, the inclusivity person in charge came up with a new school chant of ‘SMASH HETERONORMATIVITY’. Songwriter, she ain’t. So the chaplain at the school, which is a Church of England school and is funded due to its almost toxic levels of Christianity, made a sermon. As chaplains are wont to do. And in it he said that you should listen to all the lovely, rabid, totally-woke LGBT+++ sentiments but obviously you have a right to challenge their ‘ideology’. Key word. Calls it for what it is. A set of demands for equality and inclusivity that carry the weight of religious doctrine, the questioning of which SHOULD BE ILLEGAL!!!!

And this priest then stated the official Christian line(s). Marriage is between a man and a woman of opposing genders and only ever one set of pronouns. And sex belongs in marriage, not in phone boxes, car seats or anywhere outside a proper, hetero-type marriage. As marriage between anything else, gays, transes, animals or hedges, is banned by God.

The best bit of the story is that the school, in its shock horror of the chaplain’s words, called Prevent. They are the anti-terrorist, anti-radicalisation unit of the police. I mean, really??? Prevent told them politely to fuck off and waste someone else’s time. The priest is sacked, the wokeness prevailed, the Christians can go… well, they can’t ‘fuck themselves’ because that’s not within the bible instructions.

So what you have is your essential ‘rock and a hard place’. A battle between two sets of horrible, rigid, dogmatic, unyielding paradigms, neither of which allows ‘wiggle room’ or compromise of any significance.

The wokes don’t want mere acceptance for their minority, they want total domination and control of the 99%. Who are ‘normal’ IN THE STATISTICAL WAY ONLY!!!!!, (holy shit, ya gotta be so careful), but not allowed to act it. And the Christians who feel that God’s word (not that anyone’s ever heard him speak) is unarguable and set in the stones Moses carried down from the mountain.

So I’d just like to say: its all bollocks (nice word). And if people were just a little nicer (horrible word), everything could be nicely accommodated in a really nice way.

I’m over football. It has no meaning in my life.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

We have a vast political landscape in this fine, democratic nation. And its blue. There’s hundreds of other colours in the palette, but they don’t count. Don’t contribute. Don’t reckon into the equation. Which currently reads: Boris 1, everyone else didn’t.

It is remarkable that they’re now talking about a Conservative government with greater longevity than Maggie Thatcher’s 11 years. Possibly. And all they really need is a pandemic every year to ensure it. Ok, maybe unfair, they need a pandemic AND they need a hapless, meaningless, message-less Labour Party to contribute to their wellbeing. Which, under the stern-appearing, solid-sounding but with a very very soft underbelly leadership of Kier Starmer, they seem to have.

I’m undecided about Kier. Never liked the look of him, I find him quite repulsive, but ‘this is not the cult of personality or beauty’… yet it always is. And when Kier came in, suspended Corbyn on about day3 and spoke harshly about his predecessor’s evil ways, my first thought was ‘well said, Kier-baby’ and my second thought was ‘where the fuck have you been for the last 3 years other than standing right next to Corbyn nodding your fucking head? Supporting these ‘evil ways’, even if that ‘support’ was just doing and saying nothing. When he became leader he ‘suddenly realised’ that his wife was Jewish and rose to defend her race and her people. Hmmm…

Is it still about Brexit? I really don’t know. Why would the good people of Hartlepool (I’m sure there must be a few, aren’t there?) just abandon their voting patterns of the last 60 years because they ‘believe in’ the Conservative way. It’s actually unthinkable. And if they were Corbynites protesting, the last person in the world they’d vote for would be a Tory. So it can only be a dislike of Starmer or they’re hanging on so tightly to their Brexit ways that only Boris could possibly represent them. As if anyone else might take us ‘back in’. Whereas only Nicola Sturgeon has the power to do that. According to Nicola Sturgeon. And Hadrian’s Wall is like green kryptonite to her anyway so her powers don’t work down here.

I’m not sure about the argument that ‘Starmer is just another posh, southern softy, London lawyer’ and thus can’t understand the lives of a northern working class rabble, when Boris is just the same, without the lawyer bit.

All I know is that without some kind of viable and united opposition party, government doesn’t work properly. And the opposition party currently have no message, no visible path to success, no viable nuffink. Sir Kier needs to get his shit together and have a, kind’a, ‘plan’. And quick. Because Boris is not the God that he is actually beginning to think he is.

Happy wet Saturday. Real men play tennis in the rain. Especially silly ones who know no better.

A xxxx

… 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