Andy's Glasses

My lovely old dad, bless him, just turned 94. So he reads the Daily Mail, loves Brexit, adores Trump and hates Theresa May, like he hated David Cameron, for ‘not being Tory enough’. Those are your political views if you’re lucky enough to still have any at 94. And he hates Social Workers. Even though a lot of what they do is very difficult, very important and often life-saving.

The problem is that Social Services act within a very constrained set of laws and regulations. So they are sometimes simply not allowed to take ‘Baby F’ (or the letter of choice) from abusive parents/step-parents/drug-dealers because certain criteria are not reached. And when Baby F is murdered by aforementioned scumbags, Social Services take the flak. Similarly, when they do take a child into care, away from its parents, for protection, they take flak for that too, for breaking up families.

So pretty much everyone hates social workers, to some degree, not just nonagenarians. You’re not human if you don’t. Even if you do appreciate what they do, up to a point.

But that point is often missed, or simply lost in the rules they have to follow.

Like contacting a convicted, jailed rapist, currently serving a 35 year sentence, to ask whether he’d like to meet his child and take any parental responsibilities. The child was the product of one of his rapes. The man was part of one of the notorious ‘grooming gangs’ who raped and abused 1500 girls in Rotherham, many of whom were in ‘Social Services care’ at the time.

The mother wasn’t asked whether she thought this might be a good idea. A nice thing. The child (now a teen) has no interest in meeting his ‘father’. But Social Services were just following rules, laws and protocols. Which I’m going to assume come from Brussels and the fabulous Human Rights department of near-insanity. Because I hate to think that good, wholesome, roast-beef-and-Yorkshire-pudding British law could ever be so fucking stupid.

“Darling, would you like to meet your father? That nice man who drugged and raped me when I was a vulnerable and unstable 15 year-old? And 864 others too?”

The (now) woman in question has rather bravely come out publicly about this because otherwise the Council in question can’t be named.

So even those sympathetic to the importance of Social Services have a lot of questions to ask Rotherham Council about the most terribly mishandled abuse scandal and the cock-ups they’re still making relating to it. They are the ‘gift that keeps giving’.

Does this mean I’m getting old?

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

They’ve landed on Mars. This is what it looks like. Spotty. Should be red, but its spotty. The Spotty Planet. It took the spacecraft 7 months to get there. Though it is 91 million miles away. If you went by London Underground (3 miles every 24 minutes) it would take 19 years to arrive. Though with my free pass at least I’d get there for nothing. Rather than spending a few billion quid like the Americans at NASA have. Is Mars past Ongar? Is anything beyond Ongar?

The tricky bit was the landing. Everything else is calculated, tested, computerised to the nth degree, sorted. But then the ‘Insight’ lander has a six-and-a-half minute journey through the atmosphere of the planet, with temperatures of about 1500 degrees (doesn’t matter if they’re Celsiuses or Fahrenheits at that point, ‘fucking hot’ is all that counts; though may need to be quantified for practical purposes). But it survived and it landed, where it should have, on its little feet things, nice and gently, and bang on time. Which is why EasyJet don’t do space travel. Delays due to storms on Alpha Centuri. Act of God so you don’t get your compensation, just a cheese sandwich for 14 quid.

We now just need to wait and see if the solar panels unfurl. Cos if they don’t they need to send a shit-load of double-A batteries as soon as possible. Otherwise they’ve spent untold billions to put an ornament on a planet that no-one will ever see.

But hopefully all will be good and we’ll learn lots about the origins of the planets, ours included.

Elon Musk is desperate to go to Mars and is working on his spaceships to offer trips. Don’t know what you’d do there, other than take a few selfies til your phone died.

But I’m a little disappointed that there were no Martians to greet the landing craft. Martians have always captured our imaginations as the ultimate, go-to bad guys. Before communists came along and replaced them. And I want Martians. I want aliens. Who look like giant squid carrying ray-guns and act like Chelsea fans after a ‘good night out’.

Shame. David Bowie was right.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I like traveling. We travel, as you’ll know if you follow these pages, quite a bit. And quite extensively. But we have an unspoken rule; we need to feel safe. Ish. So Columbia last Christmas was absolutely fabulous and wonderful but enjoyed with a degree of care and caution that wasn’t required in, say, India. Where you do feel safe. Though Colombia’s lack of perceived laws and rules are mainly historic. Albeit recent history, that of Paulo Escobar and the drug cartels. Who were lawless, Godless, ruthless. Nowadays there’s more law, not sure about God, and we never met Ruth.

In Jamaica we were cautious and didn’t do too many drug deals on the beach. In 3 weeks time we’re going to Australia and New Zealand. Being very wary of kangaroos. And we’ve done South Africa, where you feel safe but everyone tells you that you’re wrong to believe that. And Argentina which was perfect, and Brazil, where again you need to watch where you go and what you wear/carry. America is generally safe, Canada almost perfectly so. The Far East is generally pretty good on the whole. Bearing in mind that there are always areas in every country, every city, where you have to ‘be careful’. This is caution over people, not over the State.

But we’ve never been to Dubai. And we never will. We have been twice to the airport whilst planes were filling up and that in itself is an experience. In gaudiness and tastelessness. Which is not why we wouldn’t go there. I’m not scared of gold plate, even if I don’t like it very much on an industrial scale. But I am scared of places where the laws appear to be made up as they go along.

If you know that to enter a mosque with bare shoulders is wrong, you don’t do it. If you’re aware that pissing on holy shrines will get you in trouble, unlike various groups of back-packers in Indonesia, you can avoid it. But if you can get arrested just because you looked at a policeman, or bumped into someone in a shop, and then jailed without any meaningful trial for 17 years with no appeal, that’s not somewhere I need to be in any particular hurry.

Matthew Hedges was researching Dubai security for his PhD, arrested for spying and jailed for life. This morning, just one week later, he has been pardoned and is on his way home.

And this guy grew up in Dubai, knew it well, its laws, how they generally make them up on any particular day, who not to offend, how not to offend them, Matthew knew all this. Yet still fell foul of the whims of those Emiratees.

So, thank you very much, I’ll return to Ecuador with pleasure, troll the streets of Hong Kong all night, do Manhattan any day. But Dubai? You can keep it.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Winning isn’t everything. But losing isn’t anything. So say the collective sports’ fans of the world. Not counting cricket fans, because they love a draw on occasion, and Formula One fans who love a crash beyond all else.

But sometimes winning simply isn’t enough. Sometimes you just need to gloat.

Because beating Cardiff 1-nil away is a great and hard-fought result for which your team (ok, MY team) gets awarded the 3 points for victory and everyone goes home happy. Except the Cardiff fans but they don’t count. Most of them can’t count.

But other victories have an added sweetness that no number of goals, tries or off-stumps can equate to. Because its about who you play, not how you play. And to deny such a thing is to employ a neutrality in sport which removes passion and love and renders everything sterile and just reduces it to a few emotionless numbers.

I can’t live my life in such a way. Not when we’re winning anyway, only in times of loss.

And yesterday was simply ‘the dream’. It started with the rugby. We (that’s the England ‘we’) played Australia. And although beating New Zealand would always be more significant, more important, more difficult, it simply doesn’t mean as much as beating Australia. Because New Zealand is a nice place full of lovely people. And…

It’s all about attitude. Not of the players, however important that might be. Its about the collective national attitude and the general feelings between the two nations concerned. And by not just beating Australia but by pretty much humiliating them with a second half performance that was breath-takingly outstanding, those poor Aussies had the smugness simply wiped off their faces. And put onto ours.

But that was the mere hors d’oeuvre for the main course when Chelsea came to play Spurs. Bringing their ‘unbeaten’ record with them. And their arrogance and their nasty, vicious fans and their manager. Who I reckon must be a Spurs fan. Because he took Chelsea’s most influential player, if not their best, N’golo Kante, who has just been given a new, 290,000 pound a week contract for being probably the best holding midfielder in the world, and played him in a new, untried and more peripheral position. Replacing him with some tosser with an equally funny name but about 10% of the talent, no pace and not much clue, for the Spurs attackers to flummox.

Would Kante have prevented Spurs from winning? Hard to say (thank gawd). But it certainly wouldn’t have looked so easy for my high pressing superstars to simply breeze up to the Chelsea goal again, and again, and again, leaving the seemingly hapless Chelsea defence in tatters. And never more so than ‘the best goal we never scored’ when Son played a 1-2 with Eriksen on the edge of their box, the latter floating the most exquisite chip over the heads of the Chelsea defence back to our Korean wizard. Who obviously hit the ball into the crowd, but that’s not the point. It was the style, the skill and the totally dominant class that impressed, almost as much as our missed opportunities to inflict even more damage on Chelsea’s ‘unbeaten’ record.

We (that’s the Spurs ‘we’) were brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Happy Sunday. And come on Bournemouth!!!!

