Andy's Glasses

In case you might be in any possible doubt, let me make my position perfectly clear: I FUCKING HATE TERRORISTS AND WOULD WILLINGLY ROUND THEM ALL UP, PUT THEM IN A BIG HOLE AND FILL IT WITH CONCRETE. All of them. The whole bloody lot.

But you can’t find them. You can’t prevent them, so it would seem, and you can’t kick them out even if you could find them, because many are British. Allegedly. Just not ‘British’ in any way that we understand. As in embracing British values of freedom, democracy and tolerance.

And you can’t change your ways for terrorists, you can’t stop going out, stop having fun, stop meeting in public, stop going to pubs and clubs and football matches and concerts. Because then they win.

That’s the theory.

Then last night, when the shit hit the van, on London Bridge, then mayhem ensued in the normally fab, cool and atmospheric Borough Market, I thought about my daughter. Not the one with the baby, I knew exactly where she was, guarding my granddaughter. But my other daughter. The one who is always out and about in London’s hippest places that sell alcohol. So I messaged her. ‘You out?’ ‘Yep’. ‘Where are you?’ ‘Angel’. Ok, that’s Islington, miles away from the horrors. Then the question from her: ‘should I go home?’

And that simple question was in fact a test of faith. The proper answer is ‘no, if you change your lifestyle, the motherfucking jihadi scumbags win’. But in my heart I just wanted her safe. Home, in her bed, doors locked. I was almost ashamed to have such thoughts, but this was no longer about politics and statements. This was family.

These ‘jihadis’ are just violent, worthless scum. They have no value of life, their own or that of others. And the ‘islamist’ badges they wear are worthless. If they weren’t affiliated to ‘ISIS’ they’d be part of a gang, maybe join some other form of moronic ‘freedom fighters’. They just like violence and death, under any banner. But currently they are ‘Islamists’ and that horrendous ideology must be addressed. And that can only happen within the muslim community. I don’t hold muslims in any way responsible for this shit but they do have the power. To control the values at home, in mosques, meeting places, where all the evil begins.

The police shot the 3 attackers dead. 8 minutes after they received the first phone call. If that’s not unbelievably brilliant, I don’t know what is. 8 minutes. Respect.

Happy tragic Sunday

A xxxx

And there’s just four players left in the mix, really. We have Corbyn, we have May, we have Trump and we have Arsene Wenger. These are the only ones left to lead us, our collective futures are in their hands. Which would be fine, but its their heads in which the problems lie.

I think the main problem with Theresa May is that she’s not very nice. I know this should be irrelevant but it never is. Theresa comes across as slightly arrogant, even for a Conservative, and that’s not great. But what she says does have a realistic honesty. She refuses to make promises that are just crowd-pleasing, vote-winning soundbytes that have and can have no substance in reality.

Jeremy Corbyn (even though he makes MY skin crawl) is popular. Massively so. He has duped an entire generation. With promises that everyone wants to hear. No university tuition fees: hooray, free school meals for all; hooray, nationalise the railways: hooray, 14 grillion quid to the NHS; hooray; 63 drillion to social care; yippee. And best of all; he’ll ensure a continued free trade agreement with Europe.

Where the fuck is all that money coming from? It simply can’t all come from the hike in corporation tax, even though he doesn’t appear to have a plan B. You can only use 15 billion quid once. That’s the rule with money. Gone is gone.

More importantly, his insistence on a tariff-free trade deal after Brexit has not been questioned. But to get such a deal, any country HAS TO embrace all the European rules. Like freedom of movement and adoption of all their laws. So we’d leave Europe and then re-join it again under exactly the same terms but as non-members. For which we’d doubtless have to pay more than we did before.

Donald Trump has removed his nation from the treaty for reduction of carbon emissions. Saved 2 billion quid. Because Europe is not his problem and there’s a massive coal industry in the States that needs all the carbon it can burn. “America First!!!!” And fuck the world.

I’m not the greenest person on the planet, its safe to say. But simple measures at reducing certain ways of life can definitely help to slow down the climatic changes that are occurring, there is no doubt. But for some reason, in a speech that would have appeared childish in a school playground, Trump was concerned that ‘the world is laughing at America’. Plonker.

Arsene Wenger has signed a new contract with Arsenal. Sadly its only 2 years. Wish it had been 10. But by then, under Corbyn, football will be nationalised, players riding bikes to training, tvs will become ‘big’ again to promote the valve industry and there’ll only be electricity for 2 hours a day anyway.

Ahhhh, the future is… something.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

In the 1960s and 70s a young Aussie called Margaret Court was the
undisputed champ of women’s tennis. She was the Martina of her day.
The proto-Williams. Sharapova without steroids. She was a winner. Yet
even back then she had views that were… different. At a time when
everyone was boycotting South Africa because of apartheid, Margaret
praised the regime as being ‘better than the United States’ in racial
matters. Though looking at America in the 60s they had almost the same
thing there in many states.

Then she found God. Always a problem. And she’s a church pastor. Which
is not just finding God but kind’a eating at his table, going to his
parties, chillin’ together, kind’a thing. And because of God she’s now
abandoning Quantas airline because ‘they support same sex marriage’.
And she doesn’t. And He (apparently) doesn’t. Even though this is not
some radical Islamic, throw-gays-off-the-roof kind of God, but the
other one, the Western one, with the beard. She further said that
tennis was full of lesbians. And as a tennis player myself, I’d like
to state here and now that I’m no lesbian. Not through want of trying
but they won’t let me join.

Poor, old deluded Maggie then said the best one: that teaching in
schools about such things as ‘gayness’ was ‘what Hitler did. Got into
the minds of children’. Which, other than being historically wrong,
Hitler never messed about with kids but went straight for the adults,
is just plain and simple fucked up. Its on a par with not teaching
evolution (still a problem in some schools in America, nearly 100
years after the ‘Scopes trial’).

I wanna know why her God is so intolerant of gay people? Particularly
lesbians. Martina Navratilova has had ‘words’. Some in English, some
in Czech, all expletive. Good for her.

Have a super, tolerant, inclusive Friday

A xxxx

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury; I shall present you with evidence over the course of this trial, to show that security measures currently employed in this allegedly fair and democratic nation, are in fact just hi-tech versions of spying. And the Plaintiff, Lila Sophia Bell, has indeed had her human rights abused by this technology on grounds of privacy, intrusion and round-the-clock surveillance.

Babies are an obsession. For all of us, so it would seem. So when our kids were little we had little monitoring devices, that inevitably failed; human error, you had to turn them on and kind’a point them, so this is the logical extrapolation. The Babycam. Not only can you spy on your baby when its in bed but you can speak to him/her. You can play music from your phone. Not, like Nirvana or the Groundhogs, maybe Black Sabbath which you find on my phone, but, more plinky-plonk baby songs about stars in the sky and the wheels on diesel-spewing buses polluting the environment. You can play the baby the endless electoral debates; sends me to sleep soon enough, should work wonders for a babe. Or re-runs of Spurs last 2 matches in full. Wow.

Ahhh technology…

They’re gonna fly a rocket to the Sun. I know, you don’t need to, you can see it from here easy enough, long as its not cloudy. But you know what scientists are like; give them an inch and they take 93 million miles. I hope they’re taking lots of Factor 50. They’re not actually landing on it, obvs, that would be rather tricky as the temperature is higher than Blackpool in August. Its another ‘probe’ (horrible word; brings to mind medical shit and proctologists and…) which will in fact travel in ever nearing loops, ending up just 2 million miles away. Which is pretty far if you were using your over-60s tube travel card, but in terms of our star, can only be termed ‘fucking close’. 1400 degrees close. Way too close for comfort. You could bake your cheesecake in 7 seconds. But close enough to learn what they need to learn. Don’t ask, I have no idea, other than it’ll be ‘ground-breaking’ and ‘really important’. So I’m happy with that. Science for science’ sake; there’s nothing purer. Other than a baby.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

First Diana Abbott malfunctioned when asked 2 weeks ago about police numbers and costing. She had no clue. Started mumbling and conjuring figures out of thin air on the Nick Ferrari show. “Errrr… that’ll cost… errrr… just a minute… YES, 300,000 a year”. So that’s paying policemen £30 a year each then? enquired Ferrari. “Oh… errrr… wait a sec… errrr…” and on it went. Her brain was subject to cutbacks and redundancies which left it weak and vulnerable to cyber-attack by the Chinese or Russians, or even by Alexa in my kitchen. Not that I’d have that woman in my kitchen. Its against the rules; anyone who’s ever shagged Jeremy Corbyn; banned for life. Rule 364/AJVE/7772389:g.

Then BA malfunctioned on Saturday. Big time. And although ‘computer crash’ is way better than ‘plane crash’, it doesn’t feel like that at the time when you’re 15 hours at Terminal 5 without water or food or any information whatsoever. The CEO said later that they could have done better perhaps with getting in touch. No shit. Perhaps used social media, blah, blah, blah. Here’s an idea: how about a n’announcement?? Like a loud voice over some loud speaker system telling people what’s going on. You don’t need fucking snapchat when every you want to address is in the fucking room.

Then yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn himself malfunctioned. On the radio. Woman’s Hour, to be precise. He was telling the, presumably, women of Britain how every child would get free nursery school places under Labour, which is a great idea. Jezza is full of great ideas. Just not a clue how to pay for them. So Emma Barnett asked him: how much will this cost, Jeremy? And he turned into Diane Abbott without the wig. “Errrr… let me see… hmmm… errr… I’ll get back to you on that”. Don’t you know???? (Implication: YOU COME ON MY SHOW TO EXTOL THE VIRTUES OF FREE SCHOOLING FOR A MILLION-PLUS KIDS AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH IT COSTS???? YOU TOSSERRRRR).

And that’s when it got nasty. Not on the show, they just moved on. But the ‘real’ Cobynites came out of the woodwork and onto their twitter feeds. Suddenly, Emma has become a ‘Zionist bitch’, a ‘Zionist shill’, whatever one o’them might be, and lots of other really pleasant comments, obviously coming from the many, not just the few.

I don’t mind a bit of banter, I don’t mind if they’d called her a slag, a bitch, whatever. And I’m not sensitive to anti-semitic bollocks. But what actually irked me is that the term ‘zionist’ is now, in these people’s feeble minds, an insult. As if calling someone that is the worst thing they could think of.

Once again the long, deep shadow of anti-semitism follows Corbyn wherever he goes. Whereas the brightness of simple mathematics left him years ago.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Some decisions are hard to make. Not exactly ‘Sophie’s Choice’ but, like, which tennis racquet should I buy? Because someone, (no names mentioned, RAAACHELLLL!!!) broke my last one. Ok, she would probably say that ‘the string broke’, whereas some of us are not so accepting of so-called ‘accidents!!!’. I normally wait about 3 years til the grip is worn out then reckon when that happens, its God’s way of telling me I need a new one. So I went to Mike’s place to get another, as you do. Sports Direct. On a saturday afternoon. Which would normally have been just ‘hell’ but because it was about 20 minutes before the cup final kick-off, the place, the roads, the car park, all empty. Brilliant. Then you’re faced with a wall of racquets. You pick one up, bang the strings, hold the handle… hmmmmm. Then another, bang the strings (remarkably similar to the first one), hold the grip (remarkably similar to the first one) and then… HELPPP!!! But there’s never anyone to help at Sports Direct. And if there is then its a 16 year-old girl who is struggling with her GCSE in art and is worried that her boyfriend of 27 minutes is seeing her best mate, Kylie, behind her back, over by the golfing accessories, and she’s getting a cold sore as well. So you look, you fondle, the racquets, not the assistant, nor Kylie, and you decide.

Choosing a government is perhaps more complex, though obviously there aren’t as many choices as there are tennis racquets in the world. And if you ignore the Lib Dems, which everyone should and most people did last time of asking, and similarly the Greens because its just a wasted vote then it becomes a very limited choice indeed. I won’t even mention UKIP, ok, other than there, because their esteemed leader, eager for any hard-right headline, last week claimed that not only would his party bring back the death penalty for terrorist murderers, but HE’D KILL CHILDKILLERS HIMSELF!!! Note to Paul Nuttall: YOU CAN’T EXECUTE A SUICIDE BOMBERS YOU ABSOLUTE TOTAL FUCKING MORON.

So its ‘him’ or ‘her’. Corby or May. Jezza the Red, Terry the Terrible. And they had a ‘debate’ last night. Together. But separately. In the same place at different times. Cos that’s what they wanted. And it was hard and brutal, fielding questions first by the studio audience and then by Jeremy ‘Pit-Bull’ Paxman who was, it must be said, horrible. To both of them. And my main worry was that Corbyn came across so decent and normal and measured that even I was impressed with a man who I know, underneath that groomed veneer, is Joseph Stalin. Theresa was ok but is still reeling from abandoning every old person in Britain and stealing their homes.

The only saving grace, the only hope really, is immigration. Because ‘we’ voted to leave Europe pretty much for no other reason and Jezza is weak on immigration whereas Theresa sounds almost as strong as she did for the last 4 times she’s promised to control it. We must hope its enough to keep Corbyn out.

I’m voting Head for tennis racquets, anyone-but-Corbyn for everything else.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

What do you do on a rainy bank holiday monday when you’ve just spent 2 hours with the granddaughter and had her wrenched screaming (me, not her) from my vice-like grip? You bake a cake, that’s what real men do. A cheesecake in fact. Which I’ve never made but my mum made the best everrrrrr and I was hoping it might be a genetic thing, so at least I’d have half a good cheesecake. Still baking so I’ll let you know.

So with my assistant, who always knows best, even though she’s only there to hold the beaters for me, we baked. And when you bake you need music, right? Its on the top of every recipe. Just before ‘measure out 250gms of flour’ it says ‘put on some 1970s rock music so fucking loud that the milk curdles’. That’s how I read it. Then it said ‘separate 2 eggs’, so I put one in the garage and left the other in the fridge. So far so good. Its only following a recipe for gawd’s sake.

But the music is important. And we have an Amazon player thingy. You know, its like having a permanent Chinese spy in your kitchen who eats nothing and can sing you any of 40 million songs upon request. She’s called Alexa but I thing Gung Ho or Kwai Chang might be more appropriate. But that 40 million is actually for real, as claimed by Amazon. So we can all hear what we want, right? Kind’a right; we can all hear what we want but not necessarily at the same time.

So we started, under the assistant’s instruction, with Ed Shearan. She loves Ed Shearan. After the second track I was about to put Alexa in the fucking blender, but instead played some common ground. Steely Dan. We both love that. But then one of us kind’of goes onto song-association-football mode and starts playing tracks that the previous one reminds me of, maybe due to the time, maybe the tone, maybe who knows. But we ended up with the Groundhogs. Mel wasn’t impressed but I was. Firstly that you can get such an obscure band so easily and then with their phenomenal mix of 70s rock in ultra-jazz time signatures. From there we went to Islands in the stream, always safe, then onto Jolene. And then, quite logically really, to ‘Stand by your Man’. Which, if ever the society for Male Chauvinist Pigs, Misogynists, wife-beaters and Bad Motherfuckers needed an anthem, that would be it.

Because poor Tammy Wynette advises you (sistas) to ‘stand by your man’, cos, after all, he’s just a man. Which may sound patronising and pathetic but is actually a blanket excuse for all and any of man’s failings and shortcomings. However big a shit he is: stand by him. Either Tammy put back the feminist movement by 25 years or Nashville is exempt from such things altogether. Either way I’m now going to fly a confederate flag from Lila’s pram. You’re never too young to make a political statement.

Happy Bank Holiday Monday

A xxxx

I love films. And because I’m a total and unrelenting movie snob, I only really watch them at the cinema. And I love art house films and French films and Iranian films and Korean lesbian films and… well, any lesbian films really, and I even like films that say nothing and go nowhere. Except Koyaanisqatsi which I fucking hated. And I hate ‘blockbusters’ and franchises and anything with a number in the title except SE7EN and anything with Tom Cruise except Rain Man, and I love weird and bizarre and David Lynch and the Coens and Tarantino and… and… and…

They’re the rules. The party line. Why go and see Fast and Furious 19 when you could watch flowers growing in fields in Nicaragua to a backing track of long-forgotten (with really good reason) Aztec bongo music played on shrunken heads?

But I have guilty secrets. Fucking loads of them. Movies that I really shouldn’t even deem worthy of the ticket price yet which I watch time and again on tv. Well, bits of them anyway. Terminator. Terminator 2 (breaks two cardinal rules but I dearly love that movie), Pretty Woman (Nooooo!!!! yes, love it), Officer and a Gentleman, Maid in Manhatten and… the worst of all, Top Gun.

The ‘fingernails down a blackboard’ effect of little Tommy was more than offset by Kelly McGillis at her absolute finest, driving a Porsche 356 with planes and motorbikes and Russians being shot out of the sky. Add in Val Kilmer at his slimiest and you really do have a wonderful film fit for the entire cheese-making industry of the world. And I love it. Everyone loves it. It took our breath away.

And so they’re making part 2. To which, as always, I have to ask: Whyyyeeeeee????? Some things should just be left alone. They’re perfect. And if you can’t improve them, why make another? Oh, for money, forgot about that, silly me. So Tom is making the movie. Obviously Scientology is a bit short this month (not in a Tom way) so he’ll make the investment for them. And star in the film, obviously, though this time as ‘an instructor’. Probably of flight, not of singing ‘you’ve lost that loving feeling’. And his ‘maverick’ rebel student is… is… is a gel!!!! No shit, they let women fly. Not yesterday from Heathrow, obviously, but in general terms, women can pilot.

I haven’t yet watched the opening edition of Twin Peaks Nouveau but its been panned by the critics. Not that I care about them. And now we have Top Gun re-boot to look forward to as well. Has the entertainment industry run out of ideas? Or just become cynical and lazy?

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So we had Manchester, now we’re back on the election. But its a new election now. Economy’s important, Brexit’s Brexit but its all about who can make us safer. From terrorists, from ISIS, from all manner of loonies intent on causing pain and death because they’re bastards. And apparently we currently possess 23,000 jihadists in our fine nation. 23,000 who, on some level, would be happy to see more of our children dying, more of our buildings crumble, more of our way of life changed to something more Islamist.

This is what I’d do.

Deport all 23,000 jihadis. We don’t have any use for them. We can’t eat them, we don’t want them in our prisons, they have nothing but evil intent. So get rid of them. Where to? I have no idea nor care. Just anywhere-but-here sounds fine to me. We don’t need trials, waste of court time, we don’t need ‘process’, just round them up and put them on several planes. Preferably those American planes where they beat up the passengers.

And so who will protect us from terrorism?

The main arguments seem to be that Jeremy Corbyn will pump another 36 billion quid, or maybe 9.4 billion or even 622 billion, makes no difference, the money’s not there anyway, into the police force. More men on the streets, more people in work. Great. But police don’t really do terrorism, not til after its too late.

Theresa May has doubled intelligence expenditure, but decimated the police. Not sure about the net outcome, but our ‘intelligence’ is pretty wonderful, generally. Long as we don’t share it with those blabbermouth Americans. Who think that if it takes 10 minute for ‘secret and sensitive information’ to get from the CIA to the front page of the New York Times, something must be slowing things down.

My main issue is that Corbyn likes terrorists. Always has. He loved the IRA and he has nothing but tolerance and patience for Hamas and IS and thinks we should be ‘negotiating’ with them. Presumably someone managed to convince him that murderers are just workers doing an unpleasant job therefore need job security and union protection. And I agree, that’s why I always refer to them by the acronym of the ‘Confederation of United National Terrorists’.

Glad that’s sorted. Happy Saturday

A xxxx

We need to stop using electricity. Like now. The planet’s dying. Carbon is the killer. In case you missed that. And generating electricity burns coal. That’s how we do it. Newton’s law: energy cannot be created, only changed from one form to another. So we burn hydrocarbons and they provide electricity that we need to charge our phones. Oh, and our electric cars. And the telly. Maybe some lights.

In fact our electricity consumption has increased. Everywhere we used to have 2 sockets we now have a ‘4-gang’ thingy plugged in to provide more outlets. Because my whole life seems to be about putting things on charge. So action is needed. And toys are apparently the answer.

They have windmills, big ones, ok, fucking massive ones, which turn really slowly and produce electricity and now they’ve invented a new method. Using kites. Massive kites, in pairs, which move outwards and inwards in tandem, rolling a generator as they do it. They fly at about 100mph, and really high, so they’re not as unsightly as the windfarms. Though pilots probably won’t be too impressed.

They’re building 10 pairs of these kites, they’ll be 600 metres apart and flying at 300 metres. Each kite has 380 square metres of surface area. And that’s all fine, til the wind stops, or they get tangled or the lines break. Cos flying kites is dead easy, right?

These things speak of desperation. We need to think nuclear. Its the only way. A lump of coal burns for about 4 minutes, then its dead, having produced a bit of electricity and spewed its carbon upwards, so you need another lump. A lump of Uranium lasts for 4 billion years and reacts carbon-free. It really does. In fact in 4 billion years your lump has just halved its potency. Takes another 4 billion to halve it again. Ok, maybe a bit more expensive and touch more difficult to control, and if you lose control you’ve destroyed half the country for the next billion years, but it must be cheaper in the long run.

Toys are fine, but if you need power you need to harness nuclear power. Can’t understand why all these boffins can’t do that safely. They’re too busy working out which foods will kill us this week.

Happy Friday. Sunny and a long weekend ahead. Ahhhhhh…

A xxxx