Andy's Glasses

Extremists! Phah!!!

It’s easy to become an extremist. Here’s all you have to do:

1. Go online
2. Pick your extremism of choice from the wonderful array on offer. For those unable to decide from all the mouth-watering options, there’s web-sites that can help. Radicalised-R-Us is a good one. Compare the Murderers.com. And U-switch-blade, will turn you from a hunt sabateur to a neo Nazi in the flash of a letter-bomb.
3. Ensure that you’re a brain-dead supermoron with no sense of morality or decency
4. Become brainwashed by your chosen bunch of sociopaths
5. Buy a gun. Or two. Or rent a van.
6. Let rip.

I was in Christchurch just a couple of months ago. Beautiful little city. 300,000 people. Not one of whom was out and about on Christmas Day. The quietest place in the entire world. But terrorism? In New Zealand?? It’s almost unthinkable. And that’s what terrorism does, it strikes where least expected.

This time a ‘white supremacist’. The rhetoric is marginally different but the result is the same. Death to innocent people. Because terrorists don’t fight an enemy. Enemies fight back. Innocent civilians are much easier, safer, more abundant. Which is why, even though Brenton Tarrant felt himself in some kind of ‘first person shooter’ video game, and in fact did video the who sorry event, no-one was firing back. Not one shot at him. It’s an act of ultimate cowardice.

And they’re raging at Facebook for allowing the live video on its pages. As if Facebook is a little office in Croydon where Mr Facebook sits and checks everything before allowing it on. The very nature of the internet is that everyone is connected to everyone else WITHOUT INTERVENTION OR INTERMEDIARIES. Of course, there are facilities in place to try and filter out unwanted shit, like a mass murder, but essentially, until a person has drawn attention about such things, the nature of the beast is that 12 million people have seen it, uploaded it, forwarded it before it can be stopped or removed. Unless we want some kind of blanket censorship, and we certainly don’t, stuff will slip through.

So be they white supremacists, jihadis, IRA, its basically the same people, stupid, suggestible losers, looking for an excuse to kill. The ‘narrative’ changes, the ‘ideologies’ differ, but really the bottom line remains awfully, tragically the same.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

To every problem there is a solution. Except the ones that can’t be solved. Then you need something of an ‘accommodation’, a compromise. An agreement. Nice.

Then came Brexit. And re-wrote the entire definition of a ‘problem’. And there are two in particular that are big.

The first is (fucking) Ireland. The border between north and south MUST remain open. Otherwise violence will erupt. Again. Which will please Corbyn but anyone decent will be appalled and horrified. So the border MUST stay open, in accordance with the Good Friday agreement.

There MUST be a border between an independent UK and the EU, of which Ireland (the south, independent, Republic of, bit) is a member and Northern Ireland won’t be when/if we leave.

So how can a border also not be a border at the same time? Answers on a postcard to: T.May, 10 Downing Street, SW1…

The other problem is a bit more complex but was fantastically illuminated by 2 of the audience on last night’s Question Time, who Fiona Bruce, bless her saintly soul, told to argue it out. Fuck the panel; they’re just politicians and thus all have various agendas and have thus far proved totally not up to the task. And argue these guys did. One stating that we were all so misled by the initial bout of Brexit bollox, so lied to by Boris and Farage (collectively known as ‘the horns of the devil’) that we should have a re-vote. A more informed, enlightened population voting once more. None of the 350 million pounds a week for the NHS!!!! type crap, no ‘project fear’.

The respondent shouted loudly (all Brexiteers shout) that the vote was enacted, the decision made and government must sort it out. Why would they listen to a second vote if they’re prepared to ignore the first?

Both are right. I’d love a ‘second vote’ but feel really uncomfortable about how horrendously undemocratic it would be.

Cameron’s Curse lives on. Probably now for much longer. Oh joy. Another fucking year of Brexit. SHOOT ME NOW; MAKE IT GO AWAY!!!!

Happy Friday

A xxxx

OMG! American celebs have been caught paying people to get their marginally average children into top-flight colleges so the celebs can enjoy the vicarious vanity of ‘my daughter’s at Stanford, akk-cherlaay’, or ‘my son’s at Harvard, innit’. And I only care because one of the ‘guilty’ is Felicity Huffman. Who is not just really funny and clever and great, but she’s married to William H Macy who I just love, just like she does. He had me at Fargo and has never let me down. And now, of course, it has descended into the typical American drama. Because if you add A-listers to dodgy deals, sprinkle in some White House (because ALL of Hollywood is Democrat) for some barbs and venom, that equals HEADLINES!!!!

Apparently they have recorded phone conversations of Felicity agreeing to pay some college coach or other lots of cash to improve her daughter’s test scores. As if that’s a crime. That’s called ‘BEING A PARENT’. Ok, well maybe that’s called ‘BEING A STINKING RICH PARENT OF NOT TOO BRIGHT PROGENY AND PANICKING ABOUT THEIR FUTURE’. Morally I can see a few issues with the whole process. Just a few.

But the British press are having a field day with it. Because over here in egalitarian Britain, you simply can’t just ‘buy’ places for anyone anywhere. It’s not cricket. In our country one has to simply earn one’s place in life on pure and simple merit.

Unless you are a Lord, a Duke, a Prince or some other Arthurian type anachronism from the dark ages, whose daddy happened to go to Eton by virtue of a strip of land given to his great, great, great… great grandfather by Ethelred the Unready in 1237, along with a title which enabled him to rob all the poor people in his vicinity of all their food crops and valuables for all eternity. Then, young (let’s call him) Rupert, thick as two short planks, a minor speech impediment, hare lip, who spends his leisure time pulling the legs off dragonflies one-by-one, breezes into Eton on a full scholarship, even though daddy is worth 8.7 trillion by virtue of that strip of land which happened to sit on a goldmine. But that’s fair.

I’m not saying its right, but lack of the ‘high horse’ reporting would be appropriate for Mr & Mrs H Macy, I feel. Even though they’re goin’ darn.

Amazingly, four English teams have made it to the last 8 of the European Champions League. Or the English Champions League as it should be called after March 29th. The other four are one (almost) Spanish (depending on the current status of Catalonia), one Italian (Christiano Ronaldo), one Dutch and one from Portugal.

It’s ours for the taking.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

It was exciting. For something involving Brexit it was very exciting. I watched it ‘live’. On the news channel. It showed an empty room. Called ‘the House of Commons’. Its always empty, you get a few bods lolling around in the back, half asleep, often someone talking at the front, but no-ones listening. Its just a sea of green seats. Then suddenly, every seat is filled, standing room only, bods in suits (and skirts; that’s the Lib-dems and other women) piled 3 high in the gangways. All for one little vote. Do we accept Theresa May’s revised-but-not-very deal plan with which we shall LEAVE EUROPE (well some of it, and not the Irish really, they’ll hardly be leaving at all) ON MARCH 29TH!!!! BREXIT MEANS BREXIT!!!

It lost. By a margin that before this whole saga began would have been called a ‘catastrophic’ defeat, a ‘truly massive’ thumping. Lost by 149 votes. Which for a government, albeit one with no overall minority, is horrendous. But last night it felt like a victory. Because the defeat was so much better than the last one. Then Theresa rose in her chair, bravely, sadly, and opened her mouth to speak. And her voice had been hijacked by the monster from The Exorcist. She’s spent so much of the last week shouting at Messrs Barnier and Junkers that what was left of her voice was was donated by a serial murderer when he’d finished using it for making threats from old phone boxes. Very scary. Our PM is possessed!!

Today they’ll vote on whether we can leave with no deal. Which will be a resounding ‘non!’ as no-one wants that, not even Corbyn because there’s no political mileage in it for him. Otherwise he would. And so we’re left with… errrr… well… there’s always… how ’bout… errrr…

We’ll delay. The next vote. To delay or re-vote.

Main problem: just over half the people in the country (who I’ll call for purposes of differentiation: THE STUPID HALF) want Brexit, whereas 3/4s of MPs are remainers. And they have to represent all of us. You do da maffs.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

The ‘backstop’. The fucking Irish backstop. It’ll be the death of us all. Death by boredom. Death by endless repetition. Death by… death. And certainly the death of Theresa May’s political career (doomed from day 1 anyway, even she could have been under no illusions otherwise). And tonight its ‘The Vote’ redo. The first one was lost by over 200 votes, so ‘success’ could be seen as losing this one by just 199, or 187 votes. Either way, it ain’t gonna win. Half her party are opposed, Labour is opposed, the Irish probably won’t accept the revised, re-worked, re-done, latest, beta-test version of the backstop, so its all doomed. And Brexit day is just over 2 weeks away. Or ‘not-Brexit Day’ as it may come to be known if the inevitable happens.

