Andy's Glasses

BMW are big in electric cars. They’re right up there with all the major players, more so than normal rivals Mercedes and Audi who are only toying with the concept currently, which may affect their standing over the next 10 years of ‘the revolution’.

And from 2021, BMW are putting ‘gaze recognition’ in all their electric cars. The (fucking) car will be able to tell what you’re looking at outside the car. Three cameras triangulate the eyes of the driver to ‘see’ where he’s looking and upon a single word command, the car will produce the menu of the restaurant the driver is eying up, the reviews, book a table, if required, probably pour the wine. The amount of which will thus be dependent on the degree of autonomy to which the car is set. More autonomy, more wine. Presumably. The command required is just ‘open!’ Like that. Spoken with an exclamation mark. Like you speak to Alexa. Otherwise da bitch don’t listen.

But what if the drivers gaze happens to be on the lovely legs of a gorgeous woman? I’m aware that such distractions can occur in weak-minded individuals. Normally men, if I can still say such a thing without the world crashing down on my head. But if a mere photo of Eva Herzigova’s wonderbra had to be banned because it caused crashes, it must be deduced that some men do look at women. #metoo.

So you’re staring at the lovely legs and you shout: OPEN! What happens next? What does your wife say? Assuming you still have one and not replaced her with a robot with naughty bits. But if you have the sex-bot, standard on the M-models, she’s probably blue-toothed to the car anyway so she knows exactly what you’re looking at before you do and so one minute you’re driving and suddenly you get a slap. And this is going to be a proper slap. Arnie in Terminator kind’a slap. Send you through the car door and smashing through the wall of the very restaurant you were looking at before the legs came into view.

And they call this ‘progress’. Phah.

Not talking about football. Ever again.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

You gotta love Jeremy Corbyn. On Monday he says how he needs to rebuild trust and relationships with the Jewish community and on Tuesday he opposes the move to ban Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. Though as Corbyn has previously described the Iranian-backed Shi’a group as ‘his friends’, you can’t fault him for consistency. Yet it would appear that to endear yourself to Jezza, the man ‘opposed to racism of all forms’, you only need to align yourself against Israel or Jews to receive that slightly grimy, leather-elbowed, old tweedy arm wrapped around your shoulders.

Hezbollah have 3 missions. To destroy Israel, to deny the holocaust and to eliminate the world of Jews, spreading wonderful conspiracy theories that would not be out of place in The National Enquirer. In Jezza-world there’s nothing antisemitic about any of that.

Israel is depicted as this ‘apartheid state’, this bullying, tortuous, divisive hell. Even though millions of Palestinian Arabs live there happily and peacefully. The conspiracy theories are nothing new, they go way back. Blood libels, the Spanish Inquisition, anything to taint and vilify, right up to the now famous mural that Corbyn argued shouldn’t have been removed, depicting caricature Jews playing cards on the backs of ‘the poor’.

But holocaust denial gets me. Obviously on an emotional level, to a massive extent, but that aside, on a logical level. People deny the holocaust for one reason. Which is to deny the right of Israel to have been declared a state in 1948. Because if it hadn’t been for the holocaust, in all likelihood, Israel would not have been born. So if these people deny that event, it removes the justification for Israel. In the minds of the sick.

But you can’t just re-write documented history to conform to a present political agenda. You can’t deny the racism that occurred during the 19th and 20th centuries, you can’t deny apartheid in South Africa or the Slave Trade in America. Similarly you shouldn’t remove statues of Cecil Rhodes. He was a man of his time, both good and bad.

The Germans don’t deny the holocaust. And they were there. Not only were they there but they were obsessively efficient, both in the murders and in the documentation of them. It’s what Germans do. And it wasn’t just Jews that were murdered. Gays, gypsies and hundreds of thousands of disabled people. Who were German and ‘pure’ but lacked that Aryan ideal of perfection. Bit odd that the propaganda minister for Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, was himself disabled, but was exempt because… well, whatever.

So Hezbollah can hate Israel, can wish the Jews dead, that’s their right. But to deny the holocaust has always struck me as so childishly stupid (putting your hands over your eyes and shouting ‘NYEEEH NYEEEH NYEEEEH’) that it loses you all credibility.

Other than with Corbyn, who seems to attract holocaust deniers like flies round shit. Such a wonderfully appropriate parallel.

Happy Wednesday. Spurs are playing Chelsea tonight. Which is not only massive but somehow relates to all of the above.

A xxxx

We all love The Oscars. Don’t we? We all stay up all night long to enjoy the wonderful spectacle and razzmatazz, see the dresses, hear the speeches, roll around in hysterics at the compare for the night. If they can find one.

Actually, we don’t. Well I don’t. I love movies but have never found the Academy Awards worthy staying up for. To me its always been a bit irrelevant. Mainly because I have no idea what ‘The Academy’ does the rest of the year. If it does anything. And the whole, let’s face it, really American event is a touch too saccharine for this British palate.

Yet it has a power. ‘ACADEMY AWARD WINNNING…’ is a guarantee of more people seeing the film, the star, the director, the cinematographer’s 3rd assistant’s nanny, because historically its the ultimate accolade. And more people means more money. And that’s how the world goes round.

But I’m not alone in finding the whole thing a bit ‘irrelevant’. And because relevance is the Academy’s sole purpose to the entire movie industry, that is a big danger for its existence. If the potency of ‘AWARD WINNING!!!’ is reduced to ‘yeah, so what?’ then the role of the academy is reduced to nothing.

So we had the ‘too white’ years in which any actor, director or writer of any colour whatsoever was almost institutionally ignored, and now we have the reversal. Because the Academy just has to stay relevant, it can’t just pick massive and pure white blockbusters each and every year. And pick it does. Let’s face it ‘best movie’ is a rather subjective judgment, as is best anything, so it becomes a bit political.

This year Green Book won the best movie award. I didn’t see it. Because in trailers it looked a bit clicheed, a bit stereotypy, a rather predictable culture clash reversal with an urbane, sophisticated black dude and a ‘talian New York wise guy goodfella on a road trip in the still segregated South in 1963. It shows the bigotry, the hypocrisy, the stupidity of segregation and how a Northern virtual dim-wit was oblivious to it, having had no experience of such in NY City.

Yet Spike Lee decided it was a movie about racism too much from the white perspective and went to storm out when Green Book won its award. Whereas Black Klansman, for which Lee won best director Oscar, a great movie which depicts the horrible racism, bigotry and hypocrisy in the South, is presumably fine.

But Lee had to win an award, because the politics demand that he do so, and quite deservedly, if not for Black Klansman, which was an ok movie, but for his vast work over decades. Which is always how the Oscars have worked.

So I’ll continue to ignore the Oscar Ceremony, the babes in 50,000 dollar dresses, the bling, the often embarrassing and seemingly endless speeches, but reserve the right to be influenced by the ‘ACADEMY AWARD WINNING’ banners on movie posters.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Have you ever done a ‘speed awareness course’? If you answer ‘no’ then you’re either an overseas person or not a real person. I don’ think they have such things in foreign lands. In America you get fined for speeding. There’s never a question there of taking away the right to drive any more than there is taking away your gun(s). In Russia the rich people speed all the time; race up and down the boulevards in their Ferraris and hot Mercs. If the poor speed in their 1973 Ladas (almost an impossibility) they just go to Siberia for a few years, then a few more.

But here, if you get caught speeding, you either take the ‘points’, on your driving licence, which don’t make prizes, and a fine, OR, you can do a ‘speed awareness course’. Which costs about the same as the fine, but you get no points on your licence. Though the insurance companies are aware (all data is public) and reserve the right to SCREW YOU OVER at any/every opportunity. Because they’re bastards.

Speeding is what normal, sensible people call ‘driving’. It’s called ‘getting where you’re going’, rather than dithering around polluting the fucking atmosphere with no apparent goals or aims or desire to ever get anywhere, as most seem to do. Generally in the ‘fast lane’, with their lights permanently on hi-beam.

I know every speed camera on the North Circular Road. Intimately. I drive my dad home every Friday night and have done for years. But they must have put a mobile or temporary one and apparently I was going a bit faster than the limit. I didn’t even try to deny it because if I don’t know there’s a camera there then I will be speeding. I can’t help it.

I’ve done a speed awareness course before. Big surprise there. You can only do one every 5 years so I have to be careful now. But the idea behind them is simple. To make people aware of the increased danger of driving too fast. Not the danger of getting caught, that’s pretty obvious, but danger to ‘others’. And rather than just say that, they spend 4 fucking hours (which you never get back) showing you graphs and charts and scenarios and death statistics and horror photos and engage in a brainwashing process to pre-condition you that every time the speedo goes over 30 you start involuntarily sweating. And it works. Generally until you get in the car to come home. At which point ‘the race is on’ once more. It’s a pantomime. But you have no choice.

And the Oscar for ‘an actor looking engaged and interested when HE’S BORED FUCKING SHITLESS!!!’ goes to…

Me.

Happy monday, drive carefully.

A xxxx

The political spectrum is changing. Well, not changing, it can’t really change, just the whereabouts of the various party positions upon it. Labour shifted to the left. The process started with ‘Little Tosser’, who used the professional name of ‘Ed Milliband’. Who took Blair’s 40% to the left, and Brown’s 50%, and moved it to about 60% to the left. As he had to. Part of the deal he did with the trade unions when they sharpened the knife he used to stab his brother in the back to win the leadership. Then along comes Corbyn who says ‘fuck dat!’ and moves the party to about 95% to the left. Not quite 100% because at that point the spectrum becomes a loop and looks exactly the same as 100% to the right. Outward fascism, dictatorships, end of democracy. Call it ‘Hitler’s Germany’ or ‘Stalin’s Russia’, even ‘Putin’s Russia’, ‘Franco’s Spain’ or Mao’s China, its all the same. Failed models in which the people get totally shafted, regardless of the stated ideology behind that shafting.

The Tories have shifted to the right. Cameron was about 60% to the right (about the same as Blair, note), but May, much more the social reformer, took it originally back to about 55%, just slightly right of centre.

And then came Brexit.

Which has divided all parties, except the Lib Dems but only because they’re too small to ‘divide’; it’d be like splitting the atom. And the Tory divisions have resulted in a strong, hard right element, driven by the ERG (European Research Group), which is another name for those few UKIP people who haven’t yet been revealed to be neo-nazis but fucking hate foreigners of all sorts nonetheless. And hate Europe most of all. So some have nick-named the Tory party ‘blueKIP’. Which in my (facile and childish) mind, puts the Tories up to about 70% to the right. Too far for me.

11 MPs have left their parties this week. Probably because of these relative shifts in party positions more than even antisemitism or Brexit. Though all are pretty much a consequence of the polarising effect of Brexit.

Should these ‘traitors!’ stand in bye-elections? As they are no longer representative of the party they belonged to when voted? Great question. Strictly, the answer is ‘no’. Because the electorate voted for their specific name. And that’s what they got and still have. But really that’s never the case. If you ask people who they voted for in a general election they don’t say Luciana Berger or Mike Freer or Chukka Umana, they say ‘I voted for Corbyn’ or ‘I voted for May’. We elect individuals but we’re voting in a government and a prime minister. In which case they should stand for re-elections to see whether the people they represent want them or the party they just left.

The main case against bye-elections though is that they are what Corbyn wants. And therefore any right-minded, free-thinking, non-racist person should want the opposite.

And I really like the idea of new, modern, properly centrist party run by decent individuals. And if they’re all remainers? So be it.

Happy sunny Sunday

A xxxx

Chelsea football club have been banned from the football transfer market for a year. By FIFA, the world’s highest authority in the sport. For ‘impropriety’ in the contracts of 29 junior players. Which is a bit like the Pope de-frocking a cardinal for sexual offences. But this is a good thing as clubs generally ignore all rules and regulations, particularly rich clubs. Like (fucking) Chelsea. And remember, the most important rule; if its bad for Chelsea its good for the world.

And a transfer ban for any team is fairly bad, unless it was for Spurs for last year when it would have made no difference, but Chelsea are a team famous for trying to ‘buy their way out of trouble’. And they always seem to be in trouble. So they spend a lot. A helluva lot. With their manager under massive pressure due to… due to… due to the team playing shit and losing games, his position looks even more fragile. Though Chelsea are due to appeal, which historically results in the ban being delayed by 12 months. So expect big spending at the Bridge should that occur. It’ll be like doing a double shop with Ocado. But with the distinct possibility of losing Eden Hazard in the process.

But what a weekend of sport we have. Currently watching (in great discomfort) Spurs at Burnley, followed by the rugby later on this afternoon. Rampant England in Wales. And tomorrow we have the Caribaou Cup final, which I really don’t care about, but its Chelsea against Manchester City so might be at least ‘watchable’. Though the league match between Liverpool and Manchester United is a lot more tantalising a prospect.

Add in a few games of tennis in the glorious February sunshine (WTF??) and it would be the ‘perfect weekend’. Other than the game at Burnley has just finished. And that’s horrible, just horrible.

Happy (fucking) Saturday

A xxxx

The whole world is talking about jihadi brides returning. Well, my whole world is. That’s me, Mel, The Times, the News, Question Time and Lila. And on the radio too. Not radio two, but The radio, TOO. In fact on LBC. The phone-ins have been talking about pretty much nothing else since Shamima was ‘found’ by the Times journalist in the camp in Syria. And now even Corbyn’s piped up and says she must ‘come home’. But as we all know, he loves a terrorist and can never have too many around him.

Much as I’m appalled by her appalling views on various atrocities and the fact that she shows no remorse… well, a little bit after they withdrew her citizenship, so even that must be questioned, she pretty much must come back to Britain. Sajid Javid’s actions the other day can be seen by some (well, by me) as being a slightly politicised way of having a ‘Churchill moment’, of elevating himself in the public’s eyes from creepy little diversity-quota-filler to Man of Action! Like Maggie Thatcher became over the Falklands. But she was much more a man that Sajid could ever be.

The lawyers will wrangle, Shamima’s parents (or, I’m guessing by the amazingly honest, clever and superb letter they submitted yesterday; their legal team) will fight and essentially she is British and no-one else will take her. Obviously she must face the consequences of her actions, but back she’ll come. With her tail under her hijab.

A young woman on LBC, an educated ‘British Muslim’, all nice vowels and tolerance and anti-jihadi liberalism, was stating her case for Shamima’s return. And, with the presenter playing devil’s advocate and pushing a little in the interests of ‘good radio when you’ve been discussing the same thing day and night for 10 days solid’, she suddenly spurted out “WELL PEOPLE WENT TO FIGHT FOR ISRAEL IN THEIR WARS AND THEY WERE LET BACK IN!!!’

And it was the assumed equivalence that shocked me. Yup, shocked me. Along with the ease and casualness with which it was thrown out there. And the fact that this woman, seemingly so intelligent and educated, could run a parallel between people going to fight a cause that, in her eyes and many others, was unworthy or in many ways ‘wrong’, with fighting for a cause that threatens OUR very way of life. A war about the Middle East in the Middle East as opposed to a death-cult culture which is sworn to the destruction of our ways, our nation, our very existence. One is at worst ‘morally questionable’, the other a direct threat to Britain.

Worrying. Very worrying

Happy Friday

A xxxx

They’re back. Liladays. They went away due to staff issues, but they’re now resolved so we’re back on track. And the ‘full thing’. Wednesday night sleepover running seamlessly into Liladay. Brilliant. Though ‘sleepover’ implies, errrr, ‘sleeping’ and I don’t wish to convey the image of… of… of sleep. Sleepover is what it should be. Lila has different definitions. Because in the ‘old days’ (she’s now 22 months old) Lila went to sleep at 7 and woke up at 6 and that was it. The dream. Which turned into a nightmare a few months ago and we don’t know why. But now she’s up once, twice, thrice, in the night and then, best of all, official ‘morning’ starts, well today, at 5.15. Last week was a bit earlier. So today counts as a ‘lay in’. Though doesn’t feel like it. Unsurprisingly.

And I try to explain to her. About diurnal rhythms and sleep cycles and quote to her from studies of sleep depravation in Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay. I draw her graphs, bar charts, sine curves. Then she draws them. In fact that’s pretty much all she draws; graphs without any coordinates. In pink and blue AND purple. Bit of green. All over the newspaper, the walls…

But the fact of the matter is that she is so unrelentingly adorable at any time other than 1, 3, 5 in the morning, that once you see that smiling little face, its over. Ya had me at ‘smile’. The rest I’ll get over. In the fullness of time. Then she gets ‘busy’. And it doesn’t stop. Ever.

I think she woke up this morning because she was concerned about the new group of resignees in Westminster. The 3 Tory MPs who have abandoned the seemingly sinking ship (rhymes with ‘stinking shit’) of the government benches to sit as newdependents with Chukka and Lucinda et al. With no party, no backers (that we know of) and no hope of any immediate influence in the world. But they’re basically The Remain Party. That’s their collective common ground, if not their stated reason for desertion. And ya know what; its about time we had one of those. Because arguing Brexit all of every day for almost 2 years has gotten us precisely nowhere. So we might as well stay. (Run and hide immediately. London’s safe).

Happy exhausting Thursday

A xxxx

The new in-party of ex-Labour disgruntees has now grown to a massive 8 people. Yet if they get 4 more they’ll have the same number of MPs as the Liberal Democrat’s. Which is interesting but irrelevant in a way that the Lib Dem’s themselves are somewhat irrelevant. I’m just happy that Labour is in difficulty and hoping that it is catastrophic in nature. And just to illustrate a wonderful point, yesterday Labour MP Ruth George posted on social media that the new Independent Group (as they’re called) is probably being funded by Israel. She later withdrew and apologised, but, I mean, I mean, I mean… FUCK ME!!! Will they never learn? Jewish conspiracies in response to accusations of inventing Jewish conspiracies? Sensitive.

Because its not all about anti-semitism. On the news every night there are stories from Venezuela about the horrendous economic conditions which have lead to starvation. Children are dying from malnutrition in the country with the world’s largest oil reserves. There are only 2 people, possibly in the entire world, who don’t believe that this is true. That it is in fact some ‘conspiracy by the West’ to taint Nicolas Maduro. One is Maduro himself, who maintains that all is fine. And the other is Jeremy Corbyn, who refuses to admit that a nation following the socialist paradigm could fail so tragically. Even though, historically, every single one has.

Corbyn would have not just let Shamima Begum back into the country but invited her to tea and probably made her a Dame. He loves a terrorist, which is as odd as it is true. He loved the IRA until they sadly(???) disbanded, then moved on to more hate-preachy type Islamic fundamentalists and other murdering rabble.

But Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary decided not to. Let her in, that is. In fact he stripped Shamima of her British citizenship. Which is a bit radical, and awfully fast, but he will have the nation’s support. Whether he has the support of the legal appeals people is yet to be seen. The criteria for taking such an action are simple. If you represent a danger to Britain, you can’t come back. And even those fairly sympathetic to Shamima originally (everyone’s sympathetic to her poor, unfortunate kids, everyone; you’re nothing special) then listened to her views on the Manchester bombing. Which were basically ‘well they’re bombing us over here (in Syria) too; other side of the coin, shit happens’. She has no remorse, she has no sympathy or compassion for the parents of the children murdered in that IS inspired massacre, and now she’s banned. But only if they can get her Bangladesh citizenship, to which she’s entitled. Cos you can’t leave people ‘stateless’. Even really horrible people.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

So 7 MPs resign from the Labour Party yesterday and more are expected soon. As well as many disgruntled Tories too, they fear/reckon/dread (depending on your standing on the political spectrum. If you’re a ‘Green’ then just say ‘ohmmmmm’ and hug a tree).

The only resignation that didn’t come yesterday was that of Maurizio Sarri. There again, why would he resign. If he gets sacked he gets the balance of his contract with Chelsea, doubtless 10 to 15 million quid. Like every other Chelsea manager whose been sacked, virtually one a year for the last decade. So don’t expect his resignation any time soon.

And what has gone wrong at Stamford Bridge? We already know what’s wrong at Westminster, which is pretty much everything, from Corbyn to Brexit to… errr… Corbyn. But Chelsea have an amazing squad of players. They ‘know how to win’ things, they have that mentality and yet…

History repeats. There’s something, which must be there in the players, in the dressing room, which has the power to destabilise the team. And when managers fall foul for whatever reason, the team just stops playing for them. It happened with Morinho, it happened with Conte and now its happening with Sarri.

Personally, without getting too surreal or Stephen King about this, I reckon that there is an underlying evil that pervades the entire Chelsea ‘thing’. Like it was built on an ancient burial ground and the spirits are restless, and during home matches they leave their old graves and inhabit the bodies of the fans and players. Bit like Pirates of the Caribbean on the ghost ship. But that’s just my hypothesis.

Last night I watched as a really lacklustre Chelsea were horrendously outplayed by Manchester United. Not by matching the Blues attacking but by controlling the game totally from the back and then exploiting weaknesses in Chelsea’s midfield. And Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is a wily dude and knew precisely where to exploit.

Because Sarri took the world’s best holding player, the best disrupter of attacks in the world, N’golo Kante, and put him as a winger. Where he is ok. But Chelsea have a wealth of talent in that position. So the holding role goes to Jorginho. Who is simply not up to the job. And obviously, for some reason, the players have the hump with their manager and the team are underperforming massively. Which is pretty good news for most of us, not quite so good for Chelsea.

Resignations to follow.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx