Andy's Glasses

Greta Thunberg, annoying Norwegian enviro-warrior, has something of a dilemma. In fact its a typical dilemma faced by all of us tree huggers who live a saintly life of carbon-free-ness and yet at times need to get somewhere. Because living the zero carbon life is fairly simple if you stay in one place. It’s only when you move that the problems start. Particularly if you need to move quickly. And worst of all if you need to cross continents.

Greta is in California for some very very worthy save-the-planet issues and was set to give a speech to a Climate Change Conference in Chile. But due to ‘political issues’ (rioting on the streets), they’ve moved the gig to Madrid. In 28 days. Which is a problem, out of all the delegates attending a CLIMATE CHANGE meeting, only for Greta. The rest of them will gladly hop on a plane to Spain, as long as someone else is coughing up for their First Class tickets, obvs, but not Greta. She don’t do ‘plane’. She won’t emit carbons. I’m amazed she’s not hooked up to some wonderful aqualung type thingy which takes every exhalation she breathes and removes the carbon to leave just the ‘dioxide’ to return safely to the world. So she needs to get a long way. She went to New York, famously, aboard an Americas Cup carbon-free sail-boat. But they’re not exactly things you can just ‘rent’, or call on a app. And she’s got to get to New York (or thereabouts) first. Then she’ll have to swim. Or possibly walk-on-water, as befits her new status.

Euro-wings have offered her a flight for which they’ll offset the carbon, leaving the journey ‘carbon neutral’ but apparently that flight would probably be cancelled, delayed or break down, according to that airlines record.

It’s a problem. And one once faced by Leonardo Di Caprio, with whom little Greta has been spending a lot of time lately…

Leo was awarded an environmentalism award in New York. But was in Paris. So he made the 8000 mile round trip in a private jet. Who said that Americans have no sense of irony?

For the rest of this missive I’d like to talk about the wonderful game at Goodison Park yesterday, giving particular attention to all the wondrous football they played. And here it is:

Son broke some geezer’s leg. Got sent off. Wrongly. Ended 1-all. Everyone cried. Especially the fans of both clubs. A true advert for the beautiful game. Now I’m going to vomit.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

My newspaper didn’t arrive this morning. Sunday morning. The ultimate ‘tea and newspapers in bed’ morning of the whole week, the defining morning for the entire concept of such a simple but fabulously decadent pleasure when both Mel & I are there to share in its enjoyment (she takes the Magazines, I take the Sports sections and politics; there is no deviation from gender stereotyping allowed in my house). And the fucking papers didn’t arrive. ‘Delay at the depot’, said Yogi, our newspaper delivery executive. And I am aware that even mention of such a decidedly ‘first world problem’ makes me some petty dilettante nancy-boy tart, so I went digital and downloaded the Times onto my iPad. Which produces the exact same wordage but via a medium that I don’t wish to read them upon.

But what I did read scared the shit out of me. Again quite literally so but I’ll save the whole ‘bowel movements’ issue for a dedicated article at a more (in)appropriate time.

Because as soon as they announce the election, Corbyn shortens the lead that Boris has enjoyed for all those lovely months when it didn’t matter a toss. Now it does and the polls start in earnest. Although three polls gave significantly different results. Though we must always remember, and apply the required syllogism, that:
Opinion Polls are statistics
All statistics is total bollocks
Therefore…

You really don’t need to be Aristotle to complete the missing deduction. Especially as opinion polls are all fatally flawed. Because they tell you that ‘40% back Boris and only 22% Corbyn’. Which, if we were a nation using proportional representation would be fabulous and accurate. But we’re not. We are, as we always have been, first-past-the-posters, which makes prediction difficult verging on impossible. Classically, the Lib-dems poll up to 40% of the vote, yet end up with 9 seats out of 625. Because they ‘just’ come second in virtually every constituency. The winning party can often end up with less of the nation’s percentage vote. Which is why the Lib Dem’s and other small parties all bang on about PR all the time. They would do brilliantly. As did Hitler’s National Socialists when they managed to first muscle into power in 1923 (or thereabouts).

But in the absence of PR, the mere percentage of voting intention is almost irrelevant. You need to know how those percentages are distributed in each constituency. So really they should poll within constituencies and then collate all that together for a national picture. But they don’t.

I just this second had a visit from the Lib Dem’s. Not all of them, though as there aren’t that many it actually could have been. ‘Will you be voting for Luciana Berger?’ they asked. ‘No’, I said. Not because I don’t have admiration for her and her principles (basically the principle that Jews should be allowed to live peacefully and unpersecuted in this fine nation) but because I worry that voting Lib Dem would take votes from the small Conservative majority held here and allow Labour to sneak in the back door. In other circumstances, with a ‘different’ Labour I’d think differently. But then again, Luciana would still be in their party and the MP for somewhere in Liverpool, like she was.

It’s all about the basics. Going back to ABC. ANYONE BUT CORBYN!!!!!

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I just shouted at Alexa. I didn’t abuse her, because she’s not a female MP, I didn’t slap her, because she’s a fucking radio and I’d have hurt my hand, and I didn’t even swear. I just shouted at her in a rather unfriendly, slightly unpleasant tone. Because listening to the post-rugby discussion is all well and good, if ‘depressing’ can ever be ‘well and good’, when they’re speaking to Matt Dawson or Will Greenwood or Stuart Barnes or Jonny Wilkinson. But when they ask Alan Shearer what he thought of the match, that was way past my personal limit. I like Alan Shearer. As a person, he seems like a lovely bloke. He was an outstanding football player, scoring the most premiership goals ever. And he seems to have had that incredible career without ever learning anything about the game. Or so it would seem when he commentates as a pundit. So when he starts talking about rugby? RUGBY????

The game was disappointing. Now there’s an understatement. Don’t they know the sacrifices I made to watch that match? Have they no idea the commitment levels required by fans over here? We were up early, we stuck to OUR game plan, we ate three croissants when normally we’d feel guilty about just one, we were queuing up at Coffee Temptation at 8.30 for skinny lattes and a babychino (Lila’s, obvs) to go, and we gave up Tai Chi! I even missed tennis!!! Though due more to weather than incidents in Japan.

But it didn’t happen. England just didn’t even start. Whereas last weekend, and the weekend before, they’d come out with all guns a’blazing, today it was nothing. They started off in trouble and stayed that way for the next 79 minutes. Fortunately I had Lila to distract me, or vice versa, so all wasn’t the total FUCKING NATIONAL DISASTER! it might otherwise had been.

There’s always football. Oh. My. God. Football. Which has got to the point where its almost as bad as Brexit. It takes over our lives, is incredibly divisive and causes one disappointment after another on a weekly basis. If Boris Johnson played football they would just merge into one massive disaster.

But we must be positive. Tomorrow we go to Everton. Because our last trip to the Liverpool area was so successful? Because we like going up north? No. Because we have to. It’s in the rules. And if there is one team in the league who are seemingly less in control of anything they do than Spurs, it is Everton. So in the battle of the incompetent versus the unpredictable (works either way round), anything can happen.

Don’t make me watch more disappointment. PLEASE!!!!

Happy disappointing Saturday

A xxxx

I’m on my way to Japan. Not literally, but mentally. Which is much cheaper and the jet-lag is better. Dependent on what gets drunk in the meantime. But by tomorrow morning I’ll be there. In Yokohama. A short bullet train ride from Tokyo. Near Kanagawa. Which I know because on our (real life) trip to Japan in May we accidentally disembarked our train in Yokohama, thinking we were in Kanagawa. Only to be told by a lovely local taxi driver that he could take us to our hotel in Kanagawa but it is 65kms away and would cost a few yen. So yes, I know where all these places are. I’ve eaten raw fish in the best of ‘em.

So its impractical to physically attend the final of the rugby World Cup tomorrow morning and finding Yokohama is way more challenging than finding ‘channel 3’. And I’m gonna guess that there won’t be too many tickets knocking around even if I did go there.

Whereas Lila’s house is just round the corner, they have channel 3 and I don’t have to eat any more fish. Just croissants. Possibly some Danish. Coffee. Tea. But I do have to miss my Saturday morning Tai Chi class, which I hate to miss. It’s a big decision. Firstly because its such a great and energising way to start the weekend (punching people in the face, breaking arms, kicking knees out) and mainly because notification of failure to attend receives a one word message from our esteemed Grand Master. The text reads: ‘TOSSER’ and you immediately think ‘yes, I am, its true’ and never want to do it again.

Yet this is a world cup final. And England rugby has a history of such events. 2003. Everyone remembers exactly where they (on the couch, with the daughters, screaming our heads off) when Jonny Wilkinson split the uprights with a gorgeous drop kick to beat Australia (could it get any better??).

So now its South Africa. Who have the reputation for being big. Rough. Powerful. Rough. Aggressive. Rough. And big. Not the most totally desirable list of adjectives for an international rugby squad but its gotten them this far. So now its in the lap of the Gods. Who are: Eddie Jones, Owen Farrell and Maro Itoje. God lives inside all of us apparently and never more so than on the rugby pitch.

COME ON ENGLAND!!!!
A xxxx

“For the many, not the few!!”
For proper people, just not the Jew
It’s a time for change that is REAL
Not some empty, same-old spiel

Whose side are you on???
I’ll repeat that til long after you’ve gone
Because in the absence anything worthwhile
That really wouldn’t be my style

So I’ll bombard you with slogans forever
It’s the Marxist way of coming together
Words are wasted, ideas all hidden
The idea of corporations is truly forbidden

Do you want a government that panders to the rich?
An entitled conservative who died in a ditch??
Or do you want ‘change!!!’ with 3 exclamations?
In case you miss the point, not being the brightest of nations

Should a government give all support to the wealthy
Whilst all around working people remain unhealthy?
Food banks for the poor is such a terrible taboo
Whilst the billionaires all dine at Nobu.

Privatisation was the curse of Thatcher
All those thriving industries left in tatters
WE’LL BUY THEM BACK, nationalise once again
Employ millions more women and men

The fact that those services were horrendously uneconomic
Is a lie, a myth, just empty rhetoric from some Tory comic
The post, the trains, the gas supply we used
All coming back to the nation to be abused

We’ll tax the rich til they bleed, drain the middle classes
So we can pay unemployed people to sit on their arses
But in style and comfort, they’re entitled to that
With 96 inch tv, eating cakes, getting fat.

We’ll make Britain fairer, just wait and see
We’ll throw out the bankers and lawyers with glee
Corporations will pay proper taxation
At 92% of their super-annuation

Benefits will rise, in line with the pay of any major CEO
All paid for by the tax dodgers whose profits will go
Google, Facebook, Amazon and Starbucks alike
PAY THE TAX OR TAKE A HIKE!!!!

Oh, they’ve gone, they’re now based in Rome
Closed their office here, terminally gone
Now they’ll pay no taxes, no wages, no nothing
Which leaves a bit of a hole in public service funding

The billionaires similarly all gone to dust
Taking their taxes to places they can trust
Well fuck ‘em!!! I say. Fuck ‘em all and good riddance to all
More room for the workers, its just the jobs that’s taken a fall

Anyway, we can’t be worried about all that
What do you take me for? Some clueless pratt??
We’ll win this election, FOR THE MANY NOT THE FEW!!
And if the sums don’t add up, Diane Abbot will do them anew.

VOTE LABOUR!!!

The Commie Corbster xxxx

Who knows where Scunthorpe is? I didn’t. No idea. Just looked it up and its up by the Humber Estuary, just south west of Hull, in North Lincolnshire. Now ya know. Though it all gets a bit vague when you travel up past Luton, I know, just a vast northern wilderness of strange accents, stranger people, disused factories, rugby league, flat caps and a few cows farting into my ozone layer.

Scunthorpe is an industrial town. Ain’t they all. The difference is that there is actually still some industry there. Like, working, producing, employing. Hard to believe but this place could be Corbyn Central. Working people. With dirt on their hands. As opposed to lawyers or bankers slaving away for 18 hours a day, 6 days a week. They are not ‘working men’ (and women; don’t get shirty, its just an expression). They don’t even get ink on their hands any more. And in Scunthorpe they still have steel production. Which is great. Good, BRITISH steel, not like that (exceptionally cheap) Chinese rubbish. And they make the steel for the city’s other big industry, which is manufacturing wind turbines. So they can ship them on the Humber out to the North Sea to save the planet.

And now they’ve found oil. Not in ‘them thar hills’ but in Scunthorpe. Honest to goodness, there’s oil there. Lots. Gonna take them 15 years to pump it all out. It’ll create jobs, wealth, prosperity, local benefits, but… but its oil. The most unfashionable substance in the entire known universe. So the obviously more fashionable good folks of Scunthorpe are up in arms against the oil well being dug. It is, apparently, a tiny little thing in the middle of a particularly scrubby and ugly, privately-owned farm, in a place no-one goes. Even the council eventually dropped their objections to the oil dig because there is absolutely no good reason to prevent it. It’s not fracking. It doesn’t cause landslides or earth tremors, it don’t do nuffink. Except pour out liquid prosperity to the whole area. But ‘OIL=BAD’ and therefore everyone, not just Greta Thundberg, has a right, no, a DUTY, to resist anything fossil fuel as strongly as they can.

And here’s the absolute killer irony. The production of wind turbines is the most carbon emitting industry there is. So in order to save the planet we must indeed kill it first. Yet that counts for nothing in Scunthorpe. Oil is the devil’s work and thus NOT ON OUR WATCH!!!!

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

It’s comin’. The General Election that ‘everyone’ wants. Everyone needs. Everyone’s gagging for, chewing the bit, climbing the walls, simply MAD for. Its here. The Tories are desperate for it, because they need the majority in the House that they don’t currently enjoy. Labour would bite your arm off for it because its now time to ‘save Britain’ from its current path down the horrendous road to economic success and a buoyant market. The Lib Dems have their own agenda totally but that’s never stopped them before, from losing 50 seats for every one they win. The Scottish Nationalists want an independent Scotland so that it can be… so it can… increase its… its very Scottishness which its not currently allowed to do. Bit like winning rugby matches. And the DUP just want another minority government, any will do, so they can trouser another 2 billion quid for ‘support’ that they refuse to give on the grounds that its unGodly. As is homosexuality and the right to choose an abortion. So that leaves the Greens, who think that ‘now is their time’ and have appointed Greta Thundberg as ‘annoying person in chief’ because she’s not British so can’t stand for parliament here. Thank God.

The Tories will promise to TAKE US OUT OF EUROPE BY **/**/****, NO IFFS OR BUTTS OR I’M DEAD IN A DITCH!!!!! Oh, done that, been there. Well then another massively unattainable yet not very far reaching slogan will be constructed by tomorrow instead. Order your t-shirt now.

Labour don’t really want an election because Corbyn can’t win one. He now realises this too and therefore is making what surely must be his last attempt at ‘the country’ before he retires to Highgate Cemetery with other notable Marx(ists). Corbyn’s days as party leader are seriously numbered so its do or die time for Jezza and he’s polishing up all his placards and banners for the election, having his duffel coat dry-cleaned and getting a new hammer-and-sickle badge for his beret.

Interestingly, the Lib Dems have carved themselves a little niche as The Remain party and have actually said they’ll put us back in Europe if (pigs fly, or-) they win the election. So they’ve immediately lost 52% of the vote before we’ve even started. Which is pretty much how it should be.

It’s so exciting I could almost… nearly… possibly… take a nap.

Bit late today as I had to take Lila to University this morning. This was us leaving ‘for work’.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Football was my first love
And it will be my last…
Football of the future
And football of the paaaaast

That was a pop song in nineteen something or other. Terrible bleedin’ song, so I changed the lyric a touch due to ‘artistic freedom’. Yet the sentiment is true. Football was my ‘first love’ and yet now that love is waning. Nothing to do with Spurs awful season so far… ok, everything to do with Spurs awful season so far, lying 11th in the table, just behind West Ham, Bournemouth and Sheffield United (per-lease!). We’re so bad even Manchester United sit above us in the table. Even Arsenal! And they’re really terrible. So terrible that their captain stormed off the pitch yesterday, ripping off his shirt. The dreaded ‘disrespect!!!’ which is a massive red line in the beautiful game. You can racially abuse players, you can dive and cheat and commit common assault, but you CANNOT DISRESPECT THE SHIRT!

I blame VAR. For EVERYTHING. As soon as they started with Video Assistant Referees everything went to shit. Brexit got scuppered, Trump pulled his troops out of northern Syria, the pound crashed against the dollar, lorryloads of poor Vietnamese died in Essex and the Northern Line suffered delays to Morden. All because of VA-fucking-R.

This is what happens in rugby, a well-organised, intensely regulated game with a million rules, most of which prevent death, some of which are involved in scoring ‘goals’. A decision occurs on the pitch. The referee is unsure so calls on the VAR. But he does so over the ground’s PA system, telling the ‘man watching the telly’ exactly what he should look for. The replays are then shown, as the VAR watches them, on the ground’s screens, so everyone can see what he’s looking at and the different angles and is ‘there’ with the judgment. Which is then unarguable. Everyone’s seen it, everyone knows that, the number 7 was offside in the ruck, that the tackle was high, that the ball wasn’t grounded. And the referee announces his verdict to all. Publicly.

This is what happens in football. An incident happens, 22 players crowd the referee pushing and shoving him until he makes the dreaded ‘VAR’ signal. And then all is silent, all is quiet, no-one knows what’s being done or why nor is privy to the replays. The referee CAN go to the sideline and see them but often doesn’t. Simply trusting the VAR to decide for him. Even though many of the rules in football are ambiguous and the technology struggles with offside decisions. The fans can send a few text messages while they’re waiting. Have a game of chess. Go to the toilet. Then the decision is given to the ref and he just points to one spot (penalty, free-kick, GOAL!) and the game continues. It’s stupid, its opaque and its downright rude to the 45,000 people sitting there having paid a king’s ransom to watch their beautiful game stopped, stuttered and ruined by a new and poorly thought-out system.

Delays. They happen. BUT TELL THE PEOPLE WHY. Same at airports, there’s never any information. So the Premier League adopted the RyanAir model for their VAR rather than the slightly more relevant rugby version.

Spurs played Liverpool. VAR wasn’t involved. Didn’t need to be. It’s a tried and tested formula. Mo Salah scores a penalty and we lose.

It’s almost enough to make you redirect some of that love to your husband/wife!

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Have you seen Joker yet? Then you should. It’s remarkable. Brilliant. Mesmerising. And a bit brutal. Joaquin Phoenix plays the eponymous hero(??) in a study of a sick, warped and abused mind. Mel found it too long and too slow. Pretty much as she finds every movie due to her lack of patience with everything except me. But it had to be slow. It had to smoulder, it had to explain the emergence of the sociopathic psychopath lurking underneath a tenuous veneer of mere strangeness. Joker is portrayed as a victim which, according to this version, he most certainly was. But victimhood can only get you so much sympathy. We’re all victims. My mum wouldn’t buy me the bike I really wanted when I was 2 and couldn’t even walk. Joker’s mum was an insane schizophrenic and physical abuser. So we all have tales of woe. Doesn’t make us all killers and Batman haters. I loved Batman. In fact (guilty secret) I kind’a still do. Ok, not as much as I loved Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman but the Caped Crusader was instrumental in making me the person I am today. Whoever the fuck that might be.

Do you have to be a nutter to play a nutter? Well as Marlon Brando, Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson have shown, it certainly doesn’t hurt. Joaquin has had his own, personal mental health ‘issues’ but is such an amazing screen presence that you don’t care nor know where the man ends and the acting starts. He’s also a vegan, from age 3, so his mental health has always been questionable, if not his common sense.

Parallels have been mentioned between Joker and Taxi Driver. And you can see why. Both are studies of ‘injured’ men trying to cope with their own demons whilst the world around them turns to shit and compounds their despair to breaking point. Possibly ironically (even though its American) Robert De Niro is in Joker too, maybe a nod to Taxi Driver, maybe just because he’s Robert De Niro and if you can get him in a film you do. Though in Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece the Taxi Driver was the ‘solution’ and in Joker De Niro’s character is more ‘the problem’.

But its all about that ‘breaking point’, when the psycho bursts free. And it simply has to be arrived at slowly or its just a slasher movie without screaming teeny babes running round half naked.

Taxi Driver is probably better. But mainly because its set in some kind of real world, rather than Gotham City. And because of the now immortalised ‘you talking to me???’ But Joker is brilliant too and if Joaquin doesn’t win an Oscar then there is no Santa Claus, no God and no hope of Spurs winning the League this year.

England to play South Africa in the final next weekend. OMGeeeeee…

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

PS. Everyone will always remember exactly where they were when Joey sat in a high chair for the first time.

If only Maro Itoje was our Prime Minister, and Kieran Read the leader of the opposition, life would be so simple. Because everyone would know their roles and everything would go like clockwork and there’d be no posturing, no posing, no cheating; no room for liars, procrastinators, deliberators or outright masturbators. As seems to be the case most of the time in Westminster. In Japan its different. England met the All Blacks this morning and re-worked the whole ‘St George and the dragon’ legend to create a totally new one. We beat the fucking All Blacks. Didn’t just beat them but did something much more seemingly impossible than that. We made them look completely ordinary. Took away their potency and left them decidedly second best. And it was awesome and it was inspirational and it was the finest thing that has happened since 1936, possibly 1983. It was THAT good.

But the Brexit which was ‘done’ on Tuesday then ‘undone’ about 10 minutes later when it was voted that the deal couldn’t possibly be approved by next Wednesday, firstly because its very long and needs reading very carefully without falling asleep, and secondly because it probably is a pretty shit deal otherwise the EU wouldn’t have accepted it.

So Boris needs to call a general election because his ‘lame duck’ government can’t pass water at the moment, lacking a majority in the house. But the opposition party won’t agree to that. Even though a general election is all Jeremy Corbyn has been banging on about since he lost the last one. Ah, but not now. Not til Brexit’s done. Not til ‘no deal’ is taken off the table. Not til we’ve won the rugby World Cup. Not til the ozone layer is restored. Not til Greta Thundberg sits on the throne. THEN we’ll have a general election.

But to put more cats among yet more pigeons, Mnsr Macron (little French geezer; married to his granny, small man syndrome personified, the new definition of ‘Napoleon Syndrome’, lots of syndromes and psychological hang-ups) is now threatening to scupper the extension request. The one Boris never wanted in the first place. But Macron has the power of veto and may implement it. Thus sending Britain ‘crashing out of Europe’ on Thursday, sans deal!!!! Because the extension is to ‘article 50’ and if its not extended then we’re gone. And that’ll be Corbyn’s fault. For refusing to accelerate the time table. Bringing about his (claimed) worst nightmare of crashing out without a deal.

Though really his actual worst nightmare is losing another general election, which he most certainly would. I read today that 78% of Jews would rather have no-deal than Corbyn. That would include me. I’d rather have head lice than Corbyn. I think we should convert the rest of the country to Judaism and then Corbyn would never get in.

So vote for Itoje. I would. And tomorrow morning we find out who England will play in the final. Wales or South Africa. Oooooohhhhh…

Happy Saturday

A xxxx