Andy's Glasses

The voting’s done, the celebrations celebrated, the back-slapping… slapped and thus the recriminations, excuses, scapegoating and rebuilding begins.

And it starts with the Conservatives. Who now enjoy almost unlimited power, which is definitely a two-edged sword, but we can only wait and see. They also have to consider an entirely new electorate. No-one in Stoke has ever voted Tory before and now Boris is indebted to the residents of that city, and many others like it, for their part in his majority. People who don’t hunt foxes. But probably eat them if they’re lucky enough to find one. People who think its posh if their fish’n’chips are wrapped in last Thursday’s Daily Telegraph. Proper, honest to goodness working class geezers and gels. What Boris previously considered as ‘northern Scum’. But now he owes them an improved lifestyle. And I actually think he will try to repay that debt as best he can. Not that I believe anything much Boris says if it doesn’t make me laugh, but he’s a clever man and knows what’s due.

Not so easy for Labour. How do you cope with such an horrendous thumping at the polls? Your entire plans torn to shreds and flushed down the collective sewer of almost unanimous public contempt. Because that’s what happens if you produce a manifesto so in tune with your own stupid and malign ideology that it has simply no context for ‘the man on the street’. Whether that street be in Finchley, Blyth Valley or indeed Stoke on Trent. Only the streets of London are, apparently, paved with imbeciles prepared to buy in to such insanity and forgive the bullying, the political terrorism and the anti-semitism.

So Labour now have ‘the choice’. Not so much ‘Sophie’s Choice’ as ‘Len’s choice’. Because Len McClusky pulls the strings, being the party’s primary backer via his Unite Union. And McClusky is a Trot. Endorsed Corbyn, McDonnell and momentum all the way to… to total fucking disaster. And they can blame Brexit for everything, they can blame the unpopularity of Corbyn himself, but that would be a grave error. They somehow have to accept that their brand of Marxism is a failed and miserable path to national bankruptcy and nationalised poverty for all. So the next leader should, logically, be someone like David Miliband or Yvette Cooper. Someone moderate, central, sensible. Yet McClusky simply can’t do that. He ousted Miliband once by aligning with the other Miliband, the Ed one, who was far more left-wing and Union friendly. That paved the way for Corbyn to just extend that move ‘a little’ a few years later when Ed proved he couldn’t run the country any better than he could eat a bacon sandwich.

But also in the Labour candidates for the Big Job will be Kier Starmer, who it has been medically proven is one of the ‘undead’. Or Emily Thornberry, who’s a bit leftish. Or worst of all, Rebecca Long Bailey and Angela Rayner. The bastard love children of Bob Crowe, Lenin and some horrible northern woman with an accent that could shatter glass from 200 yards. They would also represent the worst case of ‘plus ca change, plus ca meme chose’ as they’re just female, northern versions of Corbyn. Oddly, no-one has put Diane Abbot’s name in the hat.

The Lib Dems need a total re-think, the Brexit party can just die and the Greens are happy with their one remaining seat. Scotland is a whole other story.

Happy post-election days

A xxxx

This was emphatically NOT a drastic and immense defeat for the toxic anti-Semitic, Stalinist moron and his cohorts. Not at all. Nothing like that. It was just a re-definition of the word ‘few’. That’s all. A blip. A hitch. A minor set-back in the rise of Britain’s alignment with Moscow, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran and any other terrorist groups they can find. That’ll come about, the glorious day of the revolution, once they get that pesky ‘few’ word cleared up properly.

Because last night, the ‘few’ managed to grow to such immense proportions of massiveness that the esteemed (in Cuba, maybe) leader of the opposition (for a few more days anyway) lost his shirt, his parliamentary sway, his credibility and very nearly his testicles.

In case you missed it, there was an election yesterday. Actually a Brelexion.

When news first came in from the exit polls that ‘it’s gonna be a landslide’, John McDonnell was there with (the horrible) Andrew Neil, blaming Brexit, Brexit and nothing but Brexit for the then imminent demise of his party. (Oh, and his hopes, dreams and political career, I sincerely hope). And I thought: ‘is that right?’ ‘You horrible Scouse evil person?’ ‘Nothing to do with the intended Stalinisation of our lovely land, nothing to do with toxic alignment with every terrorist organisation on the planet, nothing to do with a ridiculously unsustainable model of nationalised dependency????’ That’s what I thought.

And they were factors. But kid yourselves not. This was a Brelexion. Nothing else could have produced so many incredible results in areas of the land where they fucking hate Boris and everything he stands for… except one little thing. Nothing else could have turned generations long Labour strongholds blue. Because the patterns were unequivocal. Labour ‘remain’ seats remained Labour. Labour ‘brexit’ seats turned Tory. It’s that simple. Labour were wishy washy on Brexit and it cost them dearly. Oh, that and the total bollocks the entire party’s been spouting for the last 3 years. The Lib Dems stood no chance. Which is fine. Even though I really should have voted for them because I still don’t want to leave Europe. But you can’t have everything.

Interestingly the Scots are really pissed off. And rightly so. Because of yet another definition. That of ‘majority’. They’re banging on (and on, and on, and on…) about how ‘Scotland voted to remain’, because 60 percent of Scots voted to remain. Whereas the 52% of total Britain who voted to leave do NOT constitute a ‘majority’ when the word is translated into Scottish. It’s an equivalent argument to saying (in Scottish): ‘well, Mr McTavish, at number 23 is going to leave Europe but Mrs Fried Mars Bar at number 38 is remaining. There’ll be a wee border at number 31…’

Majority means majority. I don’t like it either but that’s life. What about the 30-odd percent of Scots who did vote to leave? Don’t they count for anything. Or are they just no longer to be considered part of ‘Scotland’?

The total bollocks of the last 3 years is dead! LONG LIVE THE NEW BOLLOCKS!!!!

Very happy Friday nonetheless

A xxxx

Sent from my iPad

Normally, on the day of a General Election, I’d say ‘the talking’s over’. But this time I have to say, ‘the shouting, swearing, lying, cheating, obfuscating, disseminating, miscalculations, economy with the truth and character assassinations are over’.

It’s been dirty. It’s been mean. It’s been a slanging match, a slagging match, a fistfight, a brawl and… and… and pretty much the same shit that’s been happening in politics since Brexit was elected 3 long and horrible years ago.

But this isn’t about Brexit. And yet it is. Totally and completely. And thus represents yet another wonderful facet of this most horrendous, divisive and destructively chaotic event suffered in my lifetime. To the extent that politics in the UK is now officially ‘broken’.

Leaving the general consensus, as seen almost universally when the public are questioned, that ‘none of them are worthy of my vote’. And a truer truism ne’er there was. They’re all awful. The lot. Terrible. What did we do to deserve such a shambles? Other than vote to leave the EU, obviously. But ‘we’ did vote that.

If not for Brexit we wouldn’t be ‘enjoying’ a General Election on a shitty dull rainy day a week before Christmas. And so vote we have to. The plan being that Boris might win the majority he needs, and didn’t have, to ‘enjoy’ finishing the beginning of the Brexit process. So much enjoyment all round. No wonder there’s such ‘feel good’ in the country.

But this not about ministers and parliamentarians and governments. It’s about tactics. It’s about being presented with a bunch of nincompoops, one of which HAS to end up in charge of the asylum. Like a video-game without the fun. How do you get Brexit (if that’s what you want) but still vote Lib Dem (if that’s who you were)??? Impossible. How can you be any kind of decent human being but wish to vote Labour? Or if you’re like me, how can you avoid Brexit (which I’d dearly love) but am forced to vote for the most Brexity party ever (other than anything to do with Farage which obviously doesn’t count) in fear of what might otherwise happen.

So much tactical voting. Some for whom Brexit is the priority, thus avoiding the Lib Dem’s and (hopefully) the fence-sitters of Labour too. Others intent on Corbyn’s pack of lies damned lies and unworkable expenditure, Brexit or not. And then there’s me. Who would sell every part of my soul and most of my principles (not footballing ones, obviously, but the rest) to keep Corbyn out of power.

May the least obnoxious bastard scumbag win.

A xxxx

Just a quick PS to yesterday’s post about this kid on the floor of A & E at Leeds infirmary.

As it now transpires, amid very strong rumours, that said pic-chure was a ‘put-up’ job. He laid down, mum took photos, he got up and they walked away. Mum then hit the social media.

And pissed off thousands of good, honest, incredibly hard-working NHS staff who don’t enjoy looking at things like this which, by implication, questions their competence.

A xxxx

I know this is 2019 and we spend half our time signing little online waivers about cookies and ‘personal data’ and how it won’t be shared, divided, used against us in a court of law, sold to third parties, especially the Labour Party. But we don’t think about that. You can’t access that link or newspaper article or recipe or football review, without ‘accepting terms and conditions’. But…

Google are following me.

Everywhere. Whither I goest, they shall ride in my wake. It’s like the imaginary friend you never wanted. It’s like a team of detectives stalking you. It is fucking Big Brother in the worst Orwellian way. My phone is not ‘smart’, it is ‘KGB’. But not quite as brutal. Yet. How long before it starts to actually punish us for misdemeanours? Give us a 12-volt jig for breaking the speed limit? Digs a needle in your leg for looking at that girl’s legs? Shutting itself down for 10 minutes because you ‘liked’ a photo of Prince Andrew?

But getting an email telling me precisely how far I’ve walked, cycled and driven for the last month, which countries I visited, for how long, the cities I’ve seen and how often I stopped for a piss on the way (very often, FYI), I find very scary. They ARE watching me and although they didn’t say how much hummus I’d eaten (ever such a lot) that’s probably coming later along with how many times I’ve visited doctors, parked on yellow lines and sworn at slouching pedestrians and phone zombies during the course of walking 42 miles.

This is an infringement of my neuman rights! Which are like human rights but a bit more ‘Mad’ magazine.

I walk at 3 miles per hour. Not bad. As an average. Though I cycle at 9mph. But drive, or be driven at 14mph? They must have been following the wrong person. My car only starts at 55 and that’s down the (rather short) driveway.

So yes, there is a mild interest in the data provided, but you have to question their facility in gaining it. I didn’t ask for an analysis, I didn’t know they were doing it (though that’s my ignorance, obvs) and it makes the paranoid within me wonder what else they know. Spending patterns is easy. Harder to follow those with Mel due to ‘sheer volume of traffic’.

We leave a trace as we innocently lead our private lives. And these mutherfuckas pick it up and throw it right in our faces. Then sell it to Cambridge Analytica who will make me vote Labour.

Concerned of NW11

A xxxx

Our two esteemed (phah) political leaders have been accusing each other of politicising major events. Like the London Bridge attack. Jeremy Corbyn in particular feels this to be inappropriate. And yet yesterday had no qualms about holding up a photo of a 4 year-old boy, suffering with pneumonia, being treated on the floor of the waiting room at Leeds Royal Infirmary. And blaming Boris. Obviously.

But that’s not politicising anything. No. Boris is the head of Emergency Medicine at Leeds, and the admissions director. He’s also a nurse in the A&E, the porter responsible for finding beds and the administrator of antibiotics to small children.

Oh, apparently he’s not! He’s the Prime Minister. Who’d’a known that???

The picture emerged in the Daily Mirror yesterday morning and was thrust in Boris’s face by a tv journalist, DEMANDING an explanation and to know ‘how Boris feels about THIS!!!’ Boris hadn’t previously seen it. And sensibly obfuscated. Because if you don’t know the facts, you shouldn’t comment. And furthermore, there are events like this happening in every hospital every week. Some would call it ‘thinking outside the box by over-stressed NHS staff’ in that there was no bed, no treatment room, just get the job done. Better than leaving him unattended to wait for some space. It’s not Boris’s fault that A&E rooms are incredibly busy. Nor was it the last PM’s fault when such things happened on their watch. Or any of the 19 previous incumbents when they happened in their terms.

So poor little 4 year-old pneumonia sufferer is now the poster boy for Jeremy Corbyn with which to attack Boris.

I don’t mind attacks on Boris. But this is low. Even by Corbyn’s already exceptionally low standards of everything. As exemplified by his and McDonnell’s new answer to anyone questioning higher taxation or expenditure on nationalisation in which the sums don’t work. Which is ‘because they hate the people of this country’. When the shadow chancellor stated that ‘there’s no place for billionaires in Britain’, the inevitable backlash was greeted with just that. ‘They hate the people of this country’.

I’m no billionaire so I can’t hate all the people. So I just limit it to two, to keep it within my budget. Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

You know you’re getting old when they keep sending you ‘invitations’. Not for parties, no longer for raves, orgies, toga nights, to play for Spurs at right back cos Aurier’s injured, nuffink like that. You get invitations to have health checks. In addition to all the ones you have because bits have broken.

So, having successfully completed my last ‘shit on a stick’ performance and was ‘relieved’ (ha, ha, haaaaahhhh) that I don’t have bowel cancer, I received another invitation to have my lungs checked. So as I haven’t had a major medical procedure for almost 2 days (scan on hip), I thought, yeah, I’ll ave some’a dat. You can never check too much. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re NOT queuing up with various diseases to give you.

So I went to Finchley Memorial Hospital. Which must be unique in that its small, clean, uncluttered with people, relaxed, charming and nice. And you can park outside. For nuffink!!!! Or inside if you have 3 spare hours for the terms and conditions and instructions. Fine if you’re on crutches, not if you’re always and only in a hurry. So the most gorgeous person (other than MY FAMILY, obvs) checked my blood pressure, lung blowability, other stuff and declared me ‘the most perfect specimen of manhood that ever walked (or limped) the planet’. And asked if I’d like to be part of a lung study. Trying to isolate some marker for cancer (which I hopefully don’t have) in the blood. To be honest Celia had me at ‘would you like to…’ and I’d have willingly given her my kidneys; she only had to ask.

She took blood. Loads of blood. I was really brave as I thought crying was probably a bit of a killer in terms of maintaining the super-hero stance. And then I had a scan. Of my lungs. Not an MRI this time (thank fucking Christ) but a nice, friendly, quiet, CT thingy that takes 3 minutes. The disclaimer took way longer. So now I’m a guinea pig on a treadmill. Where I belong. And I’m going to get an invite every year.

But the things you think of whilst you’re in medical procedures. Like: how can Manchester City be so shit when they’re the most expensive assemblage of talent the world has ever known? And, how can Leicester City be so good when they’re the cheapest bunch of cut-price, discounted, 2-for-1 players ever thrown together in a bargain basement and then they sold the 2 best ones anyway? The answers to which I’ll ponder at my next procedure.

Joey’s not ill. Just likes to ingest his food through his skin by osmosis. Clever.

Happy Monday
A xxxx

Went out for dinner last night. With some friends. So when Harry Kane scored the first goal for Spurs, a beautiful, stunning wonderstrike, I immediately called our local fish’n’chip shop to book a table. Then Lucas Moura hit a second. So I cancelled the chippie and booked El Vaquero instead. Seemed only fair. But then Son scored. No, that doesn’t do it justice. Son scored the goal of the season, possibly the decade, maybe even ‘the best goal of forever!!!!!’, not wishing to overstate things. So I cancelled the Brazilian place and immediately booked Asian Fusion. Just glad that it hadn’t been scored by Jan Vertongen or we’d be eating fucking waffles again. If we don’t score, we don’t eat.

And just casually, in conversation with Scary Mark, the talk moved over to that of Tottenham. The victorious, the glorious, the supercalafragilisticexpialidotious, at least for the last few weeks, except on Wednesday. And, inevitably, to our new manager. The ‘special’, the modest, the grinning, smiling, ever-charming Jose Morinho. In reply to my notifying Scary Mark of Jose’s appointment, he replied with but one word: ‘toxic!’ And that sentiment was felt by all Spurs fans. We’d LOVED Pochettino, almost as much for being the nicest person in the universe as for the amazing way he’d transformed our club. And everyone hates Jose because he’s… Jose. If not for the arrogance, the conceit, the tantrums, the mood-swings, the petulance, the… downright Portugueseness of the man, then for the Jose ‘style’. The parking of buses.

But he came. And we won. And not just won, but won in a Spurs way. With style, with panache, with the kind of beautiful football which had been absent in our lives since January. Other than when watching fucking Liverpool on tv. But we leaked goals. Then we won again. Same thing, beautiful but flawed. Then we lost. And then came Burnley yesterday. The synthesis of all our dreams. And Jose has Alli playing back at his best. Kane more lethal. Sissoko scoring two goals in two weeks when previously he’d scored none in 2 years. A clean sheet. The defence strong. And Son. The only player who gave his all even through the ‘dark days’. Who only gives 100% at all times. And does it with a constant smile.

So is Jose winning us over? Is that disloyalty to Pochettino? Can we be that fickle? To abandon the man we loved deeply for this… interloper. This mercenary pretender to the throne of king Mauricio?

And yet Spurs were ‘broken’. Not working. Since January we’d struggled terribly. Made to look acceptable by the shabby form of other teams.

That’s why God invented Daniel Levy. The heartless one. A pure businessman who looks at things with objectivity and dispassionate calculation. And it didn’t take an Einstein to know things were wrong. But it took a Levy to do something he knew would be unpopular with every single Spurs fan, even though none of us were happy. So, coldly and clinically, he excised the problem and implanted a new, working, fully-functioning organ into the patient. And we thought him to be evil and morally wrong to do so.

But it was, as can be seen by all, the right thing to do. For the club. Levy’s only concern. We didn’t get a vote. As usual.

So do we ‘love’ Jose? No. But we do love what he’s doing at our club. That must be half way there, surely??

Happy Days

A xxxx

Normally, following my morning martial arts (fighting with wooden poles, in a friendly way), I’d spend the following hour or so playing tennis. But not today. As a ‘one off’ hopefully, and not ‘the shape of things to come’, I instead spent 75 minutes inside an MRI scanner. Nice there. Listened to LBC. Almost drowned out by the whizz and whir and thumping of the machine in which I had taken temporary residence.

I have a bit of a history with MRI. The first time I went inside one I lasted 24 seconds before demanding release. The next time I opted for an ‘open’ version. Which is only as ‘open’ as it needs to be to satisfy the trades description act. In practical terms for any claustrophobic, its the same shit writ different. But I survived it. With only minor panic attacks, not much worse than I endure in every Spurs match.

But today’s was a fucking marathon. Anyone can sprint. And I survived the longest time anyone’s ever spent inside a metal box because the scan was for my hip, and my spine, the parts of which live way below my eyes so I was just kind’a peeking out the end. Which satisfies the enzyme which suppresses my fear of enclosed spaces.

Then I got numbness in my arm. Fingers went numb. Numb and number. I’ve never been very good at keeping still and now I know why. It’s horrible. Blood stops flowing. Everything starts itching. But you’re not supposed to move. So I worked out that minor movements of hand and arm would NOT interfere with photos of my spine and hip, if I did them very carefully and in isolation. Everything we do in Tai Chi is done with the whole body. You pick your nose using your hips. Scratch your arse by rotating your shoulders and shifting your weight from one leg to the other. But not in an MRI. You dissociate your limbs. You unplug your whole-bodiness completely and move NOTHING above the elbow. That way the nurse/doctor/radiographer/Philippino geezer, doesn’t keep shouting at you in the headphones.

He did ask at one point “you go’ pins’n’needle?” FUCK YES!!! “Dat normal, iss ok”.

NO, ITS NOT OK, I’m about to get gangrene in my right arm due to lack of blood supply, there’s nothing ‘ok’ about it. Fucker! Which came out as ‘oh, thank you’.

And the result is…

No idea. Someone has to analyse the photos and then I need to go and get a verdict. Which I kind’a know. Tennis fucks up the soft tissue in my right hip. So I’ll continue to ignore all advice of a ‘rest it’ kind of nature and play on til I die. And enjoy the ride.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

One week. Six more days. Ok, almost 1 week. And then we’ll know EVERYTHING. The fighting will be over, the battles ended, the… the other things… done!

We’ll know who is to be our next Prime Minister. And with what kind of majority. We’ll know whether Brexit will ‘get done’ (a phrase which has become so hateful I’d like to have it tattooed on Jeremy Corbyn’s arse). And we’ll know whether Arsenal will be relegated this season. Even though they’re only one point behind us and we’re still ‘going for 4th place’. But that’s not the point (sic). The point is that they are currently awful and haven’t won in their last 9 games. Their most barren spell for the last 40 years. Freddie Ljungberg has failed to produce the ‘Solskjaer effect’ and the team have actually become worse under his ‘guidance’.

But we mustn’t let this detract us from the election. Even though its much more fun and delightful. That would make me guilty of schadenfreude and nastiness and not being a nice person. Hmmm…

Yesterday the Brexit party defected. Nigel Farage’s latest attempt to introduce the ultimate ‘1-trick pony’ into the political world backfired as four of its MEPs told voters to back Boris. Presumably to ‘get Brexit done’. Possibly because they no longer see any virtue in being associated with the vanity project of a mouthy, right wing narcissist, and possibly because they were all conservatives to begin with and only joined Nige because we weren’t Brexiting quickly enough to suit their own small islander mentality and racist predispositions. One of them is Jacob Rees-Mogg’s sister and another was a former speech-writer for the Conservatives. Traitors!!!

Yet this has become the most angry and personal election campaign I can remember. Nasty. Aggressive. Parties and personalities who genuinely hate each other. Rather than gentlemen united by their common love of the country yet divided by their ideals of how it should function. Never mind Andrew Neill with whom Boris will not debate, I wouldn’t talk to the fat Scottish fucker either. Horrible, arrogant man. I think Boris and Jezza should just get in the ring, take off the gloves, pick up a baseball bat each and slug it out. And if Corbyn should win, shoot him.

Yes, six days (of AG-O-NEEEEE) left and then all will be revealed.

Happy Friday

A xxxx