Andy's Glasses

There’s a new byword in Westminster. A trump card. The ‘joker’. To be deployed by anyone reaching any kind of sticky situation, anyone ‘cornered’, anyone running out of cogent, logical argument. Just throw in the ‘DEMOCRATIC’ card and it reduces the opponents to mere dust. It’s like the smart button on a video game. When all the enemies are lined up to kill you and there’s no-where left to go, hit that button and they all blow up. But in a video game you can only use it once. In Westminster you use it pretty much all the time.

To do anything but leave Europe on 31st October is, according to Boris, ‘undemocratic’. And strictly speaking that is correct. We had a referendum. A pinnacle of democracy. Which told us to leave Europe. So to not do so would be to basically shit on the head of democratic process. To render it useless. Or ‘undemocratic’.

So we have to leave. On Hallowe’en. Oooooohhhh!!

But if we leave without a deal then, according to most remainers and half of everybody else, that is ‘not what “we” voted for’ and hence is undemocratic. Although I reckon a high proportion of ‘leavers’ would take anything to just be out. Because they’re stupid. But I’m not making judgments. Just the ones I have to.

So perhaps we should have a re-vote. The Labour Party option now that Corbyn has finally managed to say something about Brexit, having previously been the only person in the entire country, let alone Westminster, who has consciously avoided all mention of the B-word for the past 2 years.

And a second referendum represents the hyperspace option. In that it is so democratic it becomes totally undemocratic. Hyperspace is the button you push in a total and absolute emergency. It gets you out of trouble but you have no idea which world you come out into.

Donald Trump is democratic. Even though it means something a bit different over there. But he has actually questioned the issue of gun control. Publicly. Though how he can figure out any gun applicant’s mental health status on a 2 page questionnaire, particularly their future status, is a bit beyond a mere mortal like me to understand. However, whatever tiny little suggestion he has made is firstly more than any other such noise made by any other Republican president ever. And secondly is sufficient to have the hateful NRA screaming at him already. Someone in that country must realise that there needs to be a disconnect between the government and the people who make all the guns, in the debate about why thousands of Americans are getting killed by guns every year. Otherwise its just, kind’a, plain stupid.

Tennis in 50 mile-an-hour winds separates the men from… from… from the people with any commons sense.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

It was 50 years ago (yes-)today
Sergeant Pepper sold his soul to lay
The roots for all that afterwards came
Even though most of it was pretty lame
So even though I’m not for bossing
I’m gonna curse you with a fucking zebra crossing

(Altogether!)

Sergeant Pepper’s lonely hearts club ba-a-a-and,

Trumpets, etc., etc., etc…

I’m so fucking old that I remember vividly when Abbey Road came out. Because the Beatles invented ‘hype’. Without ever doing anything. A Beatles album was just an event of massive world-wide excitement and significance. They were ‘hype’.

That was 1969.

Two years before, my brother was 14 and already something of a genius of the electronic variety. So he’d made a little amplifier which could play the new-tangled ‘thing’ which was called ‘stereo’. Music out of not one, but TWO channels. Before that we just had… music. But stereophonic sound gave you two different tracks played on either side which ‘made you feel like you were there’. And Brother made his little amp from egg cartons, empty washing-up bottles, discarded razor blades, some wire and a transistor. We didn’t even know if it would work because no albums had been recorded ‘in stereo’.

Then we bought Sergeant Pepper. Which was so recorded. And we put it on, plugged in (sellotape, sticking plaster and string) the headphones (we didn’t own TWO speakers) and I remember listening to ‘Lucy in the Sky’ with the sound swirling round my head magically and thinking ‘this is so good I need to get some serious mind-bending drugs for my barmitzvah’. The sound was just spectacular. Because if you make an album that is destined to sell 12 billion copies, you just don’t need to skimp on the technical or the innovations.

