Andy's Glasses

This is from today’s paper. Above the police, below the homeless. A school (which both of my daughters attended) is asking parents to sign a pledge requesting the entire family reduce ‘phone time’. Which is brilliant. The school was always at the cutting edge of cool, leading the way in eating disorders, producing alcoholics and being a place for really good quality drugs. Oddly it was pretty good academically too. But smartphones are killing society, I have no doubt personally, and any action is good action. They’re trying to kill our zombies!

As younger daughter commented, what a tragedy that instead of getting fucked up in the park with 4 bottles of cider and an eighth of Skunk, these kids are at home on Instagram looking at pictures of each others’ shoes. And what they had for dinner (before they threw it up). The wastage of youth. As opposed to the wastage of youths.

This pledge is for the whole family. Mum & dad too. No phones at the mealtable. No phones an hour before bed. Chargers OUTSIDE the bedroom. And not only is this a great idea but it was actually proposed by some of the girls in the 6th form as part of a psychology project. I hate clever bastards normally but this is inspired and could change the entire fabric of our future as human beings.

It will never work. The force is too strong, alas and alack.

And I think I’ve changed my mind about Brexit again. Don’t want another vote, want ‘the deal’. The only deal. The shit one. With holes in it. And a massively humongous national bill attached. But it is what it is and its better than nothing. So be it.

However, one of the main reasons for the ‘second vote’ or ‘people’s vote’ is that ‘we were chronically misinformed by both sides before the referendum’. And we were. Abysmal. David Cameron’s scare tactics, Boris’s stupid fucking ‘365 million pounds a week to the health service’ if we left, all total bollocks. All exaggerations of worst case scenarios. All with ulterior motives or halves of stories. Yet now, as I listened to Mark Carney, the gov’nor of the Bank of England the other night, I had cause to think; its happening again. The Brexit-bollocks. The exaggerations. The possible-but-unlikely effects. And I like Mark Carney and like him I didn’t want to leave Europe and still don’t. But he went too far with his doomsdaying.

Which just goes to show; you can’t believe ANYTHING about Brexit, from absolutely ANYONE. Except me.

Happy Friday.
Don’t read this on your phone.

A xxxx

Moussa Sissoko is the name on everyone’s lips today. And on Saturday too, after his fantastic performance against Chelsea, and his name deserves to be sung loud and clear. Here we go: “MOUSSA SISSOKO, MOUSSA SISSOKO, MOUSSA SISSOKO…”

A lot of Spurs fans should hang their heads in shame for the rough ride the Frenchman has generally received since becoming our then most expensive player when we paid Newcastle 30 million quid for him.

Unlike them, I was typically full of patience, understanding and compassion for the man, always giving him the benefit of the doubt and… never shouting, pulling hair out or getting frustrated with him. No, never.

He replaced Victor Wanyama in the holding role when the Kenyan was injured. And whereas Wanyama is an elegant, silky-skilled individual with a core of steel and a neat easy style with which he’s seldom dispossessed, Sissoko was somewhat… different. More… flamboyant… errrr… expressive… not quite as seemingly sort of ‘in control’, neither of the ball nor often of himself. Flaying arms and legs around and being a touch too ‘headless chicken’ for… for many fans to tolerate.

But the few of us who can hold our heads up, rather than leaving them up our collective arses (we, sorry, YOU know who you are), have been richly rewarded as our Moussa has suddenly ‘come of age’. Stepped up to the plate. And from midfield is positively driving all the good that Spurs are currently producing, including last night’s essential winning goal against Inter Milan. He didn’t score it but he just kind of turned into our other Mousa and drove right through the Italian defence before laying the ball off to Dele to flick it to Eriksen to finish.

Yet once again it comes down to just one thing. In Mauricio we trust. My tattoo (if I was allowed to have one). Says it all. If Poch reckons Sissoko is worth the starting shirt, we simply have no right to question. And Poch was right yet again. Unfailingly.

And on the amazing high of the last 2 fantastic wins, that’s how we enter the Emirates on Sunday to face… The Arse!!!! A fixture I love and hate in almost equal measures.

Come on Spurs!

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

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