Andy's Glasses

How do you get a name like Reince Priebus? If JK Rowling doesn’t give it to you? You’d spend your entire childhood trying to unravel the “i before e except after r” conundrum. And once you’d sorted it out, you’d still have a really silly name.

But Reince overcame this miserable childhood to become a miserable adult. And never so miserable was when he became Chief of Staff (the capitals there purely in case any Americans are reading this, over here ‘its just a job’) to… THE WHITE HOUSE!!!!! And 6 months later he’s gone. History. Consigned to the history books and to confound spellcheckers the world over for all eternity.

I’m not even sure what a Chief of Staff does there. Hire the cleaners? Make sure the front door’s nice and shiny? Anyway, The Grand Chief (that’ll be the Prez) hired a new communications chief last week, Anthony Scaramucci, whose father featured in lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody before he joined the Mafia as a horse-head severer. But son Anthony is a star of communications. Because he just ‘gets it’. The job. Fully understands the entire spectrum of what the word ‘communication’ really really means. Which is why, speaking to a reporter, and ‘on the record’ he called Reibus ‘a fucking paranoid schitzophrenic’. The reporter actually went and published those very words but being America, using asterisks instead of ‘fucks’. You can walk round town with a fucking great sub-machine gun, but never say the f-word in public. God bless America.

‘The Mooch’, as he’s known, blamed the press. I’ll never trust ’em again, he intoned. Or antoned. Anyway, that’s what he said. Implying that the reporter was to blame. For doing his job and, er, reporting stuff. He also apologised for swearing (Republicans don’t swear, its unGodly) but not for the content of his rant. Which also included accusing Steve Bannon, Trump’s policy adviser and former ‘alt-right’ activist, of ‘sucking his own dick’. Which probably translates as some kind of metaphor over there, rather than the rather difficult physical near-impossibility that it remains on this fair Isle.

To further improve Donald’s mood this week, Congress voted to keep his most-hated ‘Obamacare’ going when he’s so desperate to bury it, and then they voted to take sanctions against Russia, which has also caused as stir. The last thing to go down that well in the White House was Monica Lewinsky.

Fortunately, North Korea tested yet another missile this week too. One capable of travelling 2000 miles. Or, ‘to Chicago’ as that distance is officially known. And that’s fortunate because Trump now has to do something. He has achieved not one thing in the last 6 months, but if he can nuke his way out of this one using extreme violence and gung-ho-manship, then Americans will love him.

God help us all.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

How can I concentrate on the problems of the world when I keep getting distracted. Though if I have one pure and superlative skill, it is the ease with which I can be distracted. Always been the same. Homework to do, fine, then the tv comes on. Homework… later. But today’s distraction was a worthy one. Lila. That tiny little bundle of fluffy pinkness came for a sleepover last night. Her daddy had to go away so Mummy and baby came to stay. So I was stuck in goo-goo-land. Somewhere I seem to be spending alarmingly increasing time currently.

But I did see two very interesting articles. My fave type. Food/health issues. And stupidity. They always go together. In the first, a bunch of Danes have done the inevitable study on alcohol. And found… that its not only good for you but if taken in moderate but not particularly sparing ‘doses’, reduces the likelihood of type II diabetes by over 50% in men and about 45% in women. That is such a staggeringly big statistic even I’m impressed. They did stress, however, that they were investigating diabetes ONLY, so the fact that half the study probably went into liver failure and the other half are now recovering alcoholics was not ‘relevant to the hypothesis in consideration’.

The other ‘study’ showed how men (in particular but not exclusively) suffer from depression due to excess of sugar. Funny, I get depressed if I don’t have the stuff in vast quantities, particularly when mixed with chocolate or even ice cream. But there ya go. Maybe I’m not as much of a man as I thought. Bit of fluidity coming into my life so I can empathise with the youth. But only where sweets are concerned.

I’d personally use Jeremy Corbyn as a guinea pig and force feed him vodka (Russian, cheap, workers’ label, obviously) and chocolate until he was sick. Then see whether the diabetes prevention from the alcohol neutralised the sugar overload of the chocolate. And then I’d shoot him either way. Just for being a nob. And for not being ‘honest’ to ‘the kids’. Wooing them with promises of a perfect, Garden of Eden future Britain. Saddled with crippling debt that they will be paying off their entire working lives. Nice man.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Funny how you go on holiday and end up with no time whatsoever. Funny. I blame Lila. People generally are demanding in inverse proportion to their size. I worked this out when I met Mel. Very small, very demanding. Lila is a quantum leap in both directions. Really tiny yet can’t even tie her own shoelaces. Not that wears shoes. Obviously. But its not that she wants things all the time, cries out for attention, yells and screams, because she doesn’t. She demands attention by stealth. You know she’s there so you have to watch her. Play with her. Make silly noises, blow raspberries, just watch her sleep. It all falls under that umbrella of ‘amaaaazing’. So that’s where I’ve been. In Malta, with Lila. And a few others. Minor players.

And I’ve come back to a world in turmoil. Ok, not totally dissimilar to the one I left, but really. No, really. No petrol cars to be made after 2040. What will the 84 year-old me do? I want to be tootling round to the shops in a McLaren F1 at 14 mph, wearing a hat (old people always wear hats) and park it really badly, causing more pollution. I don’t want to be hopping in and out of some probably driverless electric ‘thing’. Its embarrassing. But so’s wetting myself and I’ll probably be doing that too.

Donald Trump has banned transgender people from the US military. How is that fair? How does it benefit the American military? Surely nothing fills the enemy with greater fear than a marine in a dress? Yet its almost like Trump just has to be, first and foremost, controversial. Everyone worries about pollution; he pulls out of the Paris accord. Everyone is talking about ‘gender fluidity’ and Trump comes up with the latest ban on ‘trans’ people. And you have to wonder: how big a problem is transgenderism in the US military? Perhaps its a peculiarly American problem: I don’t know whether I want to be a man or a woman but either way I want to shoot people. And I appreciate that this is my own particular problem. I have endless compassion and tolerance for transgender people. But struggle to reconcile my undoubted stereotypical attitudes with a soldier’s life.

There again I’m struggling a bit with the whole ‘gender fluidity’ thing. Not about sexuality, I get being gay, bisexual, whatever. The Romans invented that too. But telling kids not to make up their mind what actual gender they should be is nothing but an unnecessary confusion in a life already pretty overwhelming. My rule is this: if you have a dick, you’re probably a boy. What you choose to do with it is really up to you.

And so to work. Has to happen sometime, I suppose.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So Jeremy Corbyn has back-tracked on his ‘promise’ to ‘sort out’ student debt. When he shouted and screamed about it for 3 months of electioneering he sounded pretty convincing. When he repeated it at Glastonbury a month later, the implication was not only that he continued to campaign against tuition fees but that student debts would… well what? Vanish? Disappear? Be written off?? Then he did the sums.

11 billion quid. Hmmmmm. That might dent the exchequer a touch. He needs 35 billion to pump endless funds into the health service, 27 bil for re-nationalising half the country, 122 bil to increase public services and workers’ benefits. But he can count on at least 4 billion coming in from raising tax on ‘the rich’. That adds up nicely. In Corbyn’s mind.

Austerity doesn’t work; let’s try bankruptcy

So faced with that figure to wipe out the debts of a generation of students, he’s changed his mind. Or say: “I never said that”. Actually, you did Jeremy. And repeated it to the point where it became boring.

Never mind, he’s restructuring his party. Or, kicking out the deputy leader, as its known.

Tom Watson, the incumbent, was never Corbyn’s choice. When he was surprisingly voted as party leader, it was decided from on high that he was so unelectably left-wing that the party needed a bit of ‘balance’. So it chose fat Tom to appeal to the old New Labourites who found Jezza’s neo-communist ranting somewhat unpalatable. All things are indeed relative as during the Gordon Brown era, Tommy was considered pretty hard left. Ironic as he’s now deemed the party’s very own Nigel Farage and surplus to ‘the cause’. They want to replace him with Emily Thornbury who follows the staunch hard-left line. Like Diane Abbot does but Emily can string a sentence together with a degree of coherence and also probably passed her maths GCSE.

Changing of the guard. It’ll be the KGB next.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Bu-ut ohhhh, those su-ummer niiiiii-iiiiights…

Ok, I loved Grease, no shame in that. Everybody loves it still. But I really loved it because I was deeply, madly, passionately in love with Olivia Newton-John. Just me and 37 million other teenage boys, and probably as many girls were in love with that gorgeous Aussie bird wot couldn’t sing for shit but who gives a damn when you look like that? I had a big poster of her on my (purple) bedroom wall. The one from her single, Country Roads. Terrible awful quasi-C&W songette limply moaned out by Lovely Liv. My brother (massive Black Sabbath fan) sneered at me. I didn’t care. Love has no barriers. Not even to that song.

But the summer, which is where we began, is such a lovely time. Or so I thought til I downloaded the Times today and, as usual, hit the sports’ pages first and foremost and…

Fucking golf. Who voted golf a ‘sport’. Winston Churchill famously described the game as ‘the perfect way to ruin a good walk’ and I just can’t see it as a ‘sport’. A pastime (like landscape painting), fine. A very skilful game (so is bridge), no problem. But sport? Where’s the sweat? Where’s the exertion? Golf is great, just put in on the ‘pages for people who like wearing smart-casual wear and walking round in silly shoes’, and leave the sports bit for others.

So I flicked through the 18 pages of golf and found… women’s cricket. I’m no sexist, as you know, but women’s cricket? On a Sunday morning? When I’m looking for tales of footballing artistry, stories about wayward All Blacks eating lesser mortals in a new, more sacrificial type Hakka. Then there was cycling news. Hmmmm. And finally, almost an afterthought, a little bit of football. Because its only friendlies being played and we all hate friendlies. So I wouldn’t normally even waste the memory space on my ipad talking about Chelsea playing Arsenal except for 2 reasons. Firstly that it was played in Beijing. Stamford Bridge busy that day, was it? The Emirates not good enough? Oh, of course, by playing it in China each club probably gets to pocket enough cash to fund 3 NHS hospitals for 6 years (that being the new and only currency ever spoken about in the UK).And secondly because Arsenal lost.

Which, in the grand scheme of even exclusively footballing things, is meaningless. But just nice to write anyway. And apparently lost bad. Or good, if you’re that way inclined. Chelsea looked great, no change there then, and Arsenal defended like the National Ballet and were weak in attack. Even with new 65 zillion pound signing.

Which must make you a little bit happy. Even if life here in the heat, the luxury, the peace and ease of holiday-mode, doesn’t make one happy enough already.

My cup runneth over. Never mind, they have people here to wipe it up.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Ok, so here’s what you need to know about Malta. So this won’t be a long message. Because Malta is very small. Tiny. Yet its a proper country and a republic too. AND, its actually part of the EU. In fact it is officially the chair-nation, or whatever they call that dubious honour, of the EU this year.

Malta is an island in the med. The southern Med. Just below Italy, half an inch from Tunisia on most maps, not far from Libya. Nice. Hot. In terms of its importance in the world and its history, I was quite prepared to make up a total fiction. As I’ve been known to do. Along the lines of: “invaded by the Greeks in 572 BC, raped by the Romans in 32AD, pillaged by the Vikings in 743, taken over by rampaging Moors in 1219 when it became a Muslim state, governed by Napoleon, that sodding French dwarf, in 1774, who stopped here for a beer on his way to Mexico, ruled under a British mandate from 1823, then… then became a republic, survived a UFO landing in 2276 when aliens ate their babies and that’s that”.

But I checked on Wiki and found that my fiction is totally on the money. Which is no feat of historic genius on my part, but its the same history of virtually any country in these parts, especially the little ones. In fact my history and what we shall loosely call ‘the official one’ only vary because they missed the bit when the Vikings arrived and I didn’t. Big bastards they were, fucking great horns on their helmets. Blondes. Don’t know how they could have missed ’em. The UFO thing we’ll have to wait and see.

But now we’re in Gozo. And this is what it looks like. Its that bit of brown lying on the Sea just behind Mel. Impressive. That was on the boat on the way over. You don’t need to invade to come to Gozo, they have ferries every hour to take you. But heh, nothing stopping you if you really want to, everyone else seems to have done it. Gozo’s even smaller than Malta. Though is obviously part of it.

The interesting thing about Malta is that its language, errrr, Maltese, is basically an Arab language, from the Moorish days. But, and this is unique, its ‘written in English, innit’. So although it sounds distinctly Arabic, it uses Roman letters. Or English letters really, cos the Romans couldn’t speak English. Yet the Maltese can and do. English is their official language. Praise be. Which does make life easy. Which is what we’re here for.

You’ll notice that Lila is not in Gozo. Not allowed. Tried to steal her but her mum found out and scuppered the plot.

Hot here though. Nice.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

So there we were, me and Lila, discussing the finer points of worker’s entitlement, the democratic rights of the proletariat, the dissolution of the imperial ruling classes as proposed by Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx and Diane Abbott, when she fell asleep. In the water. The pool gently splashing her little body and then in a puff, she’s asleep. Lila, that is, not Diane Abbott, who I’d happily have let drown.

But its all down to the heat. Its hot here in Malta. Hot as Hades. Hot as an oven. Which is why I thought me and Che would spend a little quality time on Lila’s political enlightenment before her parents turn her into a mini-Maggie for the post-millenial’s post-millenials. Generation… Y? Generation… Why? No idea what we’ll call them but we’ll think of something.

And I must confess, I’m all newsed-out. I read the Times this morning, as I do every morning, and it said: “bleuhh, bleuhh, bleuhh, bleuhh”. Don’t know why, just nothing exiting, nothing new, nothing other than yet more BBC bollocks. So let’s put that to bed once and for all.

Superstars paid too much? Money wasted on ‘celebrity’ show-biz-bollocks shows quite at odds with the somewhat hi-brow international image that’s taken 70 years to attain? Dumbing down?

The BBC has to compete, I feel. It doesn’t need to, it gets its money whether 8 million viewers enjoy Celebrity Come Dancing or whether just 17 watch ‘The plight of the slug’s mother’. Yet to justify its very existence it has to prove, in viewing figures, that ‘Britain’ is watching it. And to do that it needs to put shows on right across the intellectual board. And to do that you have to pay market driven salaries. No other way.

So you either want the BBC to stay, pretty much as it is, or you don’t, in which case it must just go. And we’ll all save 175 quid a year. Personally, I get more satisfaction than the license money costs me, every time I watch Wimbledon and there’s no adverts.

So that’s it. Done with the Beeb, done with the news, tomorrow Mel & I leave Malta ‘proper’ (and alas Lila too) for a few days on the nearby island of Gozo. Now that’s exiting.

Happy Friday/Shabbat shalom

A xxxx

So yesterday we had the big ‘reveal’ as the BBC announced the outraaaaaaageous salaries paid to its ‘stars’. In particular, its men stars. Who get paid more than the women and more of them get on the list (150k+ for entry), in fact 2/3rds of those were men. And I’d like to say, here and now, that its all bollocks. The whole thing. From the criticism of the actual wages to the division between the genders; all bollocks.

No mention is made of how much ‘work’ any of these ‘stars’ actually do. So Chris Evans, who indeed is the knob’s knob, gets his 2 million quid a year but puts in quite a few hours for the Beeb. Whereas the really annoying Claudia Winkleman only gets 400 grand but puts in about 2 hours a week. Its just a matter of how much it would cost to replace these people, and how much they get offered elsewhere. Us poor grafters and suckers who work in the real world obviously feel cheated by these folk getting so highly paid. But only because we’re the ones paying them. No-one moans about Jonathan Ross, now he’s on ITV, for his millions. Even though he’s a tosser. Because he’s not on ‘our’ BBC.

Get over it.

I’ve got bigger things to worry about. Well, actually, smaller things. Lila-shaped things. She had her first ever swim today. And when I say ‘swim’, I don’t mean it as, f’rinstance, Mel swims. Up and down at a rate of knots, like a fish on steroids. I mean ‘swimming’ like we do, you and me, when we’re on holiday. Frolicking around in a pool for a bit. That kind’a swimming. Lila was dressed appropriately. Obviously. UV absorbing burkini, sun-hat and shades. And loads of factor maximum-for-babies. And even though she doesn’t look too sure in the pic, trust me, she loved it. As did ‘nanny-granny-bubba’ Melissa.

No-one ever asks you what you’d like to be named. Until you become a grandparent. Then you can re-invent yourself. “Are you going to be ‘grandad'” they ask, “or grandpa, zeida? What?” To which I’d reply, “I’m going to be ‘Chuck!’ or ‘Clark Kent’ or ‘Spiderman!!'” Mel wanted to be anything other than her hated, nanny, granny or bubba. Hence what I now call her. And will continue until it sticks and Lila learns it properly.

Malta is a wonderful place. Hot. Nice. Lovely.

Happy whatever day this finally gets out-day

A xxxx

The BBC is today publishing its accounts. And for the first time it has to include the actual salaries of its ‘stars’. Anyone earning more than 150 grand a year has to be named. And shamed!! Though earning lots of money is not really much of a shame, in the normal sense.

But the BBC is nothing ‘in the normal sense’. Because it is a noted broadcaster and producer, and yet is state-funded. Or, ‘paid for by us’. Therefore we’re entitled to know the nitty-gritty of who gets wot. And then we can say, with righteous indignation: ‘WE’re paying him HOW MUCH???? He’s not worth it. I want my license money back’.

I think Dr Who is a waste of money and time (travel) and space (time-continuum), but I get no say. Wouldn’t want a say. I actually trust the BBC to do what they think is best with MY cash. And if that’s to pay Gary Linneker 500 grand a year (guessing) to present Match of the Day, then so be it.

And because they are an entertainment company, they have to pay stars what they’re worth. Even though many are totally worthless. Because if they didn’t pay Gary his due, he’d be stolen by Sky, or ITV, or BT. So its not a matter of some kind of intrinsic worth or value, but just conditional on how much someone else would pay him to do the same job. Same as everything else, the market for ‘talent’ sets its own limits. We can either spend our BBC time staring at a bunch of moronic goons mumbling, or pay the price.

Off to Malta this afternoon. With MY baby. A week of slathering factor 70 over Lila and pulling her round a swimming pool. Probably screaming but she’s gotta learn. I would call it a ‘holiday’ but I’m not sure at this point.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

The biggest killer in the world today is dementia. You’d think it was Assad, ISIS, moped-riding stabbers, but you’d be wrong. Dementia. And the best way to avoid it is to eat. Ok, I’m listening now. And salivating. Going to McDonalds to ‘eat my way out of mental disease’. Make that 3 Big Macs and 4 cheeseburgers. Then they go spoil it by telling you its all about WHAT you eat. That previously a ‘mediterranean diet’ was deemed the most righteous, whereas now we’re going ‘Nordic’. Because in a study in Stockholm, those adhering to the Scandi way were 80% less likely to show cognitive decline. 80%!!! That’s a very big number. Highly significant. The poor, dribbling, incoherent 20% ate other stuff, presumably. Suckling pigs. Earth. Sugar Puffs and almond croissants.

The Nordic diet is as follows: apples (I eat them already, every day), fish (eat loads of that too, and if you include tuna mayo on a granary baguette, I eat it every day too), tea (no problem), water (more of a problem), then it gets a bit technical about different types of unrefined sugars and starches, none of which, I’m gonna guess, is gonna be found in a Mars bar. But fruit juice is BAD. I get that, never drink it, spoils the vodka. So basically, I don’t really think you need to go to Helsinki to buy your groceries. Nor even to shop at Iceland. Just eating the stuff you know you should and cut back on the good stuff. Sorry, cut back on the stuff you really know you shouldn’t.

Off on a slight tangent was the other news today, even making the front page, that middle-class life expectancy is greatly reduced by dementia. Middle-class… hmmm… Not Upper-class because they have servants to suffer dementia for them. Or they all have a head start due to tragic in-breeding in the Victorian era. And not Working Class because they all die in industrial accidents. Even though we have no manufacturing industry any longer. And if we do its so protected by ‘elf-n-safety that you’re probably safer in a foundry than ‘working from home’.

But its middle class because that’s where the increase in longevity has been most marked for decades. They can afford better health care and nicer holidays. And better food. From Denmark. So the greatest downturn is there, due to the upturn in dementias.

The King of Norway must therefore be the person most unlikely in the entire world to suffer from Alzheimers.

And me, as a middle-class total pig, the king of eating bad things, had better watch out.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx