Andy's Glasses

Anti-semitism in the Labour party; the gift that keeps giving.

We all thought it was over. We pitched up in Parliament Square on Monday night, risked starvation as we stood in the fresh air with no buffet for almost 35 minutes!! and then later Jeremy C made his abject apology in all sincerity and heart-feltiness possible. “I’m sorry!!” he said. “I caused upset, I was insensitive, and now it will stop. I missed the point of that horrible mural, just didn’t realise that depicting a bunch of Jews in a monstrous way was about being Jewish. Never caught on that all those holocaust deniers I ‘liked’ on facebook, all those blood libalists I cheered, all those calling for the destruction of Israel that I had tea with, I just never realised that they were ‘anti-semitic’, so I’m very sorry, it won’t happen again”.

Its what’s known as the ‘thick-as-a-brick’ plea. I’m so fucking stupid I never realised that abusing Jews was anti-semitic in any significant way.

But its ok, because he’s going to stop it. I hope he’s not using Shami Chakrabarti’s indicators of where the problem lies in his party, because she couldn’t find ANY evidence of anti-semitism whatsoever. Which now makes her an accomplice in the ‘thick-as-a-brick’ and ‘blind-as-a-bat’ defence. And also makes her totally unreliable, unbelievable and untrustworthy. Just another Corbynite puppet with zero credibility.

So that’s great then. Anti-semitism is over in the Labour party, Momentum, everywhere, even in my house. Job done.

Before the assembled masses had even left Parliament Square on monday there were already tweets proclaiming that ‘the Jews had made an issue of so-called anti-semitism just to try and destabilise Corbyn’. Bastard, yank-loving, imperialist, fascist Jews!

Today Momentum have started planning the deselection of all the Labour MPs who spoke at monday’s rally, starting with David Lammy. Because he ‘agreed with the right wingers’ of a certain faith.

I’m packing a bag, just in case. And taking Lila with me.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

This is almost a first for any government of MY country. A tax increase that is remarkably clever. And trust me, I’m no ‘I WANT TO PAY MORE!!’, Melvyn Bragg type, neo-Corbynista champagne socialist. But this is clever.

They’re making road tax a ‘flat rate’ of £140 a year, for all cars, including, for the first time, all hybrid vehicles. Previously exempt, these vehicles get to join the road tax club with the rest of us. Fully electric cars (assuming such things have a zero CO2 emission rate) are still exempt.

The good news is that your Ferrari, or 1957 Merc 300 SL is only going to pay 140 quid too, whereas they currently pay a lot more because they spew thousands of litres of noxious shit into the atmosphere every time the door opens.

I don’t like tax, particularly in the UK where we pay more than any other nation (a statistic true in my mind if not actually valid elsewhere), but I find it mindless when the raising or implementation of a form of taxation actually provides the government with less money than they had before. Like raising the ‘stamp duty’ when you buy a house. They raised it sky high (where it still remains), counting all that extra revenue they’d inherit as a consequence, and people just stopped moving house so much. So they now make far less in total than they did when the tax was lower. Which falls well into the ‘WHAT’S THE FUCKING POINT????’ category of fiscal stupidity.

Similarly, when they raise income tax too much (1% is too much, 25% too little), they end up with less money in the national coffers. Because very rich people are mobile and can just ‘move away’ and pay tax in a more friendly environment, and others get much more creative about how their pay and income is structured. There’s always a way.

But putting road tax on hybrids actually makes sense. Because if everyone in the country suddenly got ‘green’ and dumped the old Jag to replace it with a Prius, environmentalists would pop open the (free-range, organic, eco-friendly, zero-emission) champagne but there’d be not a penny of road tax coming in. Which would be a massive loss. So the government are ‘hedging’. If the uptake on hybrids increases, they won’t lose the tax revenue.

Alternatively, people may now think; well if there’s no tax gain, why am I driving a shitty fucking hybrid when I could drive a proper car? It’ll be interesting to see if hybrids maintain their ‘zero rating’ on the London congestion charge. We can get back to talking ‘zero to sixty’ rather than ‘zero emission’. Just sayin’.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

There’s something horrible about cheating. Let me re-phrase that; there’s everything horrible about cheating. No redeeming features whatsoever. Because, quite literally, no-one loves a cheat. Not even me. When my beloved football stars take an unnecessary ‘dive’, I hate it, it reflects on ME for some reason I haven’t yet worked out, and I accept the communal guilt by association. Yet a dive actually, strictly, almost ‘legally’ falls under that wonderful umbrella of convenience: ‘gamesmanship’. Like swearing at opponents, slagging off their sisters, trash-talk, ‘sledging’, whatever you call it. Gamesmanship.

But cricket is different. Always has been. Taking its roots from a bunch of upper-class aristocrats in Top Hats and tail-coats, it was always a game for gentlemen. To such an extent that it entered the dictionary as a metaphor for any form of dubious, immoral or questionable behaviour being described as ‘not cricket’. Boxing had the Marquis of Queensbury, cricket had the rest of the hoi-poloi. All of them. To ensure that their game not only retained its exemplary standards of behaviour and sportsmanship, but set a standard for the whole of society.

Then they showed the Australians how to play. Big mistake.

The biggest mistake was, rather annoyingly, that they were quite good at playing it. But really, to entrust the world’s poshest sport into the grubby hands of a bunch of criminally-descended street urchins was always destined to lower the entire tone of the game. The nation whose cultural contribution to the world is ‘Neighbours’. Quite honestly, if it wasn’t for Margot Robbie and Kylie, I’d wash my hands of the entire nation.

But it is what it is. You can’t turn the clock back. We can only deal with the fact that cheating has occurred, albeit in the most wonderfully stupid, ‘smile-for-the-camera’ way, and has probably been occurring for quite some while. Its institutionalised. We just need to see how deep it goes. Like the Russian athletics drug programme.

Went to Parliament Square to protest last night. And protest I did. Against the anti-semitism in the Labour Party. Was a great event. Though due to the traffic and the terrible sound system I could only hear one speaker of the 3 or 4 Labour MPs (obviously not Cowardly Corbyn) who stood up to tell of their shame on behalf of their party. But sad to say I’ve never been to a ‘do’ with so many Jews and been offered nothing to eat. No bagels. Not a solitary Danish. Nothing. And trust me; I looked.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

If you’re not an unrelenting petrol-head, or if you drive a Prius on ‘ecological grounds’ or are any other form of tosser or even a save-the-planet eco-warrior who will only get on a bus if its fully electric, won’t eat meat and name your children ‘White Rhino’ or ‘Cherry Blossom’, then look away now. This is not for you. Because on Saturday I spent the most wonderful 20 minutes imaginable (other than with Lila, obvs) in a car showroom.

Well, it used to be a car showroom, they sold BMWs and Minis. And its a 10 minute walk from home. It was called ‘Hexagon of Highgate’ because it was within a short bus-ride of Highgate. And Highgate apparently sounds better than ‘East Finchley’ where the place actually is, on the high road, approximately 25 yards from the tube station bearing the same name. And they moved the showroom into Highgate proper (probably trades description issues) and decided to put the bosses collection of ‘vintage’ cars in the old building. Which is a really fab and ultra-modern building, now housing their ‘collectable’ car sales unit.

Because anyone can ‘collect’ old cars like they have, as long as they have several million pounds to spare. Its that easy. But they don’t know who the buyers are from the browsers. So I walked across the forecourt, upon which sit their used cars. All of which, about 30 of them, are Porsche 911s. All 2/3 years old and 25 of them are red, white or blue. Looks quite amazing. If you want a used Porsche, which I don’t.

Because in pride of place in the window sits the car above. A cream-coloured, 1957 Mercedes 300 SL. Possibly the most beautiful car ever made. The first ever sighting of ‘gull-wing doors’. But its not about the doors. Its about the line of the vehicle. Its about the sheer, era-defining elegance, its about over-riders on chrome bumpers, its about the most gorgeous fucking hub-caps ever. It was never about ‘drag coefficients’, it stuck 2 fingers up to ‘economy’ and no-one gave a shit about the planet in 1957. It also looks in the same condition as the day it was born. Immaculate and totally original. Yours for £1.2 mil. “Oh Mel… please!!!… can’t we just… ANYTHING! JUST LET ME HAVE IT!!!!

But no. We ventured further in. I’ll just say it once so as not to repeat: every car is totally pristine and without any suggestion of a flaw. The Ferrari Dino, my favourite of about 5 prancing horse jobs they have there. The Aston DB4, driven in a race by Stirling Moss, the DB5, the XK120, the XK150 all wonderful and amazing. The Ferrari California convertible, 1961 is a bit of a bargain at 10 mil.

“Can I help you at all?” inquired the very nice man who hadn’t decided if we were eccentric super-rich people or just really scruffy plebs. “Yes, I said, you can. Follow me round and wipe up after I’ve drooled over these cars, would you?”

I’m going back to steal one. Haven’t finalised the plans yet, but its got to happen. They probably wouldn’t even miss it.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Jeremy Corbyn is a vegetarian. If that alone is insufficient to turn you into a major league carnivore then I simply can’t help you any longer. Although Jeremy Corbyn is also an anti-semite but I’m not suggesting that you all similarly convert to Judaism.

Though perhaps you should? Maybe its time for Jews, who never ‘evangelise’, who don’t try to ‘bring the world into its fold’, to start a recruitment drive. To increase the numbers and thus increase the proportion of voters who would never, under any, freezingly hellish or otherwise circumstances, vote Labour at the next election.

Because in a world of ‘tipping points’, Jeremy and the Jews has reached its apex. For some of us, this happened with the first ‘Hamas are my friends’ speech, seemingly decades ago. The constant stream of anti-zionist garbage and ‘nazi-state’ and ‘apartheid-state’ and other hard left nonsense almost became acceptable within the intense anti-Israel stance of the Corbynites and Momentum. Almost. Until you ask why Israel is always and only singled out as the world’s ‘rogue state’ whereas Burma is fine, Darfur a model of peaceful… mass-genocide and Syria not even spoken about.

Last week they found Corbyn on a couple of facebook groups (them again?? they really are the source of ALL the world’s evil, it would seem) which specialise in violently anti-semitic posts as well as holocaust denial and my actual favourite, the post-modern version of the infamous ‘blood libel’; ‘Israel takes Palestinian children and strips ALL their organs’. Ya gotta love that. Well, Jeremy did, though of course is now questioning ‘how his name got on that group’. Or groups, really, as there were a few.

And now we have ‘mural-gate’. This lovely mural was painted on a wall in East London. It depicts a group of obviously Jewish businessmen playing monopoly on the backs of workers. Its so horrible that the then mayor of Tower Hamlets, the corrupt and later sacked vote-rigger, Lutfur Rahman, himself not an outspoken anti-semite but certainly no ‘friend to the Jews’, demanded its removal. An act opposed by… Jeremy Corbyn. Not, I should add: someone who knew Jeremy Corbyn; not someone using Jeremy’s name on Twitter; not some third-rate Momentum acolyte, but Jeremy Corbyn himself.

Its now reached such a point that even Baroness Chakrabarti might struggle to defend the Labour Leader and his toxic stance on Jews. Though she’d certainly try.

Ahhhhhh, happy Sunday.

Vote… ANYTHING BUT CORBYN.

A xxxx

Is this the end of facebook? Has it faced its last book? Booked its… whatever. Is it even possible that the world’s biggest… errr… thing, with 27million users, possibly 3.7 billion or 1.43 trillion (neither know nor care), and valued at about 426 billion dollars (or was til last tuesday), could simply vanish from our phones/screens/lives?? What would happen to Mark Zuckerberg? Would he just die? Vanish. Or get unliked by everyone who has ever heard of him?

Because, like all tech companies, facebook is a ‘smoke’n’mirrors’ kind of deal. Its just a facility for processing data. In the normal case, our personal data that we ‘share’ and ‘like’, like ‘I’ve just checked in to Burger King in Leighton Buzzard with a woman named Zenith who used to be a man named Kevin. Please don’t tell my wife. Who used to be my husband.’ Very important information that could change the future of the entire democratic structure of the entire planet!!

But following recent revelations, it would appear that this information has a value beyond rubies in the electoral world and has been somewhat abused by facebook with the aid of the Cambridge Analyticas of this world. Because I’m sure they weren’t the only company to benefit from facebook’s immense wealth of personal data it stores about us.

So first Mozilla decided to take away its adverts on facebook. Then, very tellingly, Mr Technology himself, Elon Musk, deleted his facebook pages for both his Space-X and Tesla cars businesses. And that’s big. Because Elon Musk, as well as probably being the cleverest man on the planet (no competition at all now that Stephen Hawking has gone to his black hole in the ground), is a lover of innovation and techno-inspiration. Others will follow and abandon facebook, doubtlessly, even though they haven’t done anything strictly illegal. Other than selling personal data without permission. Though it did have kind of permission, at least to hold that information and we all know that such details are used in marketing, because we see it every day. And as they say; all the data in the world can’t make a shitty politician electable (though if there was a case for that argument it looks a lot like Donald J. Trump), but it can help to discredit a good politician, either like Hillary Clinton, or even an honest one.

Or it maybe that facebook has just run its course. It does get a bit boring after a while. That ‘while’ being about 3 months. He who lives by hi-tech wizardry may possibly die the same way. Who knows?

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Obesity is the second highest cause of cancer in the UK. So if you think you could lose weight by taking up a hobby like, say, smoking, to remove those food cravings, probably best not to because smoking is still, unsurprisingly, number one on the list. If you’re a fat smoker, it was nice knowing you.

I’m not fat. I was a thin smoker for many years before I eventually managed to transfer my allegiance to vaping. Am I at risk from digital cancer? e-cancer?? I don’t know. I was at a meeting and a chap saw the top of my e-cigarette in my pocket and enquired if it was an epi-pen. To which I replied that it was similar. Because I’m severely allergic to a lack of nicotine. Its just physiological, innit.

I missed Lila-day yesterday due to staff illness at work. I managed to do the ‘early shift’ whilst madam went swimming, then I was wrenched away, off to the tube. You know how when you leave babies they sometimes cry in protest or feeling of loss? Well that was me. I cried and had to be dragged away from my baby. Who seemed quite happy chewing some Amazon packaging. I am that easily replaceable.

Yet spring is in the air. Until you walk in that air and it feels just as wintry as it has been, but a bit brighter. Well, air can’t be ‘bright’ but ya know what I mean. So I’m hopeful that, unlike last weekend which was awful, some tennis might actually get played. Very difficult with snow-covered courts. But the clocks go forward into British Summer Time tomorrow so you have to be optimistic. At least it’ll be light coming home from work. In the snow.

And of course, there’s no football this weekend. Which is a knife through my heart. Normally I’m ok with ‘international breaks’ because if we don’t play we can’t lose. But we’re good at the moment and, if I can use the word that seems to have been totally hijacked by Corbyn’s gang of thugs, I don’t want us to lose ‘momentum’. Not ‘Momentum’, that’s ‘his’ gang of bullying, sexist, misogynist, hard-left anti-semites. But ‘momentum’; being on a roll. Never mind, at least they can have a nice rest. Those who aren’t representing their nations.

Ok, great start to the day; I’m off to the dentist. Yippee.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

There’s a new brothel opened up in Paris. In the haughty 14th Arondisment. Well, nothing new there then, French, sex, prostitutes… plus ca change, non? But this is a change. Because this particular brothel has no women. No girls. No hags even. Just dolls. Sex toys. You pay… well, I’m not saying ‘you’ in any accusatory mode, obvs, but you pay your 89 Euros and you get an hour with the post-millennial version of a blow-up doll. And they’re trying to work out if this is illegal. As prostitution is (ironically, bizarrely) illegal in that fine nation. Which in fact clarified its position on such matters in 2016 when it became a criminal offence to pay for sex, but not to charge for it. So basically, you sleep with a prostitute, she says ‘zat iz 100 euros, monsieur’ and you do a runner. She can charge but you can’t pay. Common sense.

The new ‘brothel’ is claiming that it is not in any way prostitution, all its doing is renting out ‘toys’. Toys for the boys. Which is a logic you can’t really fault.

If I was a French prostitute (and its not for lack of trying, I promise you) I’d be royally pissed off about this place. Its demeaning. And it says a lot about FRENCH men, that they’re just happy to fuck something, regardless of what that something is. A melon with a hole bored in the side would do.

Bloody French! (Although they already have such places in London too apparently, Barcelona and, obviously, Amsterdam.

So you see, in matters of the flesh, even plastic flesh, we’re on song with our (temporarily) European counterparts. We’re all on message. Singing from the same song-sheet. United, solid, together-forever, BFFs. On important matters. Like blow-up dolls.

On slightly bigger issues, like the (allegedly) state-sanctioned murder on foreign sovereign land with totally illegal substances, we’re not quite so ‘together’. Well, most are as we all damn Putin and his cohorts (or puppets) for his probable actions and pathetic denials. And as the anger and recriminations heat up, no less a person than Jean-Claude Junker, the (hateful) president of the whole EU, sends Vlad a congratulatory letter in all sycophantic sincerity and slimy groveliness for winning the ridiculously rigged election in Russia on Sunday. I mean, WTF?? I’d have voted for the blow-up doll.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Uber have suspended the driverless car which killed a pedestrian in Arizona. Without pay. And pending police action to see whether the modified Volvo C90 will have to appear in court to face charges.

That’s what I saw in the distorting image of my warped mind. The headline actually read that Uber have suspended the driverless trials. For a while. Though there are no details of what happened yet, which is odd because with all that techno-shit, don’t they have a simple dashboard camera onboard? You’d’a thunk.

The car was in ‘fully autonomous’ mode but had a driver behind the wheel anyway. Just in case. In case of what, when he missed the pedestrian, I don’t know. In case it ran out of gas, maybe. So maybe the pedestrian just kind’a jumped out from behind a parked car or something. I don’t know, but we must presume the Volvo to be innocent until proven otherwise.

Ironically, the first words out of everyone’s mouths relating to this terrible tragedy were about how much safer autonomous vehicles will be than cars with drunk, tired, telephone-obsessed humans at the wheel. Which is probably true. And I didn’t mention ‘speeding’ on the grounds that it might incriminate me.

But wouldn’t a driverless car be the perfect weapon for the perfect murder? You could eliminate an enemy with just a tiny little tweak to a computer program. And then have that computer do the digital equivalent of ‘eat the paper’ upon which it was written. We could send hit-cars round to those who need murdering. Not just Jeremy Corbyn, but perhaps other worthies too. You’re on holiday in the Czech Republic at the time and the car won’t break under torture.

Top Gear is now a raging success, again. Apparently. They’re praising Matt Le Blanc, quite rightly, but really it was getting rid of toxic boy-man Chris Evans that really saved the show. The first series, in which they both starred, was simply nauseating. I watched 10 minutes of one show and actually vomited. Mainly because the old (real?) Top Gear, was ‘laddism’ in the most British, reserved, non-contact way. In which true bromance and love is demonstrated by insulting each other really nastily and pretty much constantly. Its subtle. Its wicked. Its funny.

Whereas by getting in Matt Le Blanc, Chris Evans chose to do ‘laddism’ the American way. Which is all high fives and man-hugs with a lot of screaming and whooping. Which is bad enough when perpetrated by real Americans but when wannabe ginger-haired northerners get involved its time to get programming the driverless hit-car.

They’ve toned it right down, made Matt the Englishman’s Yank, and all is well in Top Gear Land once more. What a relief.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Pick up the ringing phone; there’s a pause on the line for 5 seconds, then noise, lots of background noise, as if… as if… as if there were 300 people sitting in an office in New Delhi all on the phone at the same time as a heavily accented voice asks “Is this Mister Andrew Convay? Its ok Mister Andrew (always) I’m not trying to sell you anything today, just ask you a few questions”.

And that’s how the world gets fucked up. That’s how little pieces of your life, your views, your habits and your preferred choice of newspaper get ‘out there’ into the public domain, forever and for every company who chooses to help build a comprehensive profile of you.

Without wishing to sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist, be careful what you say to whom, because information is power. And you end up with a situation in which a data analytical company get hold of the vast banks of information held by Facebook and you can influence an election in the ‘free-est’ democracy in the world. Ok, maybe this is just the post-digital version of ‘door-stepping’. Instead of walking round the freezing streets of Boise, Idaho, knocking on doors and talking to voters, sending electronic messages by a variety of methods does the same thing but much more quickly and easily to way more people than could be ‘door-stepped’ in 15 presidential campaigns.

As soon as I started searching for hotels in St Petersburg for our Russia trip, Facebook knew. And started offering me Russian stuff. All the travel sites suddenly started targeting Russian hotels at me in emails. ‘They’ know everything you ever google. Facebook keeps telling me now how many of my ‘friends’ have visited St Petersburg.

And the problem is always the same. Security measures can only be reactive. Someone has to commit the crime before anyone realises the crime can be committed. Then its playing catch-up to try and shore up the systems and prevent it happening again. Even though the know-how is already there for all to see.

But if the data held tells ‘them’ how many people are worried about gun control, or abortions or gay marriage, or Russians, that can all be used by politicians when they write their speeches. And they know these preferences by age, race, region, any variable you can imagine. And maybe that is just a better and more economical use of time than speaking to individuals on doorsteps, but when information is used on such an industrial scale and inevitably, very profitably, its US that’s getting screwed.

So the next time someone calls to ‘not sell you anything’ just tell them to fuck off. Because what they want from you, for nothing and free of charge, is the most valuable thing you have; your personal information.

And all this from someone who puts his every movement, bowel or otherwise, on a blog every day. I see no irony.

Happy Monday

A xxxx