Andy's Glasses

So, according to the party leaders, these were the undisputed winners of the two-and-a-half major political parties. Sorry, I can’t give that shambles of Lib-Dems more than a half, and that’s being generous. The Tories won. Labour won. And the Lib dems won. That’s it and its conclusive and final. Because all can in fact take some small points as victorious, but all in fact, objectively, were equally losers. Except the Lib-dems but they’re obviously only half a loser.

Any mid-term elections are used by the voters as comments on the national government. Even though these were local elections I couldn’t tell you who was going to fill in the pot-holes, who intended to pick up my garden waste before it turned to compost, who was going to increase elderly care. I voted on government issues. Even though they were irrelevant. Its what we do. And in mid-terms the government always gets hammered. As a protest. Yet this time it simply didn’t happen. Ok, the Tories lost a few seats but they expected to. They barely expected to hold onto Westminster, Wandsworth and especially Barnet. But they did. And that can only be viewed as a massive ‘FUCK YOU!!!!’ to Jeremy Corbyn. A sentiment with which I heartily agree.

Are you a monoluncher? Do you, like Tory Minister, Dominic Rabb, have the same lunch every single soddin’ day of the week? Its all the talk. Dominic has a chicken (good, fat free, white) and bacon (baaaad; processed and red; the devil’s work) bagette (terrible, bleached white processed wheat, loads of sugar and salt) with salad dressing (the worst), coupled with popcorn (peanut butter flavoured) and fruit pot (shitloads of sugar) and a smoothie. So he’s gonna die. Any second now. According to neutritionists Dominic consumes 864 calories a day, 54 grams of sugar, 3.5 kilos of unrefined… shit and 1lb 3ozs of napkins and plastic forks. And neutritionists always advise a ‘varied diet’ to ensure all major groups and stuff are covered. I’d personally say Dominic is a bit of a pig and has the imagination of a tea-spoon but if it makes him happy? And as we spend our days agonising over the excessive choices for absolutely everything currently available, does it not in fact reduce his personal stress by taking one choice a day out of the equation? Also worthy of consideration is that neutritionists, like most quasi-scientific purveyors of ever-changing quackery, know less than fuck all. Today’s heart-massaging wonderfood is tomorrow’s artery clogging carcinogen.

Eat what you want, ignore the pundits.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Read an interesting article the other day about Jurgen Klopp and his Liverpool team. Basically, what we all know; they score a truck-load of goals but can’t defend for shit. Hence the 5-2, 6-3, 4-2 type scorelines that have typified their season. But rather than seeing this as a weakness, the article used it as praise. Basically as long as you score more than your opponents you win the game. Rocket science it ain’t. But you have limited ‘resource’. ie: 11 men. Who can, generally, only be in one place at one time. And if they’re all screaming into the opposition’s penalty area it tends to leave gaps at the back for teams on the break. Its always a balance. Are your two central midfielders there to break things up and protect the back four or do you want more attack from them? How ‘wingy’ are your wing-backs? Are they there when they need to defend? Do your front-line players chase back to help the defence? All interesting questions. If you’re a total football nerd, geek and tragedy.

The article suggested that Klopp’s approach is the correct one. That it provides entertainment. Even if, for Liverpool fans, that entertainment means you never relax during any game, even with a 2-goal, 3-goal, even 4-goal lead. Its always precarious. But, as a neutral, we really could give a toss about the fragility of the average Liverpool fan’s stress levels. Let them take valium. Like the rest of us. And its always been ‘the Spurs way’, attack full-on and if it leaves you a little ‘porous’ at times at the back then so be it, just make sure you score more than you let in.

Manchester City, like all (but relatively very few) ‘super-teams’ manage to get the balance simply perfect. They are irrepressible in attack but incredibly solid when defending. The players have a fluidity of position which maximises both sides of the game. Barcelona have done the same for a generation but that generation is rapidly coming to an end now.

And then there’s Arsenal. Who, in their ‘invincibles’ team certainly shared the dream. But now Wenger has modified the paradigm so that they manage to combine being awful in defence with being shitty in attack. And cursed with the inviolable criterion that you must always ‘walk the ball into the net’. ALWAYS make that extra pass even when you’re through on goal and it’s unmanned.

So we’ll all be Liverpool fans for a day when they play Real in the Champions League final. And I don’t know what the odds are but I would never bet against Liverpool in a Euro match, and I would certainly never bet against the current Klopp boys in any match.

Now I’m off to West Bromwich. Only spiritually.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

So you have, say, a bad tummy, like, last week. And you mustn’t eat. So you buy a bottle of coke; real, red-label, full sugar, dental-enemy, obesity-rated, fat coke. Because of the sugar. Your body needs it. Preferably ‘flat’. Unlike your stomach would be if you drank it any other day of the year. Not that you could afford to, the fuckng new tax makes it suddenly a rich man’s drink. Or a sick man’s drink. You should get a rebate on the tax if you have a bad tum. Either produce a medical certificate at the till or throw-up all over the check-out girl. And then when you feel a little bit more stable, someone says ‘plain biscuits’. Just those 2 words. So you buy some. And that’s where the problem starts. Because you can’t buy 1. They won’t sell it. Only in packs of about 100. And you eat 3 the first day. Cos you’re sick. And ‘testin’. Then you eat maybe 5 the second day. Then you get better. Hooray, back on proper food, milk in coffee is back on the menu, all kinds of pig-out may resume as before. And you do pig -out, making up for all those lost days, all the weight that ‘simply fell off’ or got poured down various toilets and buckets. And you still have 93 plain biscuits left in the pack. That you don’t need any more. But they’re there. In my workspace. Looking at me. Should I throw them away? Give them to charity? Or just leave them alone and hope they don’t ‘call out’ to me.

Yet they do. They call. They whisper ‘eat meeeeee’ repeatedly throughout the day. And so I do. The race before they go stale.

Voting day today. We, in London at least, not sure about the rest of the great unwashed, but we vote for our local councillors. And the rule is: ‘anyone but Labour’. On the grounds that they are horrible, evil nasty people. Who actually intend to let you vote for a specific Labour candidate and then, after the election, they will deselect your candidate and replace him with some Momentum shit-head Trotskyite anti-semite. That’s what they have planned in Haringey and if it proves not to be illegal (under review) there’s nothing to stop them doing it elsewhere. Which is as dishonest as it is undemocratic. But (new, new) Labour has never been about democracy. More about abuse, sexism, racism and trolling.

Vote Rich Tea today

A xxxx

Where’s it written? That it has to rain all the fucking time? I’ve never seen that contract but it seems to have been implemented anyway. Yesterday was lovely, sunny, nice. Monday was the day from hell, weatherwise, and today looks like being its demon-brother. Or sister. Sorry for assuming that demons are male. Females have equal rights to everything. That IS in the contract. Played tennis in the rain on Saturday, in the drizzle on Sunday, we’re in May and it feels like February. Rachie’s in Berlin, far, far east of here, where you’d imagine it snows for about 8 months a year and temperatures never get above about 10. Yet she’s moaning she’s too hot to sleep, enjoying 25 degrees every day and we’re here freezing. And the heating’s not working. It was yesterday until we had a new valve put in the boiler because it wasn’t heating the water properly. Now the water’s hot but the heating non-functioning. And Lila’s coming to stay tonight. Lila doesn’t really give a shit about the temperature, well, she never mentions it, but her mother will take one walk round in the arctic house and take my baby straight back to her house where the thermostat is always set at ‘hospital/greenhouse/sauna’.

But enough about the weather, even though its my right as a British personage of British… things, to bang on about endlessly. Yet being British is something of a problem for some people. Which in turn has led to the downfall of Amber Rudd, former Home Secretary, former wife of AA Gill, she has lots of form(er).

I can’t even be bothered to get into the details and events that removed this… person from office. Too boring. Suffice to say; she fucked up. There’s only really one crime in politics and that’s telling fibs, both to the public (who put you there) and to Government committees. Ok, sexual harassment will get you sacked too but Amber wasn’t accused of that. The ‘Windrush’ scandal is a terrible thing, that as with all terrible things, has been embraced and highly politicised by the Opposition, which is their job, I begrudgingly suppose. Amber didn’t get sacked for the Windrush stuff, she got sacked because of her office’s policy on ILLEGAL immigrant removal. Windrushers were always legal but got caught up due to various cock-ups.

So in steps Sajid Javid to the role. And that’s quite a brilliant appointment. Because its hard to accuse the son of immigrants of anything racist or anti-immigrant. What’s more he’s the son of a bus conductor which makes him less Eton and more accessible than your usual Tory. Maybe his dad was conductor on the bus that Sadiq Kahn’s dad drove? Wouldn’t that be something??? Or not.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

As everyone knows; I am the absolute perfect specimen of physical perfection. In every way. And more. And yet even a virtual god like me gets issues. Body issues. Not like the ones teenage girls get which lead to eating disorders, I could never get involved in any kind of food intake reduction paradigm which had ‘Cadburys’ written anywhere in the small print. My body issues are of the damage and destruction type. Or the function failure due to repetitive strain. But we just ‘work round’ the issues, addressing them as necessary and avoiding the painful bits when we can. We all do it. Even normal humans. Like you.

But this seems to have reached some kind of apotheosis for me. Well I hope it has in a way cos if anything else starts hurting I’ll have to stop any kind of movement whatsoever for 3 months.

The right shoulder is always an issue. It just is. Has been for decades which is why I play (right-handed) tennis. Because… errr… because I’m too stupid not to. And I like tennis. And Spurs Paul would wither and rot if I didn’t exercise him regularly. So at the end of tennis my shoulder is sometimes a bit painful, along with the adjoining bit of neck.

The sprained finger episode was somewhat extended when I fell again last week running up some stairs and landed right on it. Left hand, little finger. Still swollen, still have to be careful. Particularly at tai chi where we employ the kind of ‘top to tail’ method of violence, practising strikes with every part of our bodies (not on the floor, as I often do when alone but on other people), feet, knees, elbows, head, wrists, knuckles and, of course, fingers and sides of hands. But AAAGGHHH!!!!! not there. Generally just after I’ve thumped said finger into a fucking punch bag. Boxing gloves are for wimps, Labour supporters, Arsenal fans and other tossers.

Last week we were falling over. Not like I do in my spare time for my apparent hobby, but HOW to fall over in a way that you can control and spring back up again whilst under attack. So you fall. Then you do it again, and again, and again. And you get two things, you get good at falling down and getting up, and you get a bruised coccyx. Which means sitting in certain positions is painful. Bummer. (that’s a pun).

On Saturday something interesting happened. To the outside of my right knee. Don’t know what, it just felt funny during tennis. Thus I took the medical view and just ignored it. Medically. And played again the next day. The funny bit was that by the evening it was the inside of my knee which was swollen. And in fact still is. Feeling ‘tight’ and a bit odd.

So at the moment of writing, my toes are in pretty good shape, one knee fully functional and my right thumb is nigh-on perfect. Everything else is under consideration.

Great win for Spurs last night. We’re coming for Liverpool. Who play Chelsea on Sunday. And I want Chelsea (5 points behind us) to beat the Scousers (one point ahead) because I’m ‘looking up, not down’.

Happy, healthy, pain-free Tuesday

A xxxx

Spurs play Watford tonight at Wembley. Probably in the pouring rain. And as we’re now right at the sharp end of the season, this game is at least a 6-pointer. I’ve emailed the Premier League to issue extra points if we win, but at the time of writing I haven’t received a reply. They’re probably considering it very seriously. And why is it so big? Because our ‘8 point cushion’ from Chelsea who are sniffing up our… well, just below us in the table, has diminished to a slightly uncomfortable 2 points after their win on Saturday. Not even a good win. I’ve also written to the League to ask if they’ll reduce Chelsea’s 3 points to 2 because it was such a poor show. Haven’t heard about that yet either. They must be busy.

I was voicing my concerns yesterday to Spurs Paul and he steered me along a new path. A different path. Less paranoid, less negative, fretful, neurotic. More positive. Because, as he pointed out, we have 4 matches left, including tonight. And if we win them all we will finish in 3rd place. Fuck Chelsea. They become irrelevant. We’ll overtake Liverpool!!!!

Don’t look down; LOOK UP!

And I thought ‘yes, I can do that!’ I can look only upwards and think only positive thoughts. A new positivism. A relative positivism. Because after spending my entire adult life and most of my childhood scared shitless about the results and fortunes of other teams, I can now change and manifest the confidence I have in my current team. Its not like they’ve ever let me down before.

At the other end of the table its very very interesting. So many teams vying for relegation. West Brom just won’t die. How pissed off must their fans feel when having gone most of the season being total and absolute shit, they wait til they’re just one point from relegation and start winning every match. Stoke, you must feel, are doomed. Then there’s Southampton and Swansea. Who meet in 2 weeks time for a 19-pointer. And I won’t discount West Ham from the relegation possibles yet either, mainly because I really don’t like them at all.

In the Championship (once-)mighty Wolves are coming up, with either Cardiff or Fulham. That’ll be decided in the final match next Sunday. One gets automatic promotion, the other has to endure the absolute torture of the playoffs. Which are an aspiration for all of the season but an horrendous curse if you actually have to play them. Go figure.

Come on you Spurs

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Are you a wazer? Oh, you’re not, don’t know what it is, haven’t heard…

Then I don’t know upon which planet you reside. If you’ve even taken an Uber, anywhere, you’ve been a kind of wazer-by-proxi because Waze is the navigation system used by Uber. And by me. Because its live and interactive and asks you things like “is there a speed camera coming up in 200 yards?” or “traffic jam reported ahead: confirm/not” or even “would you pick me up 2 pints of semi-skimmed from the 7/11 coming up on your left in 100 yards… 90… 80…”

Waze knows everything. And because it likes to think of itself as some kind of ‘club’, all users are called ‘wazers’. I know, its a bit on the wanky side, but they must have their reasons.

So it avoids traffic. By being very very creative with the routes chosen. Which are always different no matter how many times you use the same start and destination points.

Well I’ve never before been to my cousin’s new home. Mainly because its in South London and, other than Bermondsey Market, the South Bank and (when bloody required) St Thomas’ Hospital, I just don’t do south London. What’s the point? There’s nothing there once you’ve left the proximity of the river (where all those named places sit). But to get from an NW to an SE postcode, I needed waze.

And it took me there. Not the way I maybe would have gone but that’s because there was bad traffic on the North Circular so instead we went via the back alleys and side streets of Islington and Hackney. You know you’re using Waze when you spend half of a long journey going over speed bumps. But no traffic. That’s the quid pro quo. And worth every bounce. We went through the Blackwall Tunnel and… came out the other side. A few turns and we were drinking South London’s version of tea. Which is like ours but…

Coming home, just a few hours later, we headed away from the Tunnel. Oh. But you don’t argue with waze, that’s part of the deal. You know ‘in God we trust’, well same deal with waze but with more immediate results.

Which is how, 10 minutes later, we arrived in the queue to get on the Woolwich Ferry. That mythical ship that sails across my river, has done for centuries and yet I’ve never before set eyes upon, let alone set a car upon. And, ok, its not exactly a tourist attraction. Its not really even a boat. Just a ‘thing’ that floats in very ugly manner on the water with about 40 cars on its back. You don’t get out and feel the smog in your hair, there’s no cafe because the journey takes about 3 minutes and they’ve probably picked the most industrial and horrible part of the River to cross. But it works. Ahhhhh, back in the north. Terror Firma. Because it oh so much nicer to come home.

Ticked that off my ‘to-do list’ then.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron fall in love and refuse to be physically separated ever again, “je t’aime, Don-ald”, “lovin’ you too, Manu”, (hugs, kisses, tongues, holding hands, stroking thighs…) where’s the fucking sick-bag???

Then follows the inevitable cheap, far-eastern rip-off copy as Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in get overly pally on the north/south border in Korea. And although somewhat derivative, this bromance is in fact way more significant in geo-political terms, if not relating to peace emerging in one very highly inflamed region of our planet. Possibly.

Because you mustn’t start counting your chicken chou meins before they’re wokked, there are precedents for apparent accords between South Korea and the reigning Kim. Lots of precedents. Which last, on average, about 10 minutes before hostility and aggression breaks out once more.

Trump has already, with feigned modesty, decided to accept full credit for this olive branch from the world’s most hostile nation to its neighbours. But Trump would. Yet I think that the main significance is that the man in charge of North Korea is in possession of the one and only fat belly in his nation. Because everyone else there is starving. And personally I think this striving for ‘peace with our brothers and neighbours to the South’ is out of sheer economic desperation and necessity.

JEREMY CORBYN/JOHN MCDONNELL TAKE CAREFUL NOTE OF THE FOLLOWING!

North Korea has a population of 25 million (yes, who all look, pretty much the same). South Korea has double, 50 mil. Who also all look remarkably similar. North Korea, which is run as set up by Kim the grandfather, on a Leninist-Marxist model, has a GDP of $40billion a year. Whereas free market friend-of-the-west and manufacturer-of-my-phone-and-tv South Korea generates $2.17TRILLION a year. 500 times more. Though this in part is due to the massive military and army expenditure that the paranoid little Elvis-impersonator feels he has to maintain and that he possibly wouldn’t need if he was allied to the south.

But its the money. North Korea is cut off financially from the whole world except for China. Though granted, China is a pretty big ‘except’. And Kim’s land is all but bankrupt. It can’t feed its people, it can’t trade meaningfully and it struggles to produce anything worthwhile as you can’t market ‘hatred’ and ‘fear’ in world trade. So aligning with its brothers (and they really are, historically and totally) to the south would open up, quite literally, the whole world to them.

So yes, Trump may have been a bit of a catalyst in the game of big talk, but it may have just precipitated Kim’s realisation that the answer to so many of his problems sits so much closer to home.

Peaceful Saturday

A xxxx

In a move that will be very popular with vegetarians and will positively thrill the vegan fraternity no end, scientists in America have ‘re-animated’ the brains from beheaded pigs. Ok, before the anti-vivisectionists jump in, though most will probably fit snugly into one of the above groups of generally tree-huggy types anyway, these were heads from an abattoir. Not that such an issue will give comfort that the remainder of the animal is destined to become tomorrow’s bacon sandwich.

So they took the heads, immersed them in blood which, when warmed to the correct temperature (I’m not telling what that temperature is otherwise you’ll all be doing it at home), circulation in Piggy’s brain was restored and there were signs of neurological ‘activity’. Probably worrying about drowning in a pool of blood. Or thinking the piggy version of WTF??? Not sure what level of ‘thinking’ pigs ever do, hence the term ‘pig-ignorant’ and the fact that I’ve never seen one on University Challenge. Only a few Oxbridge post-grads who act like it.

So the scientist in me thinks ‘that’s amazing!’ The meat-eater thinks ‘I like bacon’ and the crusader for animal rights… doesn’t really give a shit because the animal was dead anyway. Or, more dead, perhaps. I just can’t see how this ‘research’ gains anything.

Ok, so you have a failing body with a functional brain, like a Stephen Hawking type scenario, when taken to extreme. Could this study lead the way to removing that brain and putting it inside another body? A better one? In which case, the donor would have to be someone in perfect physical condition but… with a dead brain? Or a decapitation victim but then you’d have to sew on the whole head (we’re talking human heads by now, obviously) and that’s beyond science at the time of writing this.

Or you could go to any gym and find some moronic, muscle-bound narcissist with the body of a god and the brain of a footballer and just steel him and replace his brain with something more functional, more useful.

There is a precedent for all of this. Its in the film The Man with Two Brains which is so accurate as to be almost a documentary. And is also the best film ever. One of 27 to carry that title in my mind.

Hey teacher, leave us pigs alone!

Happy Friday

Anne Uumellmahaye xxxx

This is (probably) positively (maybe), definitely (ish), my absolute (relatively) last (or thereabouts) post about anti-semitism in the Labour party. Not because its stopped with a massive bang as their esteemed leader banished it unambiguously from their midst, but because he hasn’t. And therefore it goes on and on and I don’t like repetition. I don’t like repetition. (As Trump would probably say it.)

Corbyn wrote a fairly decent SOUNDING apology in the Evening Standard on Monday. Sorry for offence caused, don’t know where its come from, horrible, can’t stand any form of racism, blah, blah, blah, and please vote Labour in next month’s local elections.

Words.

Though at least, and definitely a first, he actually did admit that there was something of a problem there. Ahhh, that’s a start, then let’s solve it.

Right, so along come two men called Jonathan to meet him. The leaders of 2 big and powerful Jewish groups. And they asked Jeremy to rebuild the ‘trust’. And there was trust. Before Corbyn there was always a strong link between jews and Labour. Stemming from the vast number of pre-and-post-war Jews adopting communism as being as far away from naziism as you could possibly get. But that trust is well and truly… errr… ‘fucked’ I think is the appropriate term here, by recent horrors not just in Labour but in each and every fringe leftish organisation who give Jezza his main and constant support. And who aren’t restricted by the need to get anyone to vote for them so they can really let rip. They can release their inner holocaust-deniers, paint their malicious jew-banker caricatures and give platforms to any rabid anti-zionist who preaches the destruction of not just Israel but all Jews.

But Jezza admits this may actually be a problem.

As one of the Jonathans pointed out: if he were to speak of this anti-semitism in the passionate tones he uses for Windrush, for Grenfell Tower, for all sorts of virtually everything, that would be a start.

They asked for several things. Adopting the definition of anti-semitism used by parliament and the courts. Hmmm, no, not sure we could do that. Ok, then how about preventing your members from sharing any platform with known anti-semites? Well, I couldn’t offer that guarantee. And so it went on. He agreed not one of their terms.

So Jeremy Corbyn is really really REALLY sorry (that he might have lost a few minority votes in Barnet) but is not actually prepared to take any meaningful action whatsoever about the evil in his party from inside and out. Nor, more importantly, address the fundamental question in my mind: why is there so much anti-semitism in the far left? Where did it start?

Happy Thursday

A xxxx