A xxxx

They’ve changed the law. I’m going to presume this is British change in law, rather than European purely on the grounds of the pragmatism involved seemingly in the face of any ‘health and safety’ considerations. And its about chasing moped criminals. Who are horrible little urchins on stolen mopeds (they’re scooters really but for some reason everyone calls them mopeds, even in the distinct absence of pedals) who either: roll up at upmarket jewellers and smash their way in with sledge hammers, then run off on their mopeds, or the moped passengers stealing phones from the hands of people on the streets. Alternatives in the moped criminal options are stealing delivery people’s scooters at knife-point or after an acid attack.

In brief, scooter bandits are not very nice people. The police might chase them BUT; before May, if the scooter riders removed their helmets, the police had to stop pursuit. It was deemed too dangerous to chase obnoxious, thieving little bastards in case they bump their heads. It wouldn’t be fair if people who had innocently been attacking shop-workers with sledge hammers and swords (as happened in Fleet Street, 2 doors away from me), wouldn’t be fair if they bruised their skulls. Be terrible.

The new change in law means not only can the police now chase the offenders but have devised a tactic called ‘tactical nudging’. Which translates from its PC speak as ‘knocking the fuckers off or just plain running them over’.

I think this is awful. Who’s going to pay for the damage to the scooters?

Another terrible travesty of justice has resulted in the latest bout of tube strikes on the Central Line. The strikes are for a ‘persecution of a train driver’. Those bastard TFL people have actually sacked a trade union member!! How fucking dare they? In fact they mustn’t. All the man was doing was driving a tube train while stoned out of his head on dope. I mean, what’s the problem with that? It probably relaxed him nicely, put him in a sweet and mellow place. Not like he was operating heavy machinery or any… well, just a train, virtually drive themselves, they do. Or that he was responsible for the wellbeing of more than say, 300 passengers. But those inconsiderate fascist bastard gov’nors at TFL sacked him. He’d taken a mandatory drug test and failed it. So he insisted on a retake, and failed that. So he demanded his own, private, drug test and guess what, he failed that too. Thus this abject failure on seemingly all counts was dismissed. And the RMT want him reinstated. On the grounds that… (if you can think of any possible mitigation or any reason for re-employment please let me know).

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

The wonderful thing about the internet is that it has no bounds nor limits. The awful thing about the internet is that it has no bounds nor limits.

When it was set up (Sir Johnny Internet, 1988) it was just a way for people to connect to each other. Write someone a letter. Send them a photo. Put an article ‘out there’ and someone will pick it up. Or not. I put stuff on my computer and you can access it on yours, should you choose. Simple, easy, neat.

This is very difficult, conceptually, for those of us who didn’t grow up with such things as Intrawebs. In our world, due purely to ‘the way things work and have always worked’, the internet was a big shop, or office, with The Internet!! written boldly across the top. And inside sat some people. About 27 at first, growing later to 4.32 million of them. And every time someone posted or advertised or put something publicly available on their computers, Mabel would have a look at it, read it, check the spelling, and examine it for ‘content’. So anything pornographic would be censored, everything nasty would be removed, everything financially dubious and she’d call Charlie, in the dubious finance department to check it out. “What’cha reckon, Chaz? Seems a bit dodgy, don’it?” And that would be cut, after they’d talked about over a nice cuppa tea.

But that model doesn’t apply. Similarly, YouTube, as a company, don’t get to choose what people put on their platform. And it is a platform. Just a place to put things. Anythings. Facebook too is just a virtual-land that connects people and content, and data, lots of data. It’s not ‘their’ data and content, its yours, you just use Facebook to display it. By choice.

So when MPs urge big business to ‘boycott Facebook and Google’ because of terror issues, which are unquestionably true and valid, its almost a return to the old model attitude, expecting someone to just go on and delete offending items like you delete your spam emails every day. Just wipe ‘em away.

But the world is now run by algorithms. Which analyse numbers, not words or pictures. And if that algorithm calculates that the demographic of people watching a ‘how to behead a kaffir with a Stanley knife’ video is the same as those buying sparkling kitchen cleaners, they will be linked for advertising. Which was why Unilever abandoned their Facebook advertising. Even though, when you think about it, as every bomb seems to use bleach, peroxide, cleaning soda, Jihadis probably represent a pretty good market for the manufacturing giant.

Which is a case in point. Unilever make stuff to clean with, nasty people choose to abuse those products and make bombs with them. Is that Unilever’s fault? Are they responsible?? Are Ford Motors at fault because one of their vans was used to attack innocent pedestrians?

Politicians love to find someone to blame. And I don’t think YouTube and Facebook and the others act sufficiently to remove horrible and dangerous content. But its people. We do the posting, we put it out there. They have algorithms to try and locate and remove, but it can’t be easy.

Computers now run the world. And they’re fed by us. The good bits and the bad bits. Just like the world’s always been run.

Happy Black Friday

A xxxx

Along with everyone else involved or interested in any way with the whole Brexit business, I know nothing. And yet even that ‘nothing’ is a completely different ‘nothing’ to the one I didn’t know at the start. Or at any point since. Though it must be stated that those nothings change daily. I’ll invent a new acronym: NINO. Nothing in, nothing out. Just for Brexit bollocks.

When that total bastard David Cameron cursed us forever with his ‘in-out referendum’ it is not just fair to say but actually proven beyond any doubt that both sides of the debate told the voting public total lies, outright fictions, embellishments so severe as to be almost fantasy. Ok, the only possible mitigation was that no-one knew what was going to happen back then. Because we (nor anyone else) had ever left Europe.

So 2 years down the line we know a little more. Still ‘nothing’ (within the normal statistical margin of less than 5% which is the same as random chance) but more informed nothing.

Therefore the (what we shall now call ‘first’) referendum was polled in complete ignorance. Actually worse than ignorance; it was polled knowing only a head full of lies and propaganda. Ignorance is at least neutral.

The Brexit divorce that we are possibly due to sign in a legally binding agreement on Sunday is half a Brexit. The wrong half. We’ll still be tied to European laws and diktats. We’ll still be in the Customs Union because of Northern Ireland, which prevents us from forming independent trade deals with countries outside Europe. We’ll still be allowing almost all free movement of people, which we desperately need but most ‘outers’ fucking hate. And for the privilege of getting precisely nothing new, we lose the right to have any say in new laws and regulations because we’ll no longer have Brits in Brussels. AND all for just 39 billion quid!! What a frikkin bargain!!

If I was the staunchest May fan in the world I would not, could not vote for that deal. And with half the conservatives out of the team and the Irish suddenly abandoning their half of the ‘government support’ deal, for which we paid those anti-abortionist, bible-bashing bastards a billion quid, there is virtually no chance of getting it approved.

Which means if we do go out it will be without a deal. The doomsday scenario.

And surely that is the time for another referendum. Something I’ve been opposed to in principle, so sue me. But on the grounds that we were lied to for the first one and are now presented with the ‘no deal’ scenario as a likely reality, the ‘falling off a cliff’ version of Brexit, I think WE (the good people) need to decide. Because the politicians are incapable of doing so. Nor can be trusted to.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Marks and Spencer are in big trouble. Not the financial troubles and woes that have been plaguing them for the last few years, that’s insignificant compared to the shit-storm created by this window display in their Nottingham store. Because you can scorn accountants and auditors (even lie to them, cheat for them or get them to do both for you) but you scorn feminists at your total fucking peril!

And this Christmas window was deemed, (quote:) “vomit-inducing” by one woman, I’m gonna guess she’s a feminist, who questioned whether M&S ‘have learned nothing in the last 35 years’.

So men get to ‘dress to impress’ and women get to ‘dress to undress’. I can’t see the problem myself. Other than the colour of the ‘fancy little knickers’ they used. The mannequin looks like an Arsenal player, only a bit taller. Which is such a turn-off. But heh; that’s me and my preconditioned, socially-induced sexist/Goonerist stereotyping issues that I am aware have a way to go in resolving.

I’m not saying that anyone, particularly the feminist fraternity (I know, but I had to) are over-reacting to this whatsoever. I think its justified vilification of a company with a rather large ‘pay gap’. And I think its appropriate for the Times to get a quote on this matter from the Count Dead Women Project (I wish I’d made that up but its real, its alive and it records the number of deaths of women caused by men). I mean, I don’t like women wearing Arsenal kits but I wouldn’t kill one. Maybe a Chelsea kit…

Ok, I struggle to understand the jump from ‘sexy underwear’ to murder, but that’s just because I’m a man! Probably. M&S doubtlessly use that window because their marketing department has shown that men love buying underwear for their partners. And even more surprising is that partners GENERALLY love to receive it. It means their man cares, thinks of them, ok, possibly thinks of the gorgeous salesgirl too, and finds them desirable.

Why can’t that window be viewed as a testament to women’s empowerment? You ‘must have’ fancy little knickers like Beyoncé and Lady Gaga wear on the stage, FFS. Two bastions of feminine empowerment. Lady Gaga’s ain’t bad either. Sorry.

The feminists didn’t complain about David Gandy in the other window causing men ‘handsome stress’ and ‘six-pack envy’ and reducing us to virtual eunuch status, did they? No. They didn’t.

I’m all for feminism, even let my wife buy MY knickers. And I’m all for equality. But as in all wars, you have to pick your battles. Otherwise you end up look like a totally obsessive, over-reactionary nob. Sorry again.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Houston, we have a problem. Those immortal words, or in fact, exceptionally mortal words, bearing in mind where the problem occurred, were uttered by the astronaut Tom Hanks, way up in space in Apollo 13. Hanks survived to make a series of gushy rom-coms so all ended well there.

But space is not a place for a problem. And we (that is ‘we’ the planet, the solar system, the galaxy) have a bit of a problem.

A neighbouring star system is dying, as do all stars eventually. And there’s 2 ways for this to go. (There’s probably a thousand variations, but in my mind which craves simplicity, which yearns to create systems from the chaos, there’s just 2). It can either crush itself to death and become a ‘black hole’ or it can turn itself into a Wolf-Rayet star and eventually explode.

I like black holes. They’re neat, simple. The gravity in the star pulls itself inwards until that gravity becomes so strong that the actual atoms collapse into themselves. And if you remember ‘pictures’ of atoms, they’re vast spaces with a few tiny particles whizzing round, joined by elliptical lines. Well take away the spaces, (and the lines, cos, like, you know they were never really there, don’t you?) and you end up with the same mass in a microscopic space. Infinitely dense, they call it, like a lot of football fans. A ‘singularity’. Possibly like the one that started the ‘big bang’.

Anyway, the other option is this Wolf-Rayet thing. And here the star burns itself to death, eating up all its own mass from the outside in and finally explodes. But during the process it creates solar winds of 12 million kph. You wouldn’t want to put an umbrella up in that. But best of all, as the star explodes it releases gamma ray bursts. Ooohhh, gamma ray bursts!!!

And they’re fucking awesome. They release as much energy in a 2/3 second burst as our sun produces in its entire lifetime. And without a calculator, I can tell precisely that THAT IS A FUCK OF A LOT OF ENERGY!!!! And would be sufficient to strip our weeny little planet of its atmosphere, even from 8,000 light years away where this is currently happening. So have your roof tiles checked as soon as possible.

But they didn’t say whether this is a ‘now’ problem or an 8000 years time problem. Which I reckon is rather significant. I need to book a holiday.

It’s not very neighbourly to explode so close to other people. Rather rude. I might call the council.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

This is Gareth Thomas, the Welsh ‘legend’. I use the word cautiously because today it would appear all you have to do to become a legend is hold a door open for someone. “Fanx, mate, you’re a legend”. But to be a real legend you need a back story. That’s what a legend means. A story. Passed down by word of mouth. Or by the collective archives of the press and tv stations in the case of our Gareth. And embellished along the way.

Because after becoming the first rugby player to reach 100 international caps for Wales he then captained the British Lions twice as well. Few men ever achieve this. Because the Lions only play every 4 years and to be uninjured for two series is rather difficult. To be good enough is something different altogether.

And then, at the near end of his career, this super-tough ultra-man announced to the world that he was gay. Perhaps the toughest and manliest thing he ever did. And, with no intention of slurring any nation, he did this in Wales. To make such an announcement in London, New York, Paris, would reduce it to mere conversation. “Oh, so you’re gay, fine, pass the salt would you?” But Wales is more… more… more ‘provincial’ in attitude, more conservative, more… Welsh. They voted ‘leave’ FFS. Ok, not all of them, but a vocal majority.

If I ever decide I’m gay I shall come out in Los Angeles, where you can shout it from the Hollywood sign and no-one would give a shit. Other than Mel, maybe. I wouldn’t do it in Islamabad, I wouldn’t do it in Riyadh and I wouldn’t do it in Cardiff.

But that’s Gareth’s home town and we all want to feel safe and comfortable in our home towns. Then this weekend Gareth suffered a ‘homophobic attack’. He was attacked by a ‘queer basher’ and battered and bruised, which you can see on the video he posted.

They caught the assailant and, being Gareth Thomas, instead of pressing charges against the 16 year-old, he opted for ‘restorative justice’. What? Yes, I was unenlightened too. I thought it was a euphemism for leaving the little bastard in a locked room with Gareth who could beat the living shit out of the fucker. But its not that. It means that they get to talk to each other about what happened. Which ended with a (presumably sincere) apology from the kid.

And thus the legend of Gareth Thomas just keeps on growing. Always positive, always generous, always a true and proper man.

But I want to meet the kid who attacked him. Gareth Thomas is 6 foot 3 and made of hardened steel. And looks like it. Couldn’t the kid find someone smaller to attack? Wasn’t Tom Daly around that weekend? Wayne Sleep? This 16 year old is either the hardest man in the world, or certifiably insane.

Happy Monday

A xxxx