Andy's Glasses

I’m so relieved. They’ve released Tommy Robinson on bail. Amazing. I’m going to celebrate by having a new swastika tattooed on my fucking face!!! Well how else would you celebrate a victory for the nation’s finest neo-nazi? Though I’m not sure we call them such any longer. Not sure its allowed. Even if they are. But as I don’t know what else to call the leader of the ‘English Defence League’ I’ll stick with that originally selected. Nazi scum. As was shouted at him outside the High Court yesterday by the ‘anti-racists’, which I only put in quotes in case any of them are card-carrying Labour supporters and thus can only really call themselves ‘anti-racists-for-selective-races-and-ethnic-minorities-only’ in the light of the anti-semitism rife in hard-left ideology. Isn’t politics difficult to fathom. Because the anti-racists should in theory be anti-anti-semites, but the lefties among them lost an ‘anti’ somewhere along the path, probably in Islington, possibly in Venezuela.

You following?

The English Defence League is the latest version of the one-time National Front. That was banned and, like a phoenix (wearing Doc Marten boots and sporting a shaven head) from the fire, came the British National Party. Then, after that worthy body was proscribed, up sprung the EDL. Same ideology… basically ‘Paki-bashing’ in one of its many forms and Jew-hating, but names changed for legal obligations. And Tommy Robinson is their new leader. A Nick Griffin with 2 eyes. A thinking man’s Goebles.

I’m actually quite interested in what this ‘League’ is defending us Brits from? I didn’t know we were at war or under attack. But that’s just my higgorance, I’m sure. And they’re actually defending British CULCHAAA and way of life. Morris Dancing, fish’n’chips, seaside ‘ats, light’n’bitter, Ford Cortinas and the Church’uv’Inglund. Even though, since the pubs started opening on Sundays, they don’t go any more. If they ever did.

I remember in the early 70s, the National Front recruited ‘members’ at West Ham and Chelsea. From their hard-core, ultra-violent hooligans. And the hook-line was no more ‘politically ideological’ than ‘join us and we’ll guarantee loads of fights’. British culture.

Tommy Robinson is as British a working class, cor blimey Mary Poppins, name as you’ll get. Which is why he chose it instead of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, his real name, which is rather poncey and stupid. And he was sentenced to 8 months for contempt of court, to which he admitted.

And this bastion of British… evil bastards has been defended by Steve Bannon, by UKIP, by all the mid-to-far rights from Nigel Farage to the Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK. And he won his right to appeal. Because 8 months is a bit strong for normal contempt. But I actually think he should have received 8 years just for who he is and what he represents. Which is pure evil.

Happy belated (blame Lila, obvs) Thursday

A xxxx

There was a debate on Woman’s Hour (a name I PERSONALLY find very offensive, biased and exclusive) about the use of the word ‘guys’ to describe or call a group of people of different genders. As in ‘hey guys (groups of men and women), you’re table’s ready now’. And they asked ‘is this appropriate?’ To call women ‘guys’ or include them under the generality which was obviously intended to mean ‘men’, when they invented the word in 1724. Errrr, just after Guy Fawkes. Hmmm…

And this is interesting, only in as far as it shows how little ‘real news’ ever happens in August and how desperate the BBC are to fill vacant air time.

When I phone companies at work I have a (terrible?) habit, if I get through to the woman I wish to speak to, of saying ‘Ah good, my main man’. To which the reply is always an amused ‘I’m not a man’. Right, like I didn’t know that, Lavella/Victoria/Rachel. Because to me the expression ‘main man’, which obviously started in a different world before the dinosaurs evolved and in a universe far, far away, is not ‘literal’. It doesn’t ‘translate’ as main=primary, man=person with a nob. No. It becomes an expression of its own. Indivisible. Irreducible. Main-man. The person in charge. Note; ‘PERSON’, not ‘man’ in charge. I can see that because it uses the word ‘man’ and the implications of how someone so important would have to be one and thus represents such a time on the (lack of) equality spectrum, it could be offensive. Which is why I do it, obviously. Because I like to ‘push’. Not in a childbirthy way. But then, surely, for women to have reached the lofty heights of being included in the phrase ‘main man’ is surely the greatest accolade. ‘Welcome to the club’, it says, of very important people.

Words and phrases which may once have been purely descriptive, like ‘main man’, enter the vernacular as complete phrases with a meaning greater than their mere words. Similarly, the term ‘fuckwit’ does not involve intercourse nor any intelligence whatsoever. Its just a word/phrase that speaks for itself. Unlike a real fuckwit, who generally can’t, or shouldn’t bother. The word wo-man contains the word man, perhaps we should stop using it immediately.

And that’s what happened to ‘guys’. Yes, of course it ONCE meant ‘men’ but the fact that it has now become inclusive should be hailed as a feminist triumph, not the cause for fucking debate about whether its appropriately post-feministly acceptable or not. Well done ‘gels’, it says, you’ve become a ‘guy’, YOU’RE FUCKING EQUAL!!! And yet, on Woman’s Hour at least, not quite totally happy with the sound of that equality.

Its all a bit pedantic. The point where feminism/political correctness has me rushing for the whisky bottle.

Happy Wednesday ‘Guys’

A xxxx

Other than Labour devotees of Corbyn, I think ‘we’, the people of Great Britain and the realm of glorious Queen Elizabeth II, bless her bejewelled crown, are a fairly civilised bunch. We like to think we are. Understanding. Compassionate. Humane. And we pretty much, as a nation, are. Until it comes to possibly the most statistically definite event in life. Which is death. We’re not very good at death. As a society. Almost ‘the last taboo’. Mainly because every time one’a them is broken, they find another. The last, last, last, last taboo.

So without being too morbid (as if) I want to talk about death. Not mine, I haven’t done it yet, but as regards to society and how it copes (or doesn’t) with an ageing population of increasingly dementia-ridden, incontinent, NHS-demanding, immobile, care-requiring… people. We need to have a ‘discussion’. Or in 10 years time everyone under the age of 60 will have to be a full-time carer and 94% of GDP will be funding medical and elderly care. (Actual figures may fluctuate due to… what I make up at any one time).

I’m not suggesting we have carts going round every day with the pushers shouting for us to ‘bring art yer dead!’ Not yet anyway. They’d clog up the traffic. And really its nothing to do with economic necessity. It can’t be. Otherwise we’d be in a ‘we need to kill another 20,000 in the next 2 weeks; milk’s running low’ situation. But I do think that once quality of life descends below some horrible level of dribbling, pissing-yer-pants, how-is-Mr-Churchil-today-mother?, level, considerations need to be in place.

I wouldn’t want to be there. That, and I can only speak personally, is a horror way beyond death. Which I say now as a relatively sane and rational being. Will I feel different when I’m trying to get the cat back in the fridge so he can mate with the eggs? I don’t know. Who knows what ‘quality of life’ or ‘values’ poor people in such a condition ‘think’.

I’m personally not sure I’ll make it to 70. Not because of ill health (I sincerely hope) but because I have suicide pacts with about 35 people that ‘if I ever reach that state; shoot me’, and one of them might misjudge. Everyone I know is of the same mind. Death is better than horrible, suffering, progressively diseased ga-ga-land.

Yet governments here struggle with this. Or aren’t prepared to discuss it properly, ie, not as an abstract concept, like UFOs, but with a FUCKING PLAN at the end.

They’ve just allowed a man to die who has been in a vegetative state for 8 years. On life support. Fed by tube. But this choice was made by the doctors and the family and without the normally required court order which prevents the medics from being up for murder. As it should be. Otherwise the family have to apply to the court and actually sign a statement saying that ‘they wish their son/daughter/wife/mother/whoever to die’. That’s what it says. But no-one in that situation ‘wishes’ anyone to die. They wish the accident/disease had never happened; they ‘wish’ the person could recover, all sorts of wishes, just not that one.

So this is a big step. But we need lots more, even bigger steps. Otherwise, quite frankly, we lose the right to call ourselves ‘humane’.

Ok, was a bit morbid.

Happy(?) Tuesday

A xxxx

This is my door. My kitchen door. And it looks a mess. As we like it. Because upon that very door are marked the heights of virtually everyone that’s ever walked into our house. Ok, everyone below the age of 16, the older ones are represented more sparsely. The marks are named and dated. So we could see how the kids were growing, when they were growing. And all their friends had to be on it, every time they came over, and many of my friends insisted on being on it too, because they’re stupid and childish. And at the very top is Big Dave, as you’d kind’a expect with such a name, just 2 inches below the top of the door, and Natalie’s babyhood doll, ‘Doh-doh’, coming in at about 12 inches is the lowest recorded addition. Lila’s on there, obviously, just below Mel’s line and of course I’m on there too. And that’s the problem. Because ‘Andy, 1992’ appears a ‘good inch’ higher than ‘Andy 2018’. The ‘good inch’ because standing someone against a door and putting a pen along the top of their head is not an exact science. So it might be a bit more than an inch, might be a bit less. But WTF??? I’m shrinking! That’s fucking awful.

In another 16 years time I’ll be 78. And an inch shorter again. But that’s probably not the case. Shrinkage is not necessarily a linear function. It could increase with time! Holy shit. I could be 5 foot 2 by the time I’m 65. 3 foot 8 by 72. I would end up an Action Man. With very little ‘action’.

The Sunday Times has found evidence about the successful Qatar World Cup bid. It was bent. Crooked. And the world is in shock. No, like real shock!!! Who’d’a thought that the awarding of the 2022 World Cup by a now disgraced and totally, entirely corrupt FIFA, to the nation possibly least suited to hosting a World Cup, but a really really rich nation, who’d’a thought that could be wrong?? On any level? Amazing.

They’ve already had an inquiry and found no evidence of corruption in the bid. Probably because they’re all too clever at sending money to untraceable overseas trusts. But now they’ve found that Qatar employed an American PR company to use fake news and negative campaigning in America and Australia, the other two bidders in the hat. They paid professors to publish articles about how damaging to the economy a World Cup could be. How awful, how dangerous, how-ever.

And that’s illegal. Not allowed to do it. So there’s still hope that the Qatar World Cup won’t happen. So it won’t have to be played in winter, disrupting the season all over Europe and injuring our players.

(Andrew Conway will be 4 foot 7 in 2022)

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

As I’m short on time and long on fatigue, I’m gonna ‘recycle’. The other night I prepared a short little speech for our ‘sheva b’rucha’ evening, but never actually got to say it, due to lack of time. I didn’t actually finish it either due to (LILA) a very busy day. So I’ll ‘say’ it here instead. Why not??

Speaking as a ‘sheva b’rucha virgin’ until a couple of hours ago I have much to learn. And I did learn, from Jude this morning, that it is customary, if not desirable, for someone to make a short speech. Normally of a religious/spiritual nature. Ah. Just a bit of a problem there. I can do football, Brexit, Anti-semitism in the Labour Party with my eyes closed. Tennis techniques, the writings of John Irving, evolutionary theory, more football, the music of Elvis Costello and how to avoid veganism at all costs. And vegans. If you want shorter subjects I can do feminism in Saudi Arabia, the high points of Arsene Wenger’s career and shortest of all: my favourite operas.

But according to the spellchecker on Microsoft, I can’t even spell ‘dvar torah’ (an ‘essay’ based on the bible). Which is indeed an appropriate metaphor for the depth of my religiosity. A word which unaccountably Microsoft is happy with.

But I do know about marriage. And I know about Jewish women. They’ve been a lifelong study. Ok Mel, Jewish woman. I’m only allowed one. And therefore would like to address the deep and profound philosophical question of whether Jewish women get the reputation they deserve. And as you’ve just married one, Josh; listen good.

Jewish woman is a much maligned and wickedly stereotyped beast. Please don’t take that word personally. F’rinstance:

My other favourite joke:

Avram calls the surgery one morning demanding a doctor come check on his wife. Who is lying inert when the medic arrives. “I’m so sorry Mr Schwartz, but your wife has died”. Avram sighs, “thank God for that, I thought I’d gone deaf”.

Are these tales funny? If so its because they play on our stereotyped traits of ‘the jewish housewife’. The classic, mythical ‘yenta’. Mainly a residue from generations past. They get a very bad press. But so does Kim Jong Un. Donald Trump. Though that’s fake press, obviously. Theresa May. Boris. All suffer from bad press and some might say, all deserving of it. Basically, sometimes a bad press can be deserved.

But heh; we’re post millennial. We’re post-feminism. Gender roles adapt and evolve. I bake pies FFS. Doesn’t make me a yenta. It makes me ‘metrosexual’. And although religion doesn’t, can’t ‘evolve’ and is in fact the diametric opposite of evolution, being something constant and unchanging with barely a mention of any World Cup or any other cultural influence, attitudes can change.

That was it, far as it went. Maybe I’ll work out an ending, who knows.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

So you get married, say, on Tuesday, and during the Jewish ceremony, though anyone can do it really, long as they read hebrew and have a rabbi hanging around, 7 blessings are said to the couple. To, errrr, bless them and keep them holy, and because its nice. And then, after the wedding ‘breakfast’, the blessings are said again. In case the couple have forgotten them (bigger problem for late-life weddings) or need reassurance, or just because its still nice. You can never have too many blessings.

So then what you do is: for the next 7 days the newly weds are taken to various homes where they are forced to receive more blessings. The same 7, in fact, thrust upon them, every night for a week. “You wanna sit and chill at home, just the two of ya; catch up on Love Island or watch re-runs of last season’s Match-of-the-Day (as all newly-weds really want), TOUGH! You’ll bloody well go round to Auntie Mable/Uncle Shlomo/Grandpa Tevya and get bloody blessed!!! Again.”

And last night I became Uncle Shlomo. As we hosted, as they’re called, a ‘sheva b’rucha’ (seven blessings). I’d never been involved in such a thing before. I’ve been to Seven Dials, watched 7 brides for 7 brothers, and Se7en, seen the 7 dwarves, even worn a number 7 shirt, but not a sheva b’rucha.

Thus 23 people were in our garden in the balmy tropics of norf-west Lundun. Even though some of them were actually from… Manchester!!! where they’re more used to polar bears and excessive rain. I haven’t actually spent much time in Manchester and hence I’m guessing a bit but surely can’t be far wrong. And we ate (lots) and we drank (more) and we sang and we blessed brides and grooms.

And looking round as all these people were talking, shouting, laughing (and eating my bloody food) I realised that religion can only take you so far. That the real reason for having such events are even nicer. Firstly, the stated reason, obviously to ‘keep the party going’ for the couple of the moment, and so that for a week they don’t have to cook or even order Deliveroo. But the culture goes deeper still. It bonds the two families who have suddenly (in some cases; very suddenly) become inextricably linked. It elevates ‘meeting someone’ to ‘knowing them’ a little bit more, even sometimes even liking them. EVEN, some-other-times, if they’re from Manchester! How great for the bride and groom to feel all the warmth and wonder of family and friends bonding loudly. And that is a great thing. Well worthy of all those blessings.

Yours blessedly,

A xxxx

Mesut Ozil, the Arsenal and former Germany midfielder, is no longer going to play for his country of birth. That’ll be Germany then. He won’t play for England, nor Turkey, nor France. They wouldn’t have him in France; its enough they put up with Pogba. But Ozil, Germany, its over.

The only real difference this will make to that international football team is that they can re-use his shirt number. His absence will be almost the same whether he plays or not. He’s always been good at ‘hiding’ in big matches.

I kind of admire why he quit from the national team. When he plays well, as in the previous world cup, the one Germany won, he’s a ‘national’ hero. When he plays… less well, as in this one, he becomes ‘that stinking Turk’. Or some such sentiment. Which is a form of racism, something the Germans have generally excelled at over the centuries. Odd really, as ‘Germany’ itself is less than 150 years old. And even though he was born in Germany, due to his Turkish parents, he can always be put down as ‘Turkish’, which suddenly becomes a grave insult.

Uli Hoeness, himself a world cup winner, back in the day, and present president of Bayern Munich, slagged Ozil off something rotten. Saying he’s useless, lazy, won’t tackle, all the things we already know. So Uli wasn’t really advancing the argument. Instead he pretty much joined the Germanists in slagging off the ‘foreigner’, who was born in (then) West Germany. So, as much as I have very little time for Mesut Ozil, generally speaking, his stance is a worthy one. Even if he does choose to share the proverbial platform with President Erdogan, not his finest moment of judgment.

Went to a wedding on Tuesday. That’ll be the bride then, the one wearing the bride’s dress. But enough about her. The younger daughter came all the way over from Berlin (nothing to do with Ozil, wasn’t a ‘protest’, more a bridesmaid thing) and Lila and her mum were there too, the former being a ‘flower girl’. Who neither held nor presented flowers but did try to pull a few out on the way to the ceremony.

Yet because Mel is an identical twin, with the mother of the bride, these cousins have an uncommon genetic make-up. The ‘identical’ in the twin thing is because such twins emerged from one single egg and thus are 100% genetically identical. So their daughters, rather than sharing 25% common genes as do most first cousins, actually share 50% of their genes. Like normal siblings do.

I married into a freak show.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

‘Middle of the Road’ is an expression of mediocrity, a metaphor. It was also a really crappy band in the 70s who had a song called ‘chripy chirpy cheep-cheep’ which wasn’t, musically, so much ‘middle of the road’ as ‘right in the fucking gutter’.

But now ‘middle of the road’ is where everyone seems to want to drive. And if some aggressive bastard (errr… that’ll be me then) decides that in actuality the road has perfectly sufficient space for two cars to pass each other, almost comfortably, without smashing door mirrors, and thus fails to ‘yield’, these pathetic ‘middle of the roaders’ just panic and stop. Staring dead ahead because they know, on some level, that they’re tossers that lack the wherewithal to do anything positive. When you follow one of these down a narrowish road they do the middle thing, then when faced with a car in the distance, they don’t so much ‘pull over’ into a space, but park. So when the oncoming vehicle has passed it takes them ten minutes to get out of the parking space to continue. With me sitting behind them with smoke coming out of both ears, teeth gritted and shouting endless obscenities.

And I don’t know when this happened. Driving in London has always been about narrow roads and ‘jousting’. But then someone decided to drive down the middle instead. Like excessive use of high beams for no apparent reason, these offences should carry a death penalty. And I’m volunteering as judge, jury and most definitely executioner.

Driving in the middle lane when the slow lane is empty is worth at least the loss of a hand. Or a foot. And driving in the fast lane with no cars inside, at below the speed limit; hung, drawn and quartered. Mere death is way too quick.

All of these can be encompassed in what will be known as ‘Andy’s Laws’ and can be reduced entirely to the useful phrase: GET OUT’A MY FUCKING WAYYYYY!!!!!

But we don’t have the death penalty here. We’re British. We haven’t murdered a murderer since nineteen fifty-whatever. We let them rot. Generally for about 10 years then we let them out to do it again. And we won’t send our more ‘international’ of criminals to any countries where they might be tortured or executed. Because it upsets the Labour party. Who are always worried about the ‘human rights’ of the murderously evil. Then yesterday, the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, agreed to send two ex-Brits (citizenship already revoked) who were IS fighters and noted Jihadi Johnists, to America to stand trial, without the usual requests demanding ‘no execution’. Mainly because if he had made such a request they’d have been sent to Guantanamo Bay instead, and We (Britain) really, REALLY don’t approve of that place. So a major shitstorm has developed.

I don’t want these two most evil of men executed. Because it would be a short trip to the martyrdom that they love. A life in some high security hell-hole in Tennessee would be much better, getting raped every day by a white supremacist biker gang from Nebraska.

Its all a question of morality. And no ‘middle of the roading’.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Stephen Jay Gould was a wonderful ‘populariser of science’, who unashamedly never ‘dumbed down’ his writing for the non-academic masses. And as he tended to write in paragraphs a yard long comprising maximum of 2 sentences in each, the reading was sometimes rather difficult. Speaking as an unacademic mass. But it was always worthwhile. Because as professor of geology, evolutionary biology, history of science and about 6 other heavyweight topics, Stephen Jay Gould was a clever boy (‘was’ because he sadly died of cancer about 10 years ago) but always wrote with wit and humour and with a nod to his passions of opera, baseball and chocolate. Ya gotta love that. Except the opera. And baseball.

He was a typical east coast intellectual liberal. A democrat. Who anyone south of the Mason-Dixie line would call a ‘commie’. And when he wrote about the history of science, about times when science itself was the exclusive domain of privileged, white rich men, he implores the reader not to judge their views by our contemporary standards. Because they came up with theories about white supremacy, about racial inequalities and inadequacies, about male superiority, all backed up with loads of data and calculations, but all based on the prevailing zeitgeist of their generation. Which was that educated rich white men were the pinnacle of God’s achievement. They could prove it. Empirically. And statistically. Every which way. But Gould would implore NOT to judge people, however abhorrent their ideas seem to us today in our post-milennial, post-feminist, post-obsessively PC world view. They can only be judged by the values of their times, not by those of ours. Mainly cos they weren’t here now. If ya get my drift.

And these were the men who justified colonialism and slavery and all manner of political evil. The scientists would give them a ‘framework’ of justification. And often accompanied by the church and theologians who would give moral and ethical blessings to such horrific practices. Apartheid was started by the Dutch Church in South Africa and rolled out from that. Where a nice ambiguous passage is found in the bible one day and the next all the rights have been taken away from the indigenous majority because they have different coloured skin.

So when they decide to take down a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford because some of his actions 100 years ago were not particularly ‘PC’ by 2020 standards, that breaks Gould’s guideline. And when Rudyard Kipling’s work is defaced at Manchester University because he was a product of colonialism, that does too. His crime was to think in the only way he could, given his circumstances of birth and time. He lacked the foresight to think like a man 100 years later and fall line with modern-day liberalism. How the fuck could he?

He wrote Jungle Book. Leave him alone. He was merely a man of HIS time.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

You kind’a expect a ‘legacy’ to be a good thing. A nice thing. A thing with value, either financially beneficial or emotionally rewarding. Auntie Rita dies and leaves you £362 and 47 lottery tickets (all old, used and worthless). Ahhhhh. Uncle Jack dies and leaves you his war medals. Ahhhhh.

So why does a ‘legacy’ become something different when in the public domain? When does the old cottage your dear grannie left you become The London Stadium? The Olympic ‘legacy’ which, although massively financially beneficial to West Ham United, has screwed the public, and is continuing to do so, out of more and more obscene amounts of money after that football club created the ‘deal of all deals’ to ensure they can play football forever there for 50 quid a week and the government can pay the rest.

Whereas David Cameron’s ‘legacy’ is even better. He left us a referendum. That most divisive of things. Because he was scared of Nigel Farage. And in doing so created the Mother of all Shitstorms which just carries on ‘giving’. But Cameron himself slimily slid away with his paltry resignation, as if it was the morally correct thing to do. To leave everyone else to try (and fail, and fail, and fail) to clean up his mess.

In a poll by the Times they found that 34% of Brits would now vote for a ‘hard brexit’ party. They’ll be the ‘leavers’ then. The lib-dems have been around, in various guises and changing names, since the Whigs in… 1634, or 1873, fucking long time anyway. And they have about 35% of the vote. Ok, they’re fairly cretinous but really, but even so. Scarier still is that 24% of pollees would join an anti-immigration, anti-Islam party. They’ll be the leavers too. Because despite anyone’s protestations, Brexit was always and only about immigration. As I’ve repeatedly stated. I’m not calling all ‘leavers’ racist, just the odd 98%. Or anti-immigration at least. My motto at the time: UKIP is the BNP with ties. Still applicable even though there’s (virtually) no UKIP and the BNP are a new acronym too because every time neo-nazi organisations are made illegal they just change their name and tweak their swastika-in-current-guise.

And this ‘new hard Brexit’ party is not merely hypothetical. They’re talking about it. Farage (quel surprise), Boris and a group of other mainly Tory defectors. Reckon they already have a £10mil fighting fund. Much of it sourced by Steve Bannon, Trump’s ex-guru and as far right as you can get in America without wearing a white robe and hood. And Bannon is also creating a new group over here called ‘Movement’, presumably nothing to do with constipation, in the literal sense, which will be the anti-Momentum group. Far right activists.

Otherwise, the country hasn’t been divided or polarised in any way, shape or form by (FUCKING!!!!) Brexit.

An interesting time for Britain. How do you spell ‘Canadian Passport Application’?

Happy Sunday

A xxxx