The cover for the Abbey Road album was shot outside their studios, in Abbey Road. And in fact yesterday was NOT the 50th anniversary of the album, which is next month, but of the (fucking) photo being taken. If you can believe how… fanny, fans can get. I’m not sure if its a more iconic album cover than Sergeant Pepper’s, but it is by far the most damaging. As it inspires ‘pilgrims’ (read: tossers) to walk across that crossing at all times of every day and every night, having their photo taken “right where John, Paul, George and Ringo did!!!!!” Tossers. The traffic tails back to the Euston Road as the crossers stop to pose, then the next, then the next, then… ad infinitum. And much as I love the right of anyone to be a total tosser (mobile phone users excepted) I just always see these people and think: GET A LIFE!! Though I’m normally thinking that inside my car creeping along at 3 metres an hour and late for whatever.

Zero tolerance. To anything. That’s what we need. All my troubles seemed so far away.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (may the Lord bless them, keep them holy and healthy and bestow magical, mystical properties of wonder and awe upon them) have sent out a survey to all of its 150,000 members. Asking their opinions of the persistent use of ‘the Y word’ by Spurs fans.

Because Spurs fans are known as ‘The Yids’. Or ‘The Yid Army’. Which is different from the Israel Defence League in that they don’t wear uniforms. But ‘yid’ is a horrible, inflammatory, nasty, divisive, derisive term. Everyone agrees about that. When its spat at other people. But when you use it upon yourself, as the Spurs fans do, even those who aren’t Jewish, can it still be seen as in any way ‘anti-semitic’?

The Police and the Crown Prosecution Service investigated this a few years ago and found that there were no grounds for… well, for anything. The Spurs fans, following years of abuse in the 1970s by other teams calling them ‘yids’, said, ok, that’s who we are. And they embraced it. It is NEVER used as an anti-Semitic term by Spurs fans. In fact its the exact opposite. It is unity between the fans. Jewish or not. ‘We’ are all ‘yids’.

And the survey asks the fans if they’re happy with this word? If they think it is inappropriate (which it kind’a, sort’a, definitely is). And also whether they should be allowed to continue using the word. Last time they asked, about 75% said they were happy for Spurs fans to continue using the word ‘yid’. That’s among both jews and non-jews.

But the problem, as always, is the question as to whether it invites or encourages anti-semitism, or apparent anti-semitism, from other fans. Which it emphatically does. Though it has to be said, way more from Chelsea and West Ham fans than virtually all others. I make no judgments about that fact, just kind’a put it out there. Not all scumbags are anti-semites.

And of course all London clubs have their Jewish followers. And it is they that really hate the ‘y-word’. David Baddeil (big Chelsea fan; well, keen fan, little bloke) and his brother have written between them about forteen volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica size just about Spurs fans and the yid word. Because football is a massively tribal thing. And Jewish Chelsea fans hate seeing their ‘tribe’ shouting apparent anti-semitic things. And not so ‘apparent’ things.

Coutinho? Dybala?? Sessingnon???

Happy Wednesday

The Yid
xxxx

As a football club Manchester United are just about as big as you can get. As successful, glamorous, rich, high profile and international as any team in the world. I’ve travelled to lots of seriously far-flung places and seen locals, not tourists, wearing the red shirt. Blind adherence to a fairly meaningless, far-distant concept embodied and personified by David Beckham and Christiano Ronaldo, back in the day. A bit of Cantona, a touch of Nobby Styles, a whisp of Bobby Charlton’s hair.

But as an economic model the club is a train wreck. The Glazers bought the club in 2003 using a ‘leveraged buy-out’. Which means they effectively used the club’s money to buy the club. Which is why the debt from that still stands on the team’s books at over half a billion quid. But who cares? It’s only money.

United have a history of ‘buying their way out of trouble’. And I suppose you have to define ‘trouble’. In this context. Which is pretty much: not winning stuff and not getting into the Champions League. And failure of all managers since Alex Ferguson took retirement.

And they saw how, to a great degree, the expensive acquisition of Virgil van Dyke, turned Liverpool from an aspirational team (reputations from the 1970s can only win you so many matches) into a serious contender and Champions of Europe. Fuck ‘em.

So there’s the answer. Buy a really expensive defender. And United did. Toby McGuire. From Leicester. £80mil. And according to Carling Opta, McGuire’s even better than Virgil. Wins more headers, makes more passes, scores goals from corners, and does ‘big things’ in a very ‘big’ way. Because he’s big. Of course, he’s an ‘old style’ centre back, so he’s as ‘fast’ as Jackie Charlton pulling a plough. But you can’t have everything. Even when you would appear to have paid for everything and a bit more.

Van Dyke is the ultimate modern day defender. Toby Alderweireild is on a par with the Dutchman. But United failed to get Alderweireild (praise the Lord) so instead paid Range Rover money for a Transit van. Which is solid, reliable… and slow.

United now want Christian Eriksen and apparently ‘are close to a deal’. Which is seriously bad news for Spurs. Because he’s our playmaker and, without Dele (injured) who has been a bit inconsistent of late anyway, we would lack that player with finesse. The purveyor of the killer through ball into the box. 60 million they reckon. But I’m fairly sure that Daniel Levy would not let the Dane go without having a replacement lined up. And its all got to be done and dusted by Thursday’s transfer window closure.

You should never sell great players to competitors. I’m sure Daniel knows that. If not I’ll remind him: “Daniel? Go tell Man United to FUCK OFFFFFFFF!!!!”

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

What’s French for ‘baguette’? I don’t know neither. Not that good at languages. Only Inglish. Fucking great at that I is. The rest? Don’t care. Don’t need ‘em. Cos really, Inglish is the only language you ever need, even when traveling the world. That and a bit of French- mime. I find that if you speak English to a foreigner and they obviously don’t speak the language, just speak it again but much louder and it’ll be fine. It’s a volume issue, not a linguistic one.

And that is actually true. That English is pretty much the only language you ever need. The only places where it becomes difficult are America and Australia, because they speak languages known only to their indigenous peoples. Airlines and flight controllers use English, The Queen uses English, I do, Lila does, kind’a, so that’s it really, the world is coming to the point where you really don’t need other languages.

Except in France. Quel surprise, non? Where they are really… really… ‘territorial’ about their language. They always have been. And yes, it is a beautiful language, never more beautiful than when flowing from the sumptuous lips of a Bardot (back then, obvs, wouldn’t listen to her tell me the time now) or a Leah Seydoux, all pout and pant. Such a beautiful language that from those lips it is something akin to aural copulation but I don’t wish to stress this too far.

The point is that the French passed a law in 1994 (they love a law over there, can never have too much bureaucracy or legislation for that nation) stating that all adverts, company names, anything vaguely ‘global’ (read: ‘English’) must have a French translation. Because words and phrases like ‘fast food’ had entered their vernacular in a most un-French way, ruining an entire generation!! Forever!!!! And now they’ve announced their new logo and phrase for the 2024 Olympics to be held in Paris and it reads: “Made for Sharing”. Which Macron, quite rightly, thought sounded like an ad for a pizza. A big one. And, like me, the little Napoleonic shit probably don’t share. So he’s annoyed that the phrase is in English as well as pretty stupid. But it has to be in English because the Olympics is International and as 98% of the world speaks English to some degree, why would it be in any other language. ‘Hon y soit qui mal y pense’ is just bollocks. ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’; good book (once translated) but you wouldn’t wanna use it as a name for the Olympics.

But the world is more and more globalised because the online bit of it, where most kids live, has no borders. Like Ireland. Currently. And is truly international and to the horror of Macron things like ‘BFF’ have entered France without a license.

Let them eat gateaux.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

It begins. After so long. The wait is over. The wilderness weeks of some golfer hitting a ball into a forest, of women’s netball, of trying to get really exited because Lewis Hamilton drove round a corner really really fast, of even being reduced to looking for cricket!!! It’s over. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. And being thus must begin with a monumental moment to make us aware that life moves on and, more importantly, football comes back.

It’s the charity shield, the community shield, whatever they all the traditional season opener in which the league champions and the FA Cup winners of last year play at Wembley to remind everyone why we all hated them both so much last year. And it means that football proper starts next week. I know, the ‘football league’ started this weekend, but for Premiership snobs like me and princesses like Mezut Ozil, ‘football’ starts next weekend. Though I must admit that even though I’m a total meritocratic capitalist (bastard) believing that the Premiership warrants its totally ridiculous income, pay and obscene monetary structure, because its what people pay to watch, it would be worth remembering that the league is in fact related quite closely to it. And the sad and sorry fact is that the league is becoming unsustainable due to lack of income, lack of funding. Basically, one month’s salary of any Manchester City would keep Bolton Wanderers afloat for 3 years. And dat ain’t right. Just not sure what I can do about it, influential and powerful as I obviously am.

Fortunately, Spurs have already put some silverware in their cabinet in the shape of the Audi Cup. Which celebrates emissions figures that don’t add up, cheating generally and four-wheel drive. Football doesn’t get any better than that.

Meanwhile, over in El Paso, Texas, there’s been another ‘mass shooting’. That fine nation’s 246th such event of the year. Putting it, apparently, about 244 ahead of all other competitors. For which it must be really proud. However, I must stress, that these almost meaningless figures say NOTHING about gun control, ease of ownership, the ease with which psychopaths can buy machine guns, bullets or anything else to do with guns. Which are the inalienable right of every nutty fucking killer to own. I just want to stress that in case Donald Trump’s reading this. Or any other totally blinkered moron.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Birthstrikers. Ever heard of them? No, me neither, not til this morning when I learned of this ‘movement’ of couples who have decided not to bring children into a world, the future of which is tragically, ecologically, environmentally, errr… futuristically unknown. They don’t think its fair on the child to introduce it to a world so horribly rich in carbon and in plastic waste. Or they think the introduction of yet another ‘person’ will further increase the carbon footprint of the world’s population.

And I have a lot of sympathy for these ‘birthstrikers’ who are denying themselves for the future of mankind, or alternatively, have almost written off the future of mankind and don’t wish to introduce people who won’t be able to enjoy the wonders of the, by-then extinct, Madagascan moth-eaten butterfly. Or an ocean living, bottom feeding nematode that no-one’s ever actually seen but whose future is also doomed. They have a point. Just not a very good one.

So I think a better name than ‘birthstrikers’ is actually ‘Tossers’. Because that’s what they are, for so tragically missing the whole fucking point.

Evolution works in ways no-one can control. You can only observe it afterwards. We, and I speak for all humans here, can only observe it because the Cretaceous extinction killed off the dinosaurs which enabled the tiny mammals to become cows and bears and monkeys, which eventually became us. Well, I speak for all humans except the ultra religious who don’t buy into Darwin at all, and most of the southern states of America, who view such thought as sacrilege.

Fast forward (a few hundred millennia) and due to our opposable thumbs (yours) and massive brains (mine) we are now in a position to spend all day surfing porn on mobile phones whilst hurling plastic bottles around the place and spewing carbon out of every imaginable mode of transport and manufacturing we can invent.

In another 100 thousand years, historians (if there are any) will be able to see what happened next. Maybe humanity, as we know it, Jim, will cease to exist. Maybe it’ll evolve into some carbon-breathing thing? Half tree, half Taylor Swift. Who the fuck knows. What we do know though is you have to be ‘in it to win it’. And if you don’t reproduce then you’re abandoning your rights to involvement in the biggest game in town. The Evolution Game. You’re making a decision on behalf of all those unborns to just quit and give up.

If the world is becoming excessively carbony then that’s the world we have. The only world we have. We have to cope. Get rid of the carbon or evolve into something that can cope with it. And with the changes in temperature, the floods, the everything. Don’t give up your children’s future just because it possibly won’t look the same as your past. That’s ultra-conservative, defeatist and stupid. And not giving your offspring the chance to thrive and play football for the Alpha Centuri Aliens.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

It was Lila day. I was busy. She was busy. We were all busy. She runs round in fearless manic fashion, I’m there to provide moral support and damage limitation. And to listen. To the non-stop stream of wonderful consciousness that emerges from her 2 year, 4 month old mouth. A lot of it slightly mispronounced due to the difficulty of certain sounds. Like L, G and J. And her name’s Lila and her brother is Joey. Yiya and Doey. Other words are pronounced so beautifully, so classically, that you feel you’re listening to the BBC with a high voice. Home. Phone.

Lila don’t like cricket. Not my favourite of sports anyway. But… but… but… it is the Ashes and it is Australia and… well… So I just checked the score every now and then (‘now and then’ is officially 14 minutes in cricket time; for football its different). And by lunchtime ‘it was all over’. Almost. Those pesky Aussies were batting and had slumped to an amazing 105 for 5. They were ‘at our mercy’. I’ll be over by tea! I optimistically thought. Not their innings, the whole first test. Out by lunch, we score 437 in one hour and bowl them out for 35 in their second innings. Job done. Game over. Get’cher money back.

But I hadn’t figured on Steve Smith. The disgraced and disgraceful (the former for cheating, the second for crying on tv whilst holding his dad’s hand) ex-captain of the Aussies just would not be budged yesterday. So as all his compatriots fell and crumbled and played like… well, like hapless Aussies, says it all really. Whilst all around him burned, like Nero fiddling, Smith played the innings of his (sad and awful and cheaty) life. Even I found some newfound respect for the scummy little shit.

Smithy was banned for a year from test cricket for his ‘ball tampering’ whilst captain. Tried, sentenced and banned by Cricket Australia. Hmmmmm. Oh, that’s impartial. No conflict of interests there then. Here’s our best ever cricketer who we must punish, yet we all lose out by his absence… Let’s just ban him for a year and have him back for the Ashes!! Brilliant!! Looks like we care, looks like we’re doing the right thing but he’ll only miss some meaningless matches against Fiji, Switzerland and The Maldives. Great idea.

If Australia viewed ‘ungentlemanly’ conduct in the same way as civilised countries, Smith would still be in a prison cell in Siberia. NOT HITTING THE SHIT OUT OF OUR BOWLERS AT EDGBASTON.

Happy Second Day of the Test

A xxxx

Women in abusive relationships is a very emotive subject. Those who finally ‘make the break’ generally have a very difficult transition. Where to live? How to survive? Where are the kids?? How will she cope? Whoever she is, and all like her, she has our heartfelt sympathy and, where possible, support.

And then there’s the tale of Princess Haya. Mrs Dubai. Well, one of them. She ‘is’ married to the Sheikh of Dubai. Sheikh Mohammed, if you couldn’t guess. And she is one of 2 ‘official’ wives and 4 ‘unofficial’ ones. Hmmmm. 23 children. Between all the wives. Official and non. Not sure how that all works, but it is definitely working.

The Princess fled her home and came here. And unlike most poor housewives, as luck would have it, she has an 85 million pound house in Kensington. Which she bought ‘without her husband’s knowledge’ a few years ago. Well, you wouldn’t miss small amounts going from the joint account would you? Probably scraped it together from the housekeeping change.

The first thing our Princess (in the literal sense) is doing is trying to get the courts to stop any forced marriages on their children. Not all 23, I presume, just ‘hers’. Because others of the Sheik’s children have previously run away to avoid just such a thing. He’s obviously a man into all sorts of marriage stuff. Loves a wedding. Don’t care who else joins in, long as he’s involved. She wants custody of her kids too, over here.

In fact the man is so distraught that he’s lost over 17 percent of his stock of wives, he’s been writing heart-felt poetry. Which is certainly better than sending out tweets. But not a lot better. But we shouldn’t blame him.

His is a world of total autocratic domination. Everyone does what he says, when he says it, without delay or the need for repetition. And as he makes the rules, such as they are, he gets to say who marries whom (including himself, obviously, in fact especially himself), And if he wants 6 wives, who’s gonna stop him? And if he wants to betroth his 10 year old daughter in marriage, that’s what he’ll do. (I don’t even know if he has a daughter, nor how old if he does). He makes the rules, though they’re pretty much as they have been since… since before Dubai even had just one 6-star hotel with its own submarine.

What strikes me as odd is why they are having the court processes here. He doesn’t live here. We have no jurisdiction over Dubai (far as I know) and its no more right for us to impose our laws and judicial instructions to the Sheikh, over there, than it would be for him to impose his laws over here. I know London is ‘divorce central’ for billionaire’s wives but really.

Cos you can’t dictate how other countries are ruled. Not North Korea, not Russia, not Dubai. Just don’t go there. Except Russia. Which is lovely.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx