Andy's Glasses

We love a public inquiry round my way. Its almost England’s biggest industry. We’ve had 3 into the Hillsborough disaster, the last finishing just a few months ago, 30 years after the event. Made a lot of people feel better. Though failed to bring any of the 98 dead back to life. Even lawyers have limits. Even the (guessing) 50 million quid has limits.

We’ve had two Bloody Sunday inquiries. The second lasting about 7 years and becoming the most expensive inquiry ever. Again, it failed to bring back any lives.

And some things are basically, inherently, intuitively wrong. And need looking into. Police shootings, obviously, if there are doubts, and all travesties of justice.

But you have to look at what is to be gained and how much it will cost. That is emphatically NOT putting a monetary value on death or disaster. Its just a natural question. How much will it cost? And WHAT WILL BE GAINED????

I appreciate the value of just ‘knowing’, just ‘understanding’, and vindication and apportionment of blame. But does the end justify the means?

The Child Abuse public inquiry is in a mess. They’ve appointed 3 women to run the thing, and all have gone. There are 155 people involved in this, and they have no leader. Because the last one left this week. Having done, in legal terms, pretty well fuck all, in her year in office. 3 months of which she managed to fritter away back home in New Zealand.

So there’s an understandable issue about her ‘grotesque’ salary. £350,000 a year, plus another £100k for rent. But that misses the point. If you want a top lawyer to run a massive task, they need to be properly remunerated. The problem is the scope of the inquiry. Which is basically: anyone in any walk of life who has ever abused a child, historically, and the extent of culpability of the institutions to which they belong.

That’s big. That’s churches, its schools, its parliament, orphanages, hospitals. Examining the individuals and the institutions themselves. To see if they were negligent, complicit or just stupid.

Oh, and it was 30/40 years ago. So many of the accused have died, all the ‘institutions’ now obviously under completely different management, if they still exist at all. So in terms of ‘prosecution’ its very limited.

Child abuse is the worst thing ever. It must always be taken totally seriously. Convicted paedophiles are untreatable, therefore should be locked up forever (for all I care about them) or castrated, or shot. All of which is too good for them.

But public enquiries do not make it all go away. At very best they simply shift the focus of responsibility a little. At worst they’re just a total waste of time and public money. Investigate and prosecute individuals, however long ago it was; that’s police procedure. But to create a vast and ill-defined public inquiry every ten minutes does not solve any problems. Not in my mind anyway.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

My route home from work never changes. I am commuter ergo I don’t think. Don’t have to. I’m Reggie Perrin. I have a pattern. It never changes. Other than when London Transport deem changes must occur. And then I hate them for the ‘disruption’. To my schedule. To my routine.

A couple of decades ago I abandoned the ‘shortest distance between two points’ approach to getting to the tube station. The walk down Fleet Street and the Strand became ever more clogged, more jammed as entire Norwegian schools abandoned the Arctic Circle for summers on The Aldwych. Street walkers, no, not hookers, I don’t mind them, but London Walking Tour walkers, groups of obese Americans or elderly Japanese following some Lithuanian ‘cockney’ holding up a red umbrella whilst making up a fictional history for St Clement Dane in broken rhyming slang.

Too many people, too many traffic lights, cars, fucking bikes, just too much in the way.

So I now walk the civilised walk. Through the Temple, along the River to the enchanting Embankment Gardens and the station thereby. One set of traffic lights, at the back of the Savoy, where no-one ever goes, other than the hookers (see above) but they come later. Its peaceful, relatively quiet and totally gorgeous.

Last Friday, as I walked past Temple Church, I saw Shami Chakrabarti. Human Rights lawyer and former director of Liberty, the pressure group. I was possibly the last person ever to see her before she became a peer. She’s tiny. Was wearing a little-black-dress, sleeveless, fuck me heels, sweet, great big sunglasses (it was sunny) and she looked very cute. I stopped short of going up to her with the “‘ere; iss you, innit? off the telly?? Shaka whassername, innit??” Not a great line.

And yes, yesterday Shami became Dame Shami. David Cameron named 100 tossers in his ‘honours list’, Jeremy Corbyn named but one; dear Shami. And that one is more controversial than all of Davids Dorks put together.

Mainly because Corbyn had promised not to create any new Labour Lords because he deems the Upper House to be undemocratic. Which it most certainly is. He PROMISED. (The line ‘politician lies’ is never gonna make any front page, is it?) Yet he made Shami a Dame.

Just 5 weeks ago that same Shami presented the findings of her inquiry into anti-semitism in the Labour Party. And she found… none. None whatsoever. Labour Party’s fine under Corbyn; the jews are safe on his watch. Even though Corbyn is, or appears to be, rabidly anti-semitic and whether he is or he isn’t, he has somehow created a culture within his party that has released the inner jew-hater within its members. But Shami said ‘NO!’ Not a trace.

5 weeks later she’s a Dame and Corbyn has gone against everything he ever stood for to give her the honour.

I make no link. No association between these two events. Just the casual observation that: if it looks like shit, and smells like shit, it probably is shit.

Happy shitty Friday

A xxxx

It seems that every day I read in the papers how there’s not enough sex going on in the world. Odd that the world population is rising but maybe that’s some form of immaculate conceiving going on, or test tube babies being manufactured in China. Always China. Everything’s made there.

Twenty-somethings bemoan their lot. “I tried Tindr for a while and met a bunch of boring assholes, sex maniacs and axe murderers”. So they go on 17 other dating ‘apps’ and find the same thing. You hook up, have a boring, three hour dinner watching some ‘start-up’ nerd talking with his mouth full and with at least one eye on his phone the whole time and the sex is awful. Nothing like the porn you can watch for nothing and probably do whilst the nerd is tending his apps during desert.

Maybe there’s another way? Maybe you could, kind’a, speak to someone! Like, in a pub, bar, restaurant, workplace? Like, with words. Whilst looking at them, rather than at your phone? And that way, at least you can eliminate the boring ones, saving the three-hour, 50 quid dinner. You could spend the time more wisely, watching different porn. Or maybe, even, ‘reality porn’. Ok, its fairly soft-core, but out there, in the real world, there are breasts. Lots of them. Thighs. Legs. Muscles. Six packs. Fabulous bespectacled grey-haired old men. Whatever your fantasy might be.

There’s a lot to be said for technology and communication. But in a social context, most of it is pretty bad and bodes ill for the future of humanity. (No statement too profound for this dude.)

10 days til the football season starts. But who’s counting? And tonight West Ham play their first ever game at the (former) Olympic Stadium. Their new home. Opening tonight. The place they stole from the nation and then got the council to pay a ransom on top. They’re playing their Europa League qualifier against a Slovakian/Slovenian (who knows? who cares??) team no-one’s ever heard of. And they’re warning people to ‘allow lots of time’ and also ‘don’t plan on getting home early… or even tonight, possibly’. Because its all new. And along with the glam comes the glitches. The failures. The snagging. And although the Stadium wasn’t converted by Brazilians, there’s still loads that can go wrong. They’ve spent a fortune (probably stole that too) working on the queuing systems, at the ground, for Stratford Station, everywhere.

Just as well Spurs failed their bid for that stadium then. Spurs fans don’t queue well.

Happy Thursday,

A xxxx

I really couldn’t care less if David Cameron wants to give a knighthood to the Lithuanian refugee who washed his ministerial car every thursday. The man did a good job, the car was always shiny. Arise Sir Herkus. And Samantha always looked lovely. Shiny hair, polished nails, lovely dresses. Which totally justifies giving out OBEs and MBEs and CBEs to her entire team of hairdressers, stylists, nail buffers and foot massagers. Fully justified. Though it doesn’t need to be justified by anyone. Its tradition.

Outgoing Prime Ministers get to ‘honour’ all their mates, their helpers, their supporters. They’re allowed to band about ‘gongs’ to all and sundry. To window cleaners and secretaries and political supporters and aromatherapy gurus and fitness trainers. Its what happens.

Where I personally draw the line is at anyone who ever ‘donated’. Either to the party itself or to the ‘remain campaign’. Otherwise it looks like a reward. Like they’ve ‘bought’ the honour with their money. And as the entire ‘honours’ system is totally overblown and stupid anyway, its best to avoid making it any more so by giving dubious awards to billionaires. And that’s all I’m prepared to say about it. Unless I want to say more.

The Olympics start today. Even though the official opening is not til Friday. Rio is the place to be. Particularly if you’re a builder, so you can hopefully finish the stadia, which are in some cases quite some way from ‘ready’. Or if you’re a dope-tester, obviously, or if you’re a health and safety officer as a lot of the work that is finished ain’t very good. As in: “when your taking your run up for the long jump, veer to the left a bit otherwise the track might collapse where the loose bolt is”. There again, pre-olympics are always a bit shambolic. There’s always a ‘BUT ITS NOT FINISHED YET!!!!’ deal otherwise you wouldn’t be sure its the Olympic Games.

But Rio has other issues. The water is full’a shit. But literally so. Sewage is washed into the bays, along with lots of other rubbish, chