Andy's Glasses

Cyrille Regis died a few weeks ago. Which was a shame. Only 58 and a genuine superstar footballer. Played (mainly) for West Bromwich Albion so he was never likely to achieve much fame and notoriety that way, but he had two things going for him which assured he would forever command a place English football. He was brilliantly gifted. And he was black.

And if you think, so what? half the league is black, then you have to understand what football was like back in the 70s. And how far both football and society have come since those dark days. Well, they seem ‘dark’ by today’s standards but you mustn’t ever judge the past by the standards of today. Because ‘today’ didn’t exist back then so things like political correctness and any form of equality were concepts for the future. Unfair to criticise or take a moral high ground which wasn’t even an aspiration in 1974.

There was, then, just one other black player in the ‘first division’, Clyde Best at West Ham. Who was regularly booed, monkey-chanted and the recipient of unwanted thrown bananas. As often by his own team’s fans as by those of the opposition. Which you can put down to West Ham fans being racist and vile, which they pretty much still are, but ignorance was the real root cause at work. The world needed to be dragged out of its past, a process which took… I’ll let you know when its finished.

Then came Cyrille. And Brendan Batson and Laurie Cunningham, all playing for West Brom together, and all black. Which meant they had to just be better than everyone else. And they pretty much were. And they had to ignore the near constant abuse and insults everywhere they went.

What’s more, Cyrille Regis was a lovely bloke. A genuine good guy.

They had a memorial service for him last week at the Hawthorns. And they ended with a rousing chorus of ‘Nice one Cyril, nice one son, nice one Cyril…’

Which was not his song. Never was that sung at West Brom for Cyrille (note the spelling in the song!!!), or when he played for England. That was a Spurs song. For Cyril Knowles our left back who took wicked free kicks.

So I’d just like to say that I’m all in favour of honouring a great man who was a pioneer in the beautiful game, but GET YER OWN FUCKING SONG!!! to do it with.

RIP Cyrille

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Have I told you how much I can’t stand New, New Labour? Did I mention that at all? Comrade Corbyn and his merry band of Trotskyites, bullies, misogynists, Stalinists, scumbags and anti-semites? Then let me make mention now. I FUCKING HATE THE LOT OF THEM. Now I’m feeling better.

Not content with spreading their hate-filled rhetoric among themselves, they are systematically removing any and all Labour ‘people’ and replacing them with their ‘brethren’. Like-minded communists insistent on redefining ‘democracy’ until it looks like something that Joseph Stalin would have admired. Or Adolph Hitler too. Because totalitarian is totalitarian whatever flag it waves.

Corbyn’s Labour have no time for Blairites. They have no time for traditional, union-based Labour, unless those unions are far to the hard-left. And driven by the hateful ‘Momentum’ organisation, labour MPs or even councillors who don’t share their rather extreme views are deselected and replaced with puppets who are. Unless existing members change their own personal beliefs to follow in line with the Corbyn/McDonnell way. Like our Mayor Sadiq Khan did the other day when he realised that mayoral elections are coming soon so he’d better start sucking up to the same Jeremy Corbyn he’s been in virtually total disagreement with since his election to County Hall.

Claire Kober was the leader of Haringey Council. She’d been in that role for 10 years and was popular with fellow councillors and the people of Haringey. She’s ‘moderate’ in political terms. A ‘pragmatist’. Both of which are in Corbynland, synonyms for ‘Blairite’. Soft labour. And she’d spent a couple of years on the housing crisis. Worked out a brilliant deal to create 6,500 new homes in her borough. Which, like all boroughs has a massive housing shortage. It was a 2 billion pound project. But councils don’t have 2 billion quid just kind’a knocking around looking for a home (or 6,500). Councils are strapped, always. The deal was with a building contractor. As opposed to an ice-cream vendor? A PRIVATE building contractor. And that is an absolute red line in Corbyn’s world. We don’t use private contractors on public projects. Which is why, as Claire tried to hold on to her project, Momentum gained control of Haringey, ejected the moderates and replaced them with Corbynites. Who would rather build no houses than houses resulting from a public/private partnership. Let the homeless sleep in a communist ideology, much nicer than privately built homes. And then they ejected the leader. By bullying, by being completely undemocratic and using the usual threats that the Labour machine reserves for women.

Corbyn wants the project totally publicly funded. Even though the public don’t have a spare 2 billion either. He’ll find it. He’ll ‘borrow’. And raise taxes. Which always lowers the total tax gained, but he won’t learn that. He’ll ‘borrow’ more to cover it.

Claire Kober then said that her personal experience through this entire horrible, abusive and nasty business was nothing compared to the levels of anti-semitism from Momentum and the merry bridge of ‘socialists’.

As I wrote many weeks ago; Labour; for the many, not the Jew. But I read it yesterday attributed to Howard Jacobson. Must see who said it first. He’ll be hearing from my lawyers. If I had any.

Happy horribly wet Saturday

A xxxx

Went to see the movie Mollie’s Game the other night. What a great story. Taken from the eponymous book, the ‘true’ story (ya never know how much is embellished with a flurry of ‘artistic license’) of Mollie Bloom, an ex-olympic skier who ended up running massive, high-stakes poker games in LA and New York. An American Story, logical progression from Free-style skiing to poker pimp. Gambling is illegal in both LA and New York, except in ‘private’ games. So as long you don’t get paid or ‘take a cut’, facilitating 10 guys (all guys, I’m not, in this instance, being sexist) to win/lose a couple of million dollars is perfectly fine and acceptable. And the winners gave her ‘tips’. Thousands and thousands of bucks. As big winners would. So far so legal. She declared her taxes and paid her dues. And lived like a queen. But then late in her career she started ‘charging’ a percentage of winnings, to cover her expenses, and that is a serious red line over there. In England Mollie’s Game wouldn’t have been a story. She’d never have been arrested by the FBI. In part because we don’t have them here, but also because its not illegal to do anything relating to gambling here. They advertise it on the tv over the entire sporting weekend. But Mollie ended up in court. Otherwise there’d have been no role for Idris Elba who played her lawyer.

Jessica Chastain plays Mollie. She is totally captivating. Sharp-tongued, quick-witted and much cleverer than everyone else. Or perhaps that was Mollie. Hard to see the line. Which is what being a good actor is all about, I s’pose. But as well as the great acting and powerful performance, Jessica looks simply stunning. She is the centre of the screen, wherever she is. She has that almost ‘old world’ kind of ‘screen siren’ look of the old Hollywood greats. A smile 7 miles wide filled with 276 gleaming teeth. The hair, the make-up… she got me, I was drawn to her light. Which is very bright. Bit like Lila.

Meanwhile Paul Pogba is taking flack at Man United for being a lummox on Wednesday night. Didn’t track back when Spurs attacked, couldn’t handle Moussa Dembele (few can when he’s fit) and generally being what we know him to be. A rather lazy but incredibly gifted football player. What could be termed a ‘luxury’ player. So is it his fault that as a central midfielder he failed in his responsibilities? Or the (miserable, whining, blame-throwing, Portuguese) manager’s fault for playing him in the wrong position?

Only time, and possibly trophies, will tell.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Its not enough to win. Not at football. That’s why God invented adverbs. So you can win brilliantly, win convincingly, even win ugly-ly. The three points are still the same, still feel great, but when you win against (allegedly) top-flight opposition, you want to win well. And its still not enough. Because you then want everyone else to lose. Obviously there is a problem here, mathematically, logically, because every other team can’t lose at the same time. So it gets selective. You want the teams you don’t like to lose and you want the teams around you in the league to lose. They’re the priorities. Having secured your own win. And this is all so unconscious and visceral.

Spurs won last night. Against Manchester United. So that’s immediately a double whammy. They’re immediate competition and I hate whingeing Jose. Then, amazingly, Chelsea managed to lose 3-0 at home to mighty Bournemouth. Who’d’a thought? Who’d’a put a bet on that?? Probably only an insecure Chelsea fan in ‘hedging’ mode. And that’s brilliant for Spurs, wonderful for Bournemouth and… not great for Chelsea. Certainly not great for Alexis Sanchez. So we’re all happy there.

Liverpool won on Tuesday, which is a bit depressing, but at the same time strange things were happening all the way over in Swansea City. Where mighty Arsenal went to play. And having taken an early 1-0 lead, the Arse managed not just to ‘snatch defeat from the jaws of victory’ but to forcibly thrust it on their opponents. I’d immediately have started looking for unusual betting patterns involving Arsenal team’s relatives and friends. Such was the way our aulde rivals went about the match they lost 3-1. To the bottom team, at the time.

Whilst Arsenal were losing I was playing bridge. And when you bid in bridge, there’s a convention every player in the world uses. Your partner opens the bidding, “1 spade” he might say. You look at the useless few spots on the cards in your hand and realise firstly that there is no God, and secondly that you don’t got no spades. You have shit. So you bid “1 no trump”. It doesn’t mean you fancy playing the hand in no trumps, it doesn’t mean anything other than “I’ve got a poor hand”. Its called the ‘dustbin bid’. And then I was reading about Kensington Palace. And realised that’s its basically, the ‘dustbin bid’ for Royals. The ‘one-no-trump’ reply for the truly blue blooded homeless.

Kate & Will live there. Harry lives there, soon with Meg, Duke of Norfolk, or maybe Kent (old bloke, beard, face like it was on a 1926 postage stamp) and Princess Eugenie and hubby-to-be. Others too. But its not like its a proper ‘palace’ with one bathroom they all share and, ‘who’s nicked the last’a my fucking milk, AGAIN???’ type conversations. Its a commune. A village with lots of ‘cottages’ that will house royals who can’t afford the deposit on a shared-buying scheme. A care home for the Windsors. A retirement village for those who’ve never had to work.

Very happy, Spurs-ey Thursday

A xxxx

Look, I know its not ‘up there’ with the North Korean nuclear threat, with increasing levels of knife crime, with Arsenal losing at Swansea, with child abuse, but it made the front page of the Times today, so it must be a. really important, and b. totally true beyond question.

The uglier you are the more ‘left’ you’re likely to vote.

Ugly people vote Labour. Gorgeous people are fascists. Its a ‘fact’. They done tests, din’they? And tests are ALWAYS totally validated and beyond question. Except by really annoying people like me who have an unnatural skepticism about statistics. Unless those numbers, when crunched, agree with my world view. Then I love them, obviously.

You first have to ask: why would you perform a massive study (2,000 people involved in one of them, 5,000 in the other) to find a link between ‘beauty’ and ‘political leaning’? Will it lead to legislation? Like denying the seriously ugly the right to vote? Something I’ve advocated for years now. Or will it lead to an increased understanding either of human nature or improvements to world politics? Doubtful. Its just a ‘thing’. An excuse to get a research grant out of someone.

But that’s what they found. The uglier you are, the more likely are you to vote further left on the political spectrum. Good looking people ‘tend to be’ (statistical speak) more right wing. So if you’re really an eye-sore but vote Republican (it was American testing, obvs.) GET WITH THE PLOT!!! YOU’RE A DISGRACE TO DISGRACEFUL LOOKING PEOPLE!!!!

All any ‘study’ has to show with its analysis is ‘a probability greater than chance’. In this case (they didn’t show the numbers), that wouldn’t account for much. And what is ‘beauty’? I’ll tell you, its in the myopic, distorted, astigmatic, corrupted and sick, ‘eye of the beholder’. Very difficult to get an objective ‘score’ on beauty. You see ‘gorgeous’, I see ‘dog’. Unless you’re unambiguously Halle Berry.

The explanation, as if one is warranted, is really offensive. That ‘beautiful people’ are given more attention, more love, spoiled rotten and therefore lack empathy as they get older, used to getting exactly what they want. Therefore they don’t consider others in society as much as, say, Jeremy Corbyn or anyone else in the ‘grotesquely vile’ group.

Speaking as a totally beautiful person (both my mum and Mel gave me 11/20 on a random, blind test in 1993) I find this offensive. I have loads of empathy. And if poor, ugly people don’t agree they can JUST FUCK OFF and climb back into their holes!!

The next test they’re going to do compares penis length to views on global warming. Or perhaps global length to penis warming, I can’t remember the precise details, but that should be very… errr… useful.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I am carless. I have no car. For probably the first time since I was
16 and 7/8ths and bought my first Mini which I couldn’t drive so just
kept cleaning it until the glorious day of my 17th birthday. Ok, I
drove it a bit, but not very far and quite modestly so as not to
attract unwanted attention, and only when my parents were out, obvs.
We did such things ‘in those days’.

When Rachie left for Berlin she had one final request. (I won’t list
the other pre-final ones, it’ll take me three days). She wanted to
keep her car. Which is a gorgeous little convertible thing. So she
brung it round and dumped it in the driveway. Next to my car. Another
gorgeous convertible thing but bigger. And I’d look at them sitting
there and admire and swoon and… and…

There they’d sit. I reckon I drive 50 miles a week, if that. I travel
by tube, get there by bike and I walk a lot. Mel takes her car to
work, which isn’t very far but its always filled with stuff women fill
cars with. So having two cars between us was always something of a
luxury. Or a habit really, because if you have a car, you have a car.
You don’t stop having them just because you don’t use them at all. Do
you? But having three cars, with two just sitting there waiting to
share 40 miles between them was excessive, even by my standards. Which
are roughly: you can never have too many cars. But three cars between
2 people, one of whom only uses it a bit on weekends? Something had to
give.

So I made the ultimate sacrifice and unloaded my car. And filed the
papers to temporarily adopt Rachie’s. Which I must say is fantastic to
drive and even has a proper gear stick. Probably a clutch somewhere
too but I haven’t found that yet. But its great fun and fast as fuck.

Which brings me back to the present/near future. Ford in America are
taking out a patent on a driverless police car that can spot a
speeding motorist from its hiding place in the trees or behind the
rocks or wherever, and issue a ticket to the vehicle’s computer which
will instantly be displayed on its own ‘heads up’ computer system. Or,
for some offenders, it can, autonomously, give chase. What an empty
car will say to this speeding motorist, when it catches up, I really
don’t know. Unless Robocop gets out and blasts everyone to shit with
its phaser-blaster-destruction-ray-thingumies. (Patent not pending on
that one; we should get in there).

And I hate anything that tries to stop me driving too fast. Its my
human right. Sort of. Don’t they realise that if cars moved faster
there’d be less clogging up on the roads? What a pleasure it would be
to have the outside lanes filled with cars actually moving at or above
the speed limit.

Oh well,

happy Tuesday and hey, hey, hey; let’s be careful out there

A xxxx

We have but one ‘proper’ computer at home these days. We used to have loads. At one time, when the girls were allowed to live here, it looked like NASA control in the playroom. But now we have one. Because most of what we do is on ipads. Like writing this shit. Just the way it worked out. Long as you have a keyboard. The ‘computer’ (singular) is attached to a printer. The only one we have that isn’t in the loft waiting for the price of ink cartridges to come down. Loads up there. Price of computer ink still higher than the price of enriched plutonium.

But the computer wasn’t doing its thing. Not properly. In fact it was, in IT speak: ‘fucked’. Had to keep turning it off and on again, then it would work ok-ish for about 30 minutes then slow down to the point where you’re reaching for the sledge hammer. Yet it was only 6 months old. And, thinking about it, it never worked ‘properly’, as a shiny new thing should. At first you think, ahhhh, let it get used to its new home, may take a little time. Like its a fucking puppy. Its not a puppy. Computers, unlike puppies, should be forever, not just for Christmas. But it never improved.

It was a Dell, purchased through Amazon. So I ‘spoke’ to Amazon on ‘chat’. They’re really nice, those chatterers. Somewhere on the Indian subcontinent, I’m gonna guess, but at least they give you good, honest, Indian names. Unlike some at call centres. As per Nahil’s instructions I went onto the Dell website, who sent tendrils of information-seeking-vermin straight into the computer via the intraweb thing, and immediately told me ‘no longer under warranty; go onto the 85p per second ‘help-line’ or just fuck off and buy another, ya cheap, complaining shit!’ Something like that.

So I got back to Amazon chat-room (in my mind it was like Slumdog Millionaire) where Surinder said; ‘oh, never mind, we’ll give you a full refund, just send it back’. Which is amazing on one level but creates logistical issues. Like how the fuck do you wrap up a bloody great computer? Ahhh, but this is Amazon. Just put it into a box, stick the return label on it (the last act that useless sodding computer ever performed) and drop it at a collection point. Which happens to be my newspaper shop just round the corner. Which I did at 2.30 on Thursday.

At 4 o’clock we received an email from Amazon saying ‘your card has been credited for the returned computer’. I mean, that is amazing. I can almost forgive them for having that bitch, Alexa, spy for the Russians in my kitchen. And for the rather worrying phenomenon lately that if I look on Amazon for, say, split-crotch underwear, on my ipad at home, when I’m on my work computer; different location, different email, different everything, I’ll get offers of bizarre underwear over there too.

I love Amazon, but remain concerned for my privacy and security. And safe to say, the replacement PC will NOT be a Dell.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Ok, a draw at Newport County was not, perhaps, the ideal result. Against a team about 90 places lower that our current position. But heh, shit happens, no excuses, at the end’a the day, game’a two halves, when push comes to shove, we woz robbed, video would’a saved us, should have had 9 penalties… pick your cliché, I didn’t see the match. Thankfully. But as the entire Newport annual budget is probably less than that for Son Heung Min’s bootlaces, on one level its a great thing. The ‘magic’ of the cup. Though it doesn’t really feel exactly magical when you’re struggling against a bunch of Welsh thugs who travel by public transport. Feels like shit. Yet their trip to Wembley for the replay will probably secure the team financially for the next decade. The real magic of the cup. I can’t deny them that. Even though I’d really, really like to. But it wasn’t to be. So in the next 2 weeks we’re lucky enough to add another match to those against Man United, Arsenal, Juventus and Liverpool. Just what we need.

Could be worse though. Always could be worse. At least we’re in the 4th round. Unlike… some teams of a fairly big, and red, nature. And we might still be in the 5th round, unlike… Liverpool.

Who went out, at home to West Brom. In a match disturbed constantly by the Video Ref. At the behest of the real, non-digital, low-tech, real, flesh’n’bone ref., who asked for lots of clarification. And on some decisions, still ambiguous, he had the incidents shown on his own screen on the touchline. Takes 4 minutes. During which the players get cold and then pull muscles. Because they’re too stupid to work out by themselves that they should actually either keep moving or stretching or put a coat on. One West Brom player pulled a hamstring when play resumed after one incident.

I actually like referees. Real ones. Its not only a really hard job its also a thankless one. Unless you just give penalties to Arsenal all the time and none against them. And what our few VAR matches have shown is that refs actually get it right virtually every time. And when they make mistakes it must just be viewed as part of the game. If not, if everything has to be validated by replays and juries, then it becomes a different game. And come the day when they give managers the right to appeal (and it will happen at some point) then it will become an awful game. At which point I’ll just start watching Bowls. Darts. Rugby, which easily accommodates VARs but also prevents players from harassing refs in any way at all. Now that would be a move forward in football. Would stop ‘Chelsea Syndrome’.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Its not just cos Rachie’s in Berlin that I’m currently fond of German words. There’s a reason. Always a fucking reason.

The President’s club (agaiaiain???) ‘incident’ of 2018, wouldn’t have been an incident in 1918, or 1968 or probably in 1999. But its a different world now. Generally for the better but as always, the reaction to changing standards is always to go a little beyond where the end-point will probably be. So as you brush the hand of the check-out girl at Tescos whilst taking your change, right now she’s crying ‘RAPE!!!!!’ and ordering her ‘me too’ t-shirt, but within a few months a new status quo will arrive. Not as loud as the last one and not quite as hypersensitive to perceived infringement. That’s where the term ‘cut me some slack’ comes in.

Its all about zeitgeist. Which in fact is now about ‘cleaning out the closet’ of crimes past. In the movie industry, thanks to Harvey W. and Kevin S. And in the modelling world, the workplace generally, and all going back as far as you like. Unless ‘underage’ is involved in which case add another several decades.

Because we’re now not only in the post-groping phase of enlightenment, we’re in the post-feminist era and also one of seemingly increasing gender ambiguity. Or gender non-specificity. You’re not allowed to gen(d)eralise, you can’t assume someone’s a ‘girl’ just because they have long blond hair, massive tits and is wearing a flouncy pink off-the-shoulder number with 9-inch heels. What would you be thinking??? Its just a ‘person of as-yet unspecified bits and desires’.

So how long can the Oscars continue with its totally unzeitgeisty and horrifically binary ‘best actor’ and ‘best actress’ dinosaurism? Its as bad as sexual abuse to some kind of trans… thingumy. They need to have ‘best person doing some acting in the role of a gender unspecified nature with nothing at all manly or womanly implied or stated’. Jay Leto would definitely have won that for the Dallas Buyers Club. Or they could have ‘best thing in a movie’. Or even ‘best thing (born with a nob)’ and best thing (born without). Ok, it obviously needs more thought. But it just can’t go on or I’ll have to boycott the whole thing. Sometimes you have to take a stand. And sometimes you’re better off just going inside to watch the football.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

If you attend a party and someone gets stabbed, are you guilty? If, obvs, you didn’t actually do the stabbing? Some kind of ‘guilt by association’ perhaps? Or maybe you were in the kitchen when it happened in the garden and knew neither party… at the party.

Thus, is Jonathan Mendelsohn ‘guilty’ of crimes for merely attending the Presidents Club dinner at which blatant sexism (but no stabbings, fortunately, not with knives anyway) took place? Is he guilty just by being at a place where sleazy and dirty behaviour occurred?

Jeremy Corbyn has sacked Mendelsohn from the Labour Front benches in the House of Lords, where he ‘lives’. He’s still a Lord, Corbyn is not yet sufficiently powerful to remove a peerage, though obviously, come the glorious day of the revolution, the peers will all be up against the wall with a blindfold and last fag, along with leaders of industry and all others who employ (ABUSE!!!) his working men. Oh, and women.

Its not a crime, in Corbyn-world, to consort with terrorists. Flirt with them. Court them. Befriend them as ‘allies in a struggle’. Even if those terrorists are proven murderers and bombers and jihadis and knee-cappers or whatever. So yesterday, when there was a motion in Parliament to proscribe Hezbollah from marching here, as they do every year, the motion was denied by the Labour front bench. ‘They are political, not terrorists’, even though their ‘flag’ has an AK47 on it. ‘They’re downtrodden workers’, even though they’re not. So Labour wouldn’t join the motion. Against an organisation who pledge not just the destruction of the State of Israel, which would, in that weird fucking world, be almost acceptable. Hezbollah state their aim is to destroy Jews, and stress, NOT just Israel, but Jews. And Corbyn, whilst never being ‘antisemitic’ himself, has always been very comfortable around those who are.

So back at the Dorchester, Lord Mendelson is there, as are many of high and noble people. And a bunch of superrich squillionaire bum-pinchers. Philip Green is a regular. With his knighthood or without. Many attendees were completely unaware of the ‘goings on’ in terms of groping and molesting the working girls (in every sense as in previous ‘dinners’, sex-workers had been shipped in at the end of the evening), and you can perhaps assume that Mendelson was there to network and perhaps even contribute to the undoubtedly worthy charities.

But Corbyn sacked him nonetheless. For what? For being at a place where bad things happened? Or for being a wealthy Jew, successful businessman and almost the worst crime of all, a Blairite.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re NOT out to get you.

Happy Friday

A xxxx