Andy's Glasses

We all crave freedom. Freedom from, and freedom to.

Freedom from persecution, freedom from starvation, poverty, slavery, freedom from gloating Arsenal fans and all manner of horrible things.
Freedom to vote, freedom to live as I please, to pray as I please, to not pray as I please, freedom to enjoy road-rage. And to do all manner of nice things.

Like tennis.

Man’s greatest freedom. Ok, this man’s greatest freedom. To run around like a mad thing, chasing little yellow balls in the hope of hitting them so hard they don’t come back. I didn’t say all freedoms were clever. But tennis has been off the agenda for about 6 weeks. My shoulder physio banned it. Every week, the same question, the same answer. Not yet. Not ready. Still healing.

So I was faced with a choice. Wait for the shoulder to recover completely (assuming it will at some point), or find another physio. Not necessarily a better one, just one who thinks playing tennis is not such a bad idea. And yesterday I found just such a thing. Who happens to be rather brilliant too, but that was way secondary to giving me the permission I sought so desperately.

Recommended by half my tai chi class (all old, pre-injured, sports-wounded men who, like me, just don’t know any better), I went to see ‘Mike’. He’s big, he’s blond and he’s funny. And he hurt me like a motherfucker, but in the fullness of time I shall forgive him. Because when I asked about tennis his reply was: “does it make you happy?” to which I replied in the affirmative. “So play” he said, “and then we’ll cope with whatever happens after”.

It was that simple. I’m not saying he’s right, I’m not saying everyone would agree with his ethos. But it appealed greatly to me. Whereas my old physio, she was different. Way more cautious, way more protective, way more… female. Some might say ‘more sensible’, but those saying that would probably be female too. Because, as we learned the other day; men’s and women’s brains are different. Maybe its just two different schools of thought in the physio world, and nothing to do with gender?

I’ve never ‘erred on the side of caution’, but I’ve erred plenty.

Spurs win 5-0, England beat the Aussies in the amazing rugby, the omens are good.

Playing tennis this morning.

Very Happy Sunday

A xxxxx

Zac Goldsmith is basically a good person. I think. His father, Sir James, wasn’t. But he shouldn’t be punished for that. You can’t choose your parents. Though if you are being selective, an offshore billionaire would be right up there with ‘loving, caring, nurturing’ on most lists.

So Zac was the Conservative Party MP for Richmond, posh place over in the SW of London. Not a million miles from Heathrow, making it convenient for the locals to whizz off regularly to their second homes in Grasse, Tuscany, Como, but far enough that its not THAT big a problem as it is to those who live in Hounslow.

Zac decided to stand to be mayor of London. But failed. Not just because he’s wetter than a thunderstorm in a rainforest but also because Sadiq Kahn was the better candidate. Never mind, he’s still an MP.

But he put his reputation on fighting the expansion of Heathrow. He was the ‘people’s anti-expansionist’ for that airport. And they decided to do just that; expand Heathrow. Zac was pissed, his own Conservative government passed it, against all his expressed wishes. So he resigned his MP-ness. So he could fight the constituency again, this time as an ‘independent’ on a ‘protect Richmond from Heathrow’ ticket.

Meanwhile, in case you missed it, we had Brexit. Ok, you would have to be dead to have missed it, but I’m just sayin’. Brexit. Zac was a big ‘out’ campaigner. Whereas Richmond, who he represented at the time, was 73% in favour of ‘remain’.

So Thursday’s by-election in Richmond was about 2 things. Heathrow’s expansion, which won’t happen for 10 years, if at all (the proposed runway thing has been bounced out of parliament numerous times before), and about Brexit.

The Lib Dems canvassed strongly on Europe. Massively. To the virtual exclusion of all else. Zac banged on about Heathrow, because its all he knows. Labour did nothing. Not relating to anything relevant; they’re stuck in 1917 Russia. The Tories didn’t field a candidate, out of respect to Zac. So the lib-dems won. The people of Richmond feel way more strongly about Europe than they do about a few more planes whizzing overhead.

That means the Libs now have about 10 mps. And they’re already talking about ‘landslides’ and ‘labour are finished’ and the next election. No-one learns; by-elections are for protest, general elections are never predicted by them.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Francoise Hollande, the most unpopular French leader since Luis XIV, is not standing for the next presidential election. This is very unusual in a country where the top job is highly sought after, due to its great salary and fringe benefits. Like the Eylsee Palace as your crash pad, all the mistresses you can consort with, and use of the ‘presidential scooter’ to go visit them surreptitiously.

But the toady little Anglophobic misery has decided, magnanimously, not to stand again in next year’s elections. In part because he’s probably had enough, but in the main because he stands as much chance of winning as I do. And I don’t mean that in a Donald Trump kind’a way (someone else who had ‘no chance of winning’). I mean; NO CHANCE. He is so low in opinion polls that he’s lucky they haven’t guillotined him, never mind vote him in again. And no-one deserves to end a hopeless, hapless, clueless presidency by heaping yet more humiliation onto their weak and narrow shoulders. He should slink away back to whichever rock he started underneath. I wonder if Julie Gayet will now find her true happiness with her soon-unencumbered-by-office, but now powerless, love? C’est la vie.

Fivers. New ones. Bit of a problem.

The new five pound note is a thing of wonder. You can bend it, fold it, soak it in water, insert it into any orifice you choose, burn it, attack it with anti-aircraft missiles, it just bounces back to shape. Its only if you spend it that its gone forever. So its plastic, it won’t degenerate and, most importantly, its forgery-proof. Wow; that’s progress. Or not.

The new fiver is made of meat. Pure, unadulterated prime rib. The choicest cuts, from freshly slaughtered (fairly painfully, probably; helps the taste) cattle, allowed then to age gently for 32 days, wrapped in foix gras, then slow cooked until it resembles a 5-pound note. Brilliant.

Unless you’re a vegan. And if a vegetarian is a Muslim, a vegan is ISIS. They’re the far-right, military wing of radical vegetarianism. They take no prisoners, they wear no wool. Nor leather. Their belts have to be made from cardboard, which is useless so most vegans wear boiler suits. And they fucking hate the new fivers, because they contain tallow. Beef fat. Oh no. Its not like you have to eat a fiver, I’ve tried, horrible. But the question, and ensuing petitions, is about ‘why do you ave to use ANIMAL FAT?????

May I suggest that it wasn’t a conscious decision to find the most offensive additive to our currency. Otherwise they’d be made of seal-cub-juice. But like it or not (definitely the latter), radical vegans have to share this world with normal, carnivorous people. Thus tallow is a waste product. Surely better to use it than put it in landfills or pump it into the rivers? Where it would hurt the fishes!!!! Bloody vegans, got no consideration for animal welfare.

Why do people have be so totally, fundamentally, radically LITERAL in everything. Its the cause of all the world’s problems that don’t involve Spurs.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Well ‘Europe’, that club to which we once belonged, but will soon depart, is good for lots of things. They’re very good at speaking foreign languages. French, Spanish, German, all spoken really well over there. The wine’s good in France, olive oil in Italy, sausages in Germany. They’re pretty good at football too. Spain in the lead, probably, Germany, Italy.

But they can’t touch us Brits when it comes to traffic jams. Oh no, matey, when it comes to crawling along pulling out your hair in 6 miles of nose-to-tail snarl-up, we cede our crown to no nation. Well, no European nation. You can’t compete with Bangkok, Sao Paulo (60 mile jam last year) or Mumbai.

London’s the best place for really good jams, as you’d expect. And the M25 by Heathrow is the worst spot of all. The total cost to ‘the economy’ of all London’s jams is £42billion. Wow.

How on earth do you calculate that? I sit in a jam, it costs me a fiver for the wasted petrol, plus a kit-kat and a bottle of water, so add another 2 quid. Or another 5 quid if you got them at a service station. But if you include money spent by motorists, that is arguably a boost to the economy, not a drain. Oh.

The government are looking at ways to keep traffic moving, speed it up, get it out of the way. Let’s see how that works in reality once local councils are involved.

They put up speed bumps. Width restrictions. 20mph speed limits. They organise traffic lights to slow down the cars and give equal time to the pedestrians. Of whom, at some junctions, there are none. Never mind, give it 5 minutes, someone might pitch up looking to cross the road.

Everything the councils do to the roads reduces the speed of traffic. Rather than keep it moving they’ve found a million ways to reduce it to a crawl. Then they put speed cameras there to ensure that on the odd occasion the road might be clear, you still have to drive very slowly, causing more delays.

Here’s what they need to do.
Remove all speed restrictions, all roads, everywhere. Especially near schools. Ban Range Rovers within the greater London area. There’s no point in them. Any driver found on a clear road hogging the fast lane should be fined. If he/she is hogging the fast lane and driving below the speed limit, he should be shot. In the gut. So he dies very painfully whilst all the other drivers can watch him bleed out. Attach guns to the speed cameras and reverse them so that any car driving too slowly gets shot at. First a warning, then, if they don’t speed up, the money shot.

You see, its all really sensible and logical if you look at it in a proper, socially-mindful way.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

This’ll shock you: men’s and women’s brains are different. Who’d’a thought? That’s why men are so much better at football, the obvious benchmark for high level cerebral activity. Along with throwing, parallel parking and the inability to iron a shirt without burning it. And scratching your testicles.

So for years they’ve been performing tests on new drugs for horrible things like strokes, like Altzheimers, all manner of nasty brain stuff, to produce new medication. Most of the testees (as opposed to ‘testes’) are men, and neuroscientists have found that contrary to intuition, these results can NOT be simply extrapolated to women. The drugs don’t work, as the song goes. Because men’s and women’s brains are different. Not just store different stuff, as we’ve always known, nothing to do with nagging or shopping, but fundamentally, profoundly, biologically different. And they’ve been scared to say so.

Because of political correctness, the findings from research have been left unpublished because they’re frightened of upsetting equality groups, feminists and other big, burly people who pack a punch.

But now its out there. Because women are so hormonal, it affects the structure of the synapses and the total ‘wiring’ of the brain.

So next time you ‘forget’ to pick up the dry cleaning, paint the bathroom ceiling or bring the dog back from its walk after a quick stop at the pub, just blame those pesky synapses. “If only I had a little more oestrogen acting on my cortex, it would all be so different…”

I actually don’t understand why advances in medical science would be buried for stupid PC considerations. There’s no implication that men’s brains are better, NOR IN ANY WAY WORSE (he hastens to add) just that they are structurally different. Which is probably why my pastry always falls into my chicken pie when I bake it. And in a way this vindicates virtually every excuse I’ve ever had to make to women my entire life. “You don’t understand!” and now, apparently, its true.

I’ve always appreciated the differences between the genders. Just not in such a… errrr… kind’a… ‘brainy’ way.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Manchester United have made their worst start to a football season since 1989!!!! Oh. My. God. That’s awful!! How could the Gods of football conspire in such a brutal, hard, cold way as to take away their divine right to success? How is it that the ‘biggest club in the world’ should suffer the tragic indignity of being 6th in the league after 13 games??? A single point gained at home yesterday against shitty, under-performing bottom feeders, West Ham. Its just NOT GOOD ENOUGH. It wasn’t good enough under David Moyes, wasn’t good enough under Luis Van Gaal and its certainly not good enough under Jose Morinho. Though because Jose is such a calm, considered, philosophical kind of tactician, he only received his second red card in the last month. Better than the start of his Chelsea campaign last season.

But we expect 2 good years our of Jose. Its almost biblical. And ye shall reap the harvest of 2 good years before the field goes fallow, the shit hits the fan, the team Doctor gets humiliated, the water bottles go flying, as it is written, Amen. Did it at Chelsea, twice, did it at Real, did it at Inter. Yet at Old Trafford he’s struggling like a muthaf-, like a poor Portuguese fisherman with a hole in his net.

Manchester United are soooooo big that Hollywood superstars come and see them. And Julia Roberts too. Ok, she hasn’t done much since Erin Brokovich, hasn’t looked good since Pretty Woman, but she’s fucking royalty of the A-list variety. And growing up in Wicheta, or Alberquerque or Sioux Falls, you can just imagine teeny Julia telling the good ole boys when they turned up in their red Chevy pick-ups that their daddy’s need back on the farm baaaah 7, that she didn’t want to go watch the Cougars play Baseball, or the Panthers play basketball, or the Zebras play gridiron, she wanted to go to Manchester to watch ‘sucker’. So yesterday she was there. Livin’ the dream. In the Theatre of Dreams. And a lorra good it did the team.

And what about Sunderland? Down the bottom. Watford? Struggling. Bournemouth? Just happy to still be in the top flight. They’re not hurling water bottles at the 4th official because they’re ‘only 19th’.

Never mind. As we say at Spurs, (every fucking year, after year, after year…); there’s always next season.

Happy Monday.

A xxxx

Is there a correlation between football and alcohol? This is the question on everyone’s mind, lips and… errr… livers. So it needs exploration. Not the bit about Gazza having seven litres of pure spirit poured down his throat whilst he was tied to a chair with his head held back, that’s normal. Nor Rooney going out on the piss when he was due to sit on the bench for 90 minutes just three days later. I’d never realised that ‘sitting still whilst no longer under the influence’ was a crime. No, I’m talking about the fans. The people. The masses. The great unwashed who vote Brexit, love Trump and watch football.

Because when your team wins, you ‘go for a drink’ to celebrate. When your team loses, you ‘go for a drink’ to commiserate and console. On the way to the game you ‘stop for a drink’ to get in the mood. And if you want a ‘quick one’ at half time, you’ll probably need to leave your seat at least 10 minutes before the end of the half to get in the queue. Except at Arsenal, in the famed ‘Club Level’, where the outrageous amount paid for yearly tickets actually includes ‘all the half time booze you can hurl down your throat’ as the beers are laid out on tables for the privileged to just help themselves. Which is why that entire middle tier of the ground empties totally 15 minutes before half time and doesn’t fill up until 15 minutes after the game’s re-started.

So, basically, ‘going to football’ translates for so many as ‘going drinking’. The match starts at 3, Love, so I should be home by 5 in the morning, blind drunk and sprawled across the driveway in a pool of my own vomit. Oh, and I might be bleeding from various places and possibly in possession of an STD or 2. Love you, Byeeee…

I’m interested in the relative consumption of winning teams and losing teams’ fans on any particular week. I’m interested in levels of alcoholism based on general levels of club overall success or disappointment. And whether this is merely geographical and socio-economic in nature or actually influenced by the teams and their results. We all know that northerners drink too much and piss away at least 90% of their weekly benefits by Friday night. When there’s scarcely any football ever played.

Excessive drinking occurs at times of upset, frustration and tragic disappointment. Which is why football is the perfect medium for such an activity.

And most importantly, in case I’ve failed to mention this previously: I FUCKING HATE CHELSEA!!!!

Happy Sunday; pass the bottle

A xxxx

I love the ‘far right’. As long as, politically speaking, its on the periphery, it creates a wonderful environment for the violent, the stupid, the stupidly violent and the violently stupid. Its basically politics for those who like fighting. Always has been. From Hitler who indoctrinated a group of moronic thugs (and find me any other type of thug who isn’t in UKIP) and ‘took it viral’, to Moseley’s brown shirted knuckle-draggers, up to the National Front, as was, who cut right to the chase, went to Chelsea and West Ham football grounds in the bad old days and just hooked up with anyone who looked ‘a bit tasty’ (doc Martens, Ben Shermans, sta-pressed, braces, shaved heads) and offered them the chance to beat people up on a Sunday (football was only on Saturdays back then), or even a Tuesday night!!

The National Front was banned, or died, or beat itself up in confusion, but it changed and became the slightly respectable British National Party. Which then became Britain First, the Front Nacionale and the International White People’s Darkie Hating Party. Every country has them. In Eastern Europe they have more than most. Greece is full of them, Russia loves them and these people (assuming they are ‘people’ in any normal sense) all have one thing in common.

They hate.

They spread hatred, they’re rabidly divisive and totally evil.

Probably the best example today of a totalitarian, ultra-racist, violent right wing institution is ISIS. Sadly a lot of right wingers take their lead from God himself. Or, some warped fucking distortion of any particular religious doctrine.

So its nice to see all the proper, white, European fascists get together, as they have this week, over in Bulgaria. Arguably the best place to keep Europes proto-Nazis. They’re there to ‘hunt migrants’. They catch the refugees who sneak from Turkey over to Bulgaria every day. I don’t know what they do with them, deport them, arrest them, eat them, kill them, but they catch them. Under the flag of the Knights Templar. A one-time noble organisation (about 500 years ago), now hi-jacked by our own extreme righties over here because the Cross of St George looks great as a tattoo.

Fidel Castro was never a right wing anything. He was left. Way left. So left that his regime looked very much as it would have if he was that far to the right. But without the flags.

The Castro is dead: long live the (other) Castro!!

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

In a brilliant move, based on solid maffematics, old Chancellor, George Osborne, raised the rate of ‘stamp duty’, the tax you have to pay when you buy a house. Its a basic kind of tax: you’re spending money, we want some. Goes back to Robin Hood days. Its maffia-esque. A deal is being done, by anyone, anywhere, I want a piece. Fair enough. And so George calculated that by raising stamp duty by 5%, he would rake in loads of money to the national coffers.

Because sometimes people live in a deluded and simplistic world in which ‘all things stay the same unless I change them for my benefit’. George failed to realise that, basically, people would just stop buying houses at the same rate that they did before. The tax had scared buyers off, priced them out or made them find ways to avoid the tax. The ex-Chancellor failed to comprehend evolutionary changes. Predators refine techniques, prey speed up, dig holes, climb higher as a consequence.

And thus the housing market, particularly in London, has slumped (relatively) and people aren’t moving home as they did before. So instead of a ‘tax windfall’, there is a £10billion deficit projected over the next 5 years.

Had stamp duty remained at its previous, lower rate, the exchequer would be richer. Its all about greed. And stupidity.

I don’t mind tax. Its kind’a essential. Something Donald Trump would disagree with. But Trump is a selfish and sociopathic individual with no empathy and even less common sense. He sees it as ‘clever’ to pay no taxes. Yet is happy to spend zillions on his up-coming ‘infrastructure’ projects. Where will that money come from if no-one pays taxes because they’re so ‘clever’?

But there are always limits. When tax gets ridiculously high and punitive, people stop paying it. More is sometimes less. When the Labour government put high rate income tax up to 95%, people just moved away. Left the country. With a resultant drop in the tax income. That was clever.

And history repeats. Ok, George did what he did in the main part to counter Labour’s proposal’s for its ‘mansion tax’, but still, you’d kind’a hope that governments would be able to work out projections and scenarios of likely outcomes. They employ enough fucking people to do so.

None of which affects me much personally. Other than in general principle and the fact that all these special taxes are, in essence, taxes on London. They don’t grow houses elsewhere that fetch sufficient premiums to reach the top tax rate. And again; if you keep taxing something, IT WILL GO AWAY. London won’t exactly up sticks and move to Grimsby, but if companies, and their employees, will get a better deal elsewhere, better lifestyle, greater disposable income, then they’ll go. And as London generates 30% of Britain’s tax, that would be good for no-one.

Nuf with the fucking tax, already.

Happy Friday

A xxxx