May can’t possibly get her ‘deal’ through, however much tweakage she’s managed with the immovable Euro-trash (Barnier, Junkers et al) but it won’t be enough. It’s never enough. Though apparently they have time-limited the backstop. Which is a start. If that had happened a year ago it would be grounds for possible optimism. But now, as a last-gasp, desperate measure, it will be pitifully insufficient.

And then we enter, as from tomorrow, new, uncharted levels of uncertainty. Because we’d have to leave without a deal. Which, depending on who you speak to, is either “ECONOMIC SUICIDE FOR THE ENTIRE NATION”, or, ‘the best possible outcome’ for Nigel Farage, Rees Mogg and the merry band of outers. Or we could opt for a ‘delay’, a postponement, an extension to article 50, and spend the next 6 months going round and round in the same old circles and ending up in the same place, which is basically in a river of shit with the Eiffel Tower up our collective arse.

Theresa May’s selling point is that voting for her ‘deal’ is the only way to actually leave Europe NOW. Unless we leave without the deal which nobody wants. Or we have another vote which has merits but is essentially morally and democratically wrong. Insultingly so. Because it says: ‘you had no idea what you were thinking the last time so we’ll give you one last chance to do it properly’. It leads to a kind of “Ok; how about best of 5?” ethos of cheating.

May’s hoping that if the deal is rejected Europe will be forced into more dramatic changes than just kind of putting an extra P on the word ‘backstopp’. Or that in the panic to avoid ‘no deal’ all the MPs will rally round.

It’s all shit.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Yesterday, in two separate incidents, so-called ‘football fans’ ran onto the pitch, mid-game, and attacked players. Obviously players of the teams those fans didn’t support. In the first one, some Brummy scumbag ran onto the pitch at St Andrews, where his ‘beloved’ Birmingham City were playing local rivals Aston Villa, and punched the Villa captain, Jack Grealish, on the head from behind. In the other incident, an Arsenal fan ran onto the Emirates pitch and pushed Manchester United’s Chris Smalling. Only pushed, not punched, because it was Arsenal and the fan was being true to the general ‘softness’ ethos prevalent on the Holloway Road. The fan probably wanted to spend 20 minutes espousing the full Wenger/Emrai philosophy of superiority and smugness but realised he wouldn’t have time, so encapsulated the complete theoretical framework into a single push. Either way he’s a tosser.

Both fans will be charged with pitch invasion and assault and banned from their grounds, probably for ‘life’. But that’s not enough. This season is turning into something of a disaster for the game. We had 1970s style ‘aggro’ at Millwall, with hundreds of the locals attacking away fans before a cup match. Now this. It must be stopped.

The only way to send the correct message is to abandon the rest of the season. Stop it now! (My new campaign slogan). Just call time on the rest of the term. Play out a few cup finals, if ya like, maybe the Champions League, but as for the domestic games, cancel the lot.

And so the league tables published today will be the last. I’m sorry but that’s the way it must be. We can’t let ‘the beautiful game’ become destabilised and wrecked by thugs, morons and those with violent intent. We need to impose a social morality on the game to prevent further descent into horror.

What? Oh, yeah, I suppose you’re right. That would mean Spurs would finish third in the league, qualify for Europe and be ready and rested for next season. Yeah, that’s true. Hadn’t realised…

STOP IT NOW! (Please!!!!!)

Happy Monday

A xxxx

…and God laughs. Ain’t that what they say? So this morning I planned tennis. As I do every Sunday. And woke up to pouring rain and gale force winds. But did I panic? No. I remained calm and had my pre-tennis bath. To soothe the aches and pains before the next physical onslaught my ageing body is subjected to. And I lay there listening to the 50mph winds (guessing) howling through the window frames, hearing the rain slamming against the house, ever confidant that everything would be fine. Why? Because the BBC weather app had told me it would be. And I’m such a schmuck that I believe it. They forecast rain, but ONLY til 9, maybe 9.30. And I play at 10. So just chill, dude, it’ll be fine.

At 9.30 it stopped raining. 10 minutes later the sun came out and 10 minutes after that I walked to tennis. Ok, maybe ‘walked’ doesn’t go far enough to represent the amazing Marcel Marceau type struggle against the wind which was intent on blowing me to Highgate. We played. It was… ‘interesting’. But I didn’t lose any balls. Amazingly. Just spent a lot of time retrieving them from other courts. After an hour we packed up. And as we left the park it started raining. Really raining.

I feel blessed. People were giving me odd looks on the way home. Then I saw my reflection in a shop window and saw the above. I look like Darth Vader, when they took his mask off just before he died. But the force is strong.

We had friends over for dinner last night. Which is why me and all the other international women of mystery (Mel) spent half the day in the kitchen preparing. And because we have a zero tolerance to discrimination at home, the guests included a staunch Liverpool fan (she’s from that sad City so we forgive her, and she’s a ‘she’!!!) and a season ticket holding Manchester United fan. Who is that rarest of examples in that he is actually from Manchester. Even though he now lives just round the corner. And after 40 years down here, he still sounds way more Coronation Street than Received Pronunciation.

Did I want to be talking football with these 2? On ‘black Saturday’? If I was a nicer person I wouldn’t mind. But I’m not. I’m that horrible git who is only too happy to gloat at their teams’ misfortunes and mayhaps. So I just banned football talk completely. ITS MY FUCKING HOUSE I MAKE THE FUCKING RULES!!!! We just spent a rather productive 10 minutes annihilating Manchester City, who we can all hate equally, on grounds of morality, money-laundering and fraud.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Yesterday was international Women’s Day. Errrr, 2019. Probably. Which is a massive day in the life of all… international women. Local ones can carry on ironing and cooking and getting pipes and slippers ready for when their ‘man’ comes home from work, whisky in her hand. I celebrated this day myself by living it as a woman. Not in any ‘trans’ kind of way, though that was my original idea but was vetoed when I broke six pairs of Mel’s kitten shoes with the extra-strength shoe-horn. But I’m such a rampant, re-constituted post-feminist that I simply had to show my support and love and understanding of my co-women’s plight in life.

So the first thing I did was to make a list. Of all the things Mel should be doing today. A long one. I then spent a lot of the day asking people to remove lids, change light bulbs and for help when the ‘computer’s gone wrong again’. Then I got on the phone for a few hours. On the tube I went to the ‘priority seat’ where some scruffy, 17 year-old urchin was superglued to his phone, tapped him on the shoulder and said: ‘oy! muthafucka! Show some respect and give up your chair for someone empathising with women or I’ll shove your phone where only Michael Jackson would try and reach it’. He moved, I sat, cross-legged, like a lady.

Then I was over it. It’s easy being a woman. But I wondered when ‘International Men’s Day’ was likely to be? Oh, (2 answers here): 1. There isn’t one!!! How discriminatory. Or 2. There are 364 Men’s Day’s; so fuck off!

In my mind International Women’s Day is the genderised version of Brexit. It’s divisive. It accentuates the differences, polarises the factions and creates a whole load of bollocks (in the non-gender context) about virtually nothing. And in all reality I am seriously a feminist. We have no glass ceilings in our house, which has only ever been filled with me and women. And now Lila. Also a woman-to-be. Which is probably why she creates so much mess. I didn’t mean that. And if we had any glass ceilings I’d have smashed them with a football decades ago, as I smash virtually anything of value, given sufficient time.

So as I prepare for our dinner guests tonight with my signature dessert, make the salads, set the table, all whilst keeping at least one eye on the football scores, have some sympathy for the poor, downtrodden men of this world. Who are so repressed that they don’t even get their own ‘day’.

Happy Not-Men’s Day

A xxxx

Scientists are working on nanobots. Why not? They’ve gotta do something. And these nanobots are like little doctors who will cure and make you all better, but from the inside. They are truly microscopic little robots, the width of a human hair, but have a million transistors in them, as many as a Nintendo 64, apparently, so there might be a whole new raft of video games made for the internal market. Though their main job will be to get injected into blood vessels and provide drugs or information, because even nanobots carry mobile phones. So they can film stuff, take selfies, like ‘ME AND A SPLEEN!!!! LOL!’ and deliver drugs, but not in a gang-related way.

The concept of a million of anything inside something way less than one millimetre is kind’a freaky. It enters the realms of ‘cannot compute!’ But only on a mechanical level. The problem, as I see it (I always see fucking problems; that’s just so ‘ME’), is power. The nanobots have a couple of solar cells, I’m guessing their not the ones you see on people’s roofs. Little ones. Because they’re tiny and don’t need much power. There again, unless they take a ‘nano-sun’ in there with them, I have no idea how they can recharge whilst on the job. Not like they can take a USB connector with them. Or find a charging point whilst at work.

They reckon they’ll be able to send them into the blood vessels of the brain, which is also freaky. But brilliant. There is apparently no limit to human ingenuity.

Less brilliant were Arsenal last night. As I read on one Spurs fan’s comment; “we went to Dortmund and beat the German champions; Arsenal went to Rennes and lost to heartburn medicine”. A very ‘Spursy’ comment. And that’s the good ‘Spursy’.

But undoubtedly the best news of the week was Manchester United’s amazing victory over PSG. In Paris, having been set the impossible task by starting the game not just 2 goals down but two away goals down. Yet they won. Brilliantly.

And why is this the best news? Because statements are now appearing that Ole Gunnar Solksjaer, their ‘interim’ manager, is very likely to now lose the ‘interim’ status from his job description. He’s done such an incredible job in his brief tenure thus far that they would not only be stupid to get rid of him but also incur the wrath of the fans, who see him as the saviour that he is. And therefore they will stop their pursuit of Mauricio Pochettino. A relief to all God-fearing souls and decent people.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Spurs took just one point from their first three group matches in this years’ champions league campaign. That’s shit. Really shit. So much shit that you actually enter the uncharted realms of probability. ‘No team has EVER come back to qualify after scraping just one point from their first 3 matches’. But come back we did and qualify we did. Ok, we had a bit of help along the way with ‘surprising results elsewhere’ but to fight back, when half of that group consisted of Barcelona and Inter Milan, was a thing of brilliance, of beauty and, probably, the reason we will really really REALLY struggle to keep hold of our manager come August.

And we entered the ‘round of 16’. The first leg, 2 weeks ago, when we beat Dortmund at Wembley. Not just beat them but thrashed them. 3-nil. A big score considering we were underdogs and they are the current German league leaders. But we had to play them again. Them’s the rules. Last night. In the somewhat partisan atmosphere of the Westfalenstadion. Probably in Dortmund, I reckon. Where the local ‘anthem’ is ‘You’ll never walk alone’. In English. That’s like us singing Autobahn, which is not exactly rousing, or the Horst Wessel song, which I think is probably illegal.

I didn’t see the match. I endured the agony of following the text on the BBC website. And it weren’t pretty. ‘Spurs all over the place!’ ‘Shambolic’. ‘No attacking threat’. And as the first half wore on, surprisingly (and thank-God-fully) still 0-0, the possession numbers for Dortmund rose and rose until they peaked at 77%. Holy Moly. We were somewhat ‘on the back foot’, with just one shot on goal (off target, obvs) which, in my mind was by Toby Alderweireld from 73 yards; our highest attacking position so far. That’s the beauty of ‘live text’; YOU DON’T FUCKING KNOW ANYTHING AND ITS NOT FUCKING LIVE.

I remained calm. And then, a miracle occurred. Soon after half time. Spurs scored a goal. In a second half that ended up with Dortmund having just 67% possession, we created a chance, it fell to Harry Kane and our main man gave a big ‘FUCK YOU!!!’ to all who questioned his slightly off-par recent form. Because if you have him in your team, you don’t need to create 15 chances, just the one will do.

At which point Dortmund needed to score 5 goals to win. A draw, because of the ‘away goals’ rule was impossible and it was game over. They still persisted, for pride, for consolation, FOR GERMANY, but they didn’t score. So we go marching into the quarter finals of the Champions League.

Good luck to Arsenal tomorrow night when they play… I can’t remember, never heard of ‘em, in the UEFA. And Manchester United should be buoyed by Spurs when they go to Paris tonight. Because ‘no team has ever’ come back from losing a first leg 2-0 at home, before. Mainly because no-one has ever done anything until someone does it. Andy’s rule.

I’m loving football at the moment. Loving my team who are so capable, strong and resilient and can defend for three quarters of a match without giving away a penalty. Amazing.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx