Andy's Glasses

The debate is tonight. And I can see it degenerating into a shouting match. Because really, Boris and Jezza hate each other. As they should. I hate both of them. And its pretty easy to do.

Boris was a child of privilege. Eton, Oxford, learned his manners and feminism at the Bullingdon Club, went on to be a professional pompous person, hack and funny man. Which remains his only endearing trait. He’s dishonest, will shag anyone (and really its quite amazing that anyone would ever want to), and changes political stance like most of us change underwear.

Corbyn was born with a placard in his hands and is the only recorded neo-Nate to come into the world already wearing a duffel coat. He went to school but wasn’t very clever, and didn’t bother with college or university. Though if he had it would have been to the Polytechnic of Somewhere Really Unglamorous in some bleak northern town which never recovered from pit closures. Instead he joined the Labour Party. And the Socialist Party. And the CND. And started a life of protest against establishment and oppression. For some reason this allied him to anyone with a cause. The IRA, communist regimes in any country, radical Islamic jihadi movements, anyone. The only form of ‘oppression’ he didn’t oppose was that perpetrated in the name of communism.

And that’s it. They could have included Farage, but he’s a bad and horrible man, they could have invited Nicola Sturgeon but everyone hates her, and really they should have had Jo Swinson. In case they need some tea or cleaning up. I can’t see why else you’d want the esteemed leader of the LibDems present at a ‘presidential’ debate. She took someone to the high court over this omission (though who exactly do you sue? And on what grounds??) and was over-ruled. So she’s not allowed. She’s also very unpopular and according to polls, becomes more unpopular every time she speaks. Not just because she’s Scottish, but probably because she’s very annoying and won’t stop banging on about ‘remaining’ even though the nation voted the opposite.

Maybe when Sturgeon takes Scotland out of the Union, Swinson can take ‘Lib-dem-land’ out of the UK too. Re-align with the EU and create their own state. All 243 of them. They can have the far corner of Norfolk and we’ll chip it off to float into the North Sea.

So the stage is set! Boris versus Jezza. The big one! Massive. It’s Ali vs Frazier. It’s Spurs vs Arsenal. It’s Trump vs… anyone really. It’s THE BIG DEBATE! Tonight.

I’m going out for dinner. Can’t be arsed with it. Well, me bestest, oldest mate is over from France. And that happens less than general elections and new Prime Ministers round here.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Maybe its the bit that Corbyn/McDonnell haven’t said. The final piece of the Marxist-Labour puzzle which brings the whole, seemingly stupid, ridiculous, moronic and ill-conceived plan together. Because they’ve outlined spending on a scale which would cause tremors for the Sultan of Brunei. Billions to the NHS, trillions in nationalisation projects which will then, as an inevitable consequence of that nationalisation, run at massive losses requiring constant input of millions more billions. Then reduce everyone’s working week to 4 days AT NO LOSS OF INCOME and the NHS alone would need to find an extra… divide by 5… add 3,625.88… multiply by Diane Abbot’s IQ… raise to the power of the number of stars on the cover of Mao’s little red book… and the answer is: SHITLOADS. Increase benefits, reduce taxes for ‘working people’, no more tuition fees, 40,000 more police…

It seems impossible. And that’s before you take into account the massive number of businesses and entrepreneurs who simply up sticks and go to a more tax friendly environment. Thus massively reducing the government’s coffers from the levels they naively estimate.

Yet the solution is not only easy and fairly obvious but as it is used by Corbyn’s best mate and ‘model for the ideal government’, Nicolas Maduro, over in Venezuela.

Drug money. The drug industry has an annual turnover of 194,882,759,116.32 dollars a year. That’s an estimate. My estimate. You don’t need much of that to shore up the exchequer. It’s what Maduro is now doing in his country, where the drug business has increased by 50% in the last year. Due to the lawless, government-less shitstorm of chaos, starvation and instability that the world’s most oil-rich nation has ‘enjoyed’ since their own little path to a more Marxist outlook took hold on the country and smashed the economy to a pulp. Venezuela is now bankrupt, even with all that oil, and what little food there is can’t be bought by the people because of the inflation. Maduro is apparently reaping this as a national benefit. Probably files it as ‘increased productivity’ or some such.

So that’s the answer for Labour. Harvest the drug money. Forget about taxing slippery foreign investors like Amazon, Google, Facebook, they’ll just go elsewhere. But everyone needs drugs. It’s a win win.

God fucking help us all.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Went to see an amazingly brilliant movie last night. Le Mans 66. That’s what its called and, pretty much what its about. Yet its not really a ‘car race’ film. Though that is somewhat represented, obviously. But its a film about friendship. About the ‘corporations’ against the little guys. About the ‘maverick’ dudes. And its about a guy from Birmingham who wins that Le Mans race (but you need to see the film for total clarification of that) even though he’s a ‘difficult character’ and anathema to all the ‘suits’ at the Ford Motor Company, who are not portrayed in any kind of good way. It’s also about the massive rivalry between Ford and Ferrari. Which is a rather odd rivalry when you consider those two marques and what they represent. And its a ‘true story’ but as its American, you really don’t know how flexible they were with the ‘truth’.

Christian Bale plays the driver, Ken Miles, and Matt Damon plays Carroll Shelby, the racing driver who had to quit due to health reasons and went on to invent the AC Cobra and whose name appeared on all kinds of amazing muscle cars in the 60s and 70s. So you’d have a Ford Mustang. Or a Mustang GT. Or a Mustang GT350 Sport. Or, if you were a totally insane speed-freak obsessed with ridiculously over-powered monster engines, you’d get the Mustang Shelby. His name represented excess and madness. Which is why I love him. And why Ford employed him to run their race team. Though Carroll won Le Mans in 1959 in an Aston Martin, which didn’t hurt his credentials.

Christian Bale is a screen wonder. He just exudes… stuff. Good stuff, bad stuff, all kinds and here, in a Brummy accent. Damon is wonderful, funny, superb. The racing cars are great, if ya like that kind’a thing. And I do. I really do. But not quite as much as I love all the other sundry vehicles just driving round the streets, parked outside houses, just… there.

I’d also like to state for the record, and in the interests of impartiality and the salvation of our planet, that Mel really loved this film. She’s not a petrol head. She doesn’t get an erection when she hears a supercharged V8 start up and she barely knows the difference between a GT40 and C3PO. She also struggles with long films yet this one is two-and-a-half hours long and she neither complained nor slept.

My fantastic dad celebrates his 95th birthday today. Amazing man. Surrounded by generations of love.

Happy Birthday Moishe

A xxxx

Prince Andrew is not the most interesting of royals. Nor the most popular. Nor the most beautiful (need more time for that list, currently stuck on 0). Not even the most obnoxious, though he’s close. And the fact is that despite the fairly recent ‘scandal’ associating him with the late and not-at-all lamented Jeffrey Epstein and the underage sex issues, its pretty much all been forgotten in the latest wave of electioneering, Brexiteering and abysmal football results for Tottenham. Joey starting to eat solids is way bigger news than some lowly naughty royal, because it’s NOW, not ‘back then’.

But rather than letting sleeping dogs shit in the woods, or adopting an attitude more water under the bridge, over the bridge and in fact the bridge just floated away down Birmingham High Street, Prince Andrew decided to come clean, and clear the (heavily polluted) air unfit for for a Norwegian schoolgirl, let alone a Prince of royal standing. So he invited Emily Maitlis round to the Palace for tea and a chat. With a BBC film crew to hand. Not just to protect Emily from being alone in a room with a man one royal title away from the sex offenders’ register, but also to record his thoughts, recollections and excuses about ‘his time with Epstein’.

And guess what? He didn’t do nuffink. Not a fing. Touched no woman, had no sex, and ‘quite frankly’ he ‘doesn’t remember anything about Virginia Roberts’. Which is a completely and perfectly credible statement, in view of the above picture.

This is not a picture of an opportunist moment to ‘snap a royal’. This is a picture of comfortable intimacy. If I took a selfie with a royal (fucking shoot me if I ever do) I would not wrap an arm around him, lean into him and expect him to look relaxed, at ease and content. I would expect it to look like the intrusion it would be.

Photos are evocative. That’s why we take them. To remember times, people, places. It’s virtually impossible not to. So for Andrew to claim innocence is fine and what you’d expect. But to claim ‘no recollection’ is a fucking joke. And makes him look way more guilty than he did before he decided to ‘clear the air’.

Which would make him my ‘tosser of the week’ except John McDonnell wins that particular prize hands down. With his sudden decision to nationalise BT’s Openreach. Yes, it was news to BT, it was news to everyone when he said that BT, a private and listed company, was to be part-bought by his ‘incoming Labour government’ for 20 billion quid, so we could all enjoy ‘free broadband’. Even though wireless WiFi ain’t that far away. And even though BT is valued at way more than 20 bil. And has a massive pension ‘Black hole’ which is currently part-funded by profits from Openreach. And all the shareholders and particularly other pension schemes heavily invested in BT, would all take a massive hit. And the final bill would end up nearer 100 billion quid. How many doctors, nurses and beds would that buy for the NHS????

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I forgot me ‘at.

I went to Israel, where it was 32 degrees plus, and forgot to pack my Spurs hat. My sacred, my hallmark, my essential and only headgear and… left it in the fucking wardrobe. And the other in my tennis bag. And all the others wherever they have become randomly distributed around my life.

No hat. Hot sun. Hmmmm…

So I went and bought another. Because with a trip to Petra looming; an entire day out in the Jordanian desert, I didn’t want a fried head or scrambled brains. So I popped round to the local shops and perused. And ended up with this one. Because I thought it funny, nice, cool, statementy and rather fetching. I wore it on the walk back to Mel at the pool and the hat worked. Really well. It says upon it, in English and Hebrew: ISRAEL ARMY. So I wore it with mixed pride and irony.

Then, just 2 days later, as we set off southwards for the wedding, en route to Petra, I realised in one of those ‘eureka moments’ that this was in fact not really the best hat to take to Jordan. That the message spoken thereupon would not fill the natives with any feelings of humour, bonhomie or pride. They’d hate that hat. They might shoot it. Cut it off. I didn’t even want it in my bag when I crossed the border. It would be suicidal, like wearing at a Labour Party meeting. Deadly.

So I bought another-nother. It’s orange. With a little ‘NY’ on it. Neither of which would be preferences, but it was the cheapest in the shop. And I’m going to keep it for all my future visits to Arab countries because I realised that a Spurs hat, in the eyes of any football fan here, particularly David Baddiel, claims the wearer’s membership to the ‘Yid Army’. Which is tantamount, in the eyes of Jeremy Corbyn and many others, to the Israeli Army in that wonderful way they conflate Judaism with militaristic Zionism for simplistic ease and convenience.

How many fucking hats does a man need?

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Don’t get exited. I mean ‘party’ in the political sense. Which is as much fun as… as… as something that’s really no fun at all. Even less fun than ‘international breaks’ in football. Although that’s possibly symptomatic of the same syndrome. Which is the divisions and tribal instinct inherent in humans. English humans anyway. Can’t speak for the rest of humanity; they don’t live round ‘ere.

But I find international football boring and uninteresting and an intrusion on my basic human right to panic about my OWN football team every weekend. Because I love them. And I don’t love England because it has horrible players from other teams and they’re not nice. We are a nation divided by our common love of different football teams. And I respect that. Whilst not respecting most of the other teams. And virtually none of their fans.

Similarly politics. It’s divisive. Has to be or we’d be all voting for the same person/party. Or not voting for anyone because that’s what happens when there’s no allowable divisions. Like in Russia. North Korea.

So we just have to vote for who we like. Unless…

Unless some tosser invented the concept of ‘Brexit’. Which neatly forms subdivisions of those divisions. Like me. Who the f*** should I vote for? I’m a centrist type person who would ideologically vote for the Lib Dems. But never have because they’ve always either managed to offend me or been felt to be a ‘wasted vote’. Now, as a Remainer, more than ever I should vote for them as they’ve promised to… annul Brexit? Remove Brexit? Stop Brexit?? You pick your verb, they’re gonna do it. Yet I further feel that not doing Brexit would be undemocratic and I therefore can’t vote for the LibDems because I’d be party to effectively cheating the electorate. Even if I consider 52% of that electorate to be ill-informed and moronic racists. Without being in any way judgmental.

I could even be persuaded to vote Labour. Not NOW, obviously, but nice, cuddly, middle-of-the-road Blairish type Labour. Middle class Labour.

But my voting aspirations are compromised. By the presence of Corbyn. The overriding factor. The main problem. The doomsday scenario. And that takes massive precedence over absolutely everything. Even without his anti-semitism, his politics is the politics of national economic destruction. So therefore I have to first and foremost consider taking my own concept of ‘going off the edge of a cliff’, which is a Corbyn government, ‘off the table’. And thus find myself forced to vote for a right wing (hate that), Brexit loving (hate that), comedian (for PM??) in an increasingly right-wing government because any other vote may compromise the chances of getting Corbyn gone.

It’s that simple.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So the flight ended up being 2 hours 20 minutes late. BUT… we got a free coffee (small) and a free croissant!!! So it was all worth it and I was then pleased to have been ridiculously delayed and eventually arrived home at midnight rather than the somewhat more leisurely 9.30 as was planned. Man plans, God laughs. Ain’t that what they say? God must fly BA. Though not really their fault: ‘allegedly’. And normally, because we’d been getting warnings all day (on my APP) we could have pitched up two hours later at the airport. Except we’d coincidentally but happily (phah) co-ordinated our flights so that we flew about 10 minutes before Rachie’s flight back to Berlin. So we could all go together. Her flight wasn’t delayed. German efficiency. With EasyJet?

But we’re home and its cold here. Yesterday morning I was in the sea and it was 30 odd degrees out there. Today I have no sea and even if I did I wouldn’t go near the sodding thing. It’s cold. 4 degrees so far. Feels like -20. Only Scottish people go into the sea in such climes.

And so its back to the run up to the election. Boris has a 14 point lead over Labour. But Theresa May had something like that before the last election and that didn’t go quite so well. I think if parliament’s hung this time, most of the population will opt for the same fate rather than have to endure another 2/3/4 years of Brexit bollocks.

But much more importantly, than the election and mass suicide of a considerable proportion of the electorate, is VAR. The thing that is ruining football. That has produced nothing positive in the beautiful game. Other than two marvellous decisions against Manchester City in Spurs games. Other than that, its just shit. It’s a cluster-fuck of nonsense and stupidity. My lovely son-in-law was at the Spurs match on Saturday and told of a 4 minute delay (if 24 hours is a long time in politics, 4 minutes is eternity at a football match) for VAR, during which not one word of explanation, instruction nor cause was mentioned to the crowd. Even though the stadium is brand new and has so much high tech wizardry and big screenery and public addressability and the ref has a mike and headset. But its a secret.

No-one likes VAR, no-one wants it and they’re having a meeting this week with the head ref to decide whether to abandon the project mid-season. I’d vote for that. Much easier decision than the election.

Happy back-to-work day

A xxxx

Here’s a first world problem: my flight home has been delayed. My BA app has told me that, so far, we’re over an hour later than schedule. But that’s increasing every time I look. I’m rather proud of that app, and in fact all my apps because I’m not naturally an ‘appy’ person. Safe to say I’m fairly scared of them. Scared of anything that will ask me for a password I set up more than a week ago and haven’t used since. But that’s me. So the daughter got the BA app for me (and for Mel) so we can become those really annoying people at the departure gate trying to locate our boarding passes that don’t cover a sheet of A4.

Israel (and Jordan in fact) are experiencing a heat-wave. Yesterday in Eilat it was 36 degrees of niceness. Last night back ‘up north’ (think Manchester; then bring up the most opposite place you could ever imagine), it was 28 degrees all night long. This morning it looks like that pic and feels much hotter. Probably 32 or 33. It’s fucking November, up here in the Med, northern hemisphere and we were swimming in the sea this morning. Ok, it wasn’t easy getting in (15 minutes for me… conservative estimate) but that’s because I have testicles. My fellow travellers don’t and therefore entered the water much more easily. Choosing to mock, taunt and gloat. Very nice!!!

We booked to come to a wedding. Booked it back in April. Thought if we were lucky it wouldn’t rain too much. But instead it has been totally cloudless for 6 days. If we’d have known we’d have stayed longer. But we can’t. Lila needs us. Joey needs us. Work might appreciate us. And the election needs us. Needs all the help it can get.

Jeremy Corbyn is unlikely to visit Israel. But they all know him. Mainly as the only man in the world who doesn’t realise that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite. Funny that. He attends a commemorative ceremony in Tunis to celebrate the killers of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, but fortunately doesn’t remember it.

And Farage has unilaterally decided to save a few bob for the Brexit party and withdraw its candidates from safe Tory seats. He still remains an absolute tosser, from which there is no redemption, but maybe such actions will see him eventually sent straight to Hell rather than enduring purgatory first.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

So we left Jordan. And Petra was beyond fantabulous but you can keep Jordan and I’m never going back. Not that its such a big problem in my life, its not like saying ‘I’m never going back to Manchester’, or I’m never going back to the Emirates, its just that I didn’t feel comfortable there for one moment. Other than those lost in the total magnificence that is Petra. Which is just brilliant. It’s not Pompeii and its not Atlantis, its just a load’a rocks. And two and half thousand years ago lots of Jordanians lived in caves in those rocks. And buried their dead in many more of the caves that they dug out from the sandstone. Though they weren’t Jordanians then, Jordan didn’t exist til about 1946. And then you see ‘a building’ of immense beauty. But its not a building, its just a facade carved into the rock, complete with columns and doorways and all manner of adornment. But it was never used as the ‘Treasury’ that its name would suggest. Even though loads of people have dug holes in it trying to find the ‘buried treasure’ that any normal treasury might have once house. But this one ain’t no-one’s house.

But the rocks there are divine. I’d worship them. If I was some proto-Jordanian cave-dwelling type person. And they extend over about 30 square miles. Petra’s big. I got that. Having walked half of it in about 35 degrees with all our worldly valuables in my ruck sack.

The drive back to Aqaba took 75 minutes. The driver seemed as keen to get us back to Israel as we were. If not keener. What a fucking madman. There would apparently be no Arabic translation of ‘lane’, speed limit, blind bend or brow of a hill. It’s just flat out, in whichever lane happens to have the smoother surface.

We hung out in Eilat for a bit, not having been down there for over 10 years. And its changed. From a kind of Red Sea South of France to a kind of Red Sea Blackpool in just a decade. If I’m honest I was never a big fan when it was decidedly and presumptuously up itself and poncey, now it impresses me even less. Not ‘real’ Israel.

So we had lunch and set off 350 kilometres back to ‘home’. The length of the Negev Desert and then on to the Mediterranean splendour of Tel Aviv.

Nice to be ‘home’.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

When did you last cross a border? NOT on a plane. Ahhhhh. Probably… never. Maybe on a bus tour? We crossed from Brazil to Argentina to see the other side of Igausu but we had a guide and driver and didn’t actually leave the car. Cash may have crossed palms, but not mine. But have you ever actually, physically, personally, walked from one country to another? (European ones DON’T count, obvs). Checkpoint Charlie time. Well we did it yesterday. We went down to Eilat, as Deep South as you can go in Israel without either falling into the Red Sea or ending up in Egypt. But we didn’t want to go to Egypt. We wanted to go to Jordan. We’re here to see Petra. Because it’s apparently ‘quite nice’. Ok, its one of the wonders of the world and I’m really excited. But possibly not as excited as walking across the border between two friendly… ish but cautiously defensive nations. So there’s 6 passport checks. And guns. Lots of guns. On both sides. And to be honest, its scary. Lots of barbed wire, fencing, walls. It’s like walking into a prison. But a bit more hostile.

We were met half way through by a guide. His name was Mohammed and he then drove us to Aqaba where we were spending the night. And although he sounds like an Uber driver, he’d never qualify. He drove at 90 miles an hour virtually all the way. Whilst on the phone. And checking texts. And THANK GOD (and quite frankly, any fucking God would have done by then) we arrived at our hotel. We were in Jordan.

And I kind of want to like being in Jordan, I want to love the people, want to feel ‘the brotherhood’ and embrace them all unto my (pathetic little) bosom, but… but…

But I can’t. The culture is not merely alien, because I’ve traveled sufficiently that I’m happy to embrace other cultures, third world cultures, anything really. I almost forgive the ‘call to prayer’ at 4.30am and the WTF!!! you feel when it happens. And I appreciate that Arab culture is something I am prejudiced about. But you walk the streets here and there are no women. Yet Jordan is a moderate country, not a ‘Muslim State’, you are free to live as your personal views dictate. It’s not Iran and its not Saudi Arabia. But the ways endure. The values which are so opposite to our own. Particularly towards women and particularly when these allegedly puritanical men leer at my daughter in ways that make me want to hurt them. Oddly I never get that feeling from the Arab men in Israel, but maybe I’m just not as sensitive there.

But heh, I’m not here to check on the tolerance to gays, women’s rights or dirty old men. I’m here to see Petra. And I did. Spent the day there today. And a wonder of the world it really is. Breathtakingly magnificent. Unbelievably beautiful. This pic is a little taster. If I get time tomorrow after the long hike from Petra to Eilat then pick up the car and go 4 hours back to Tel Aviv, I’ll tell you allllllllll about it. If not, it’ll wait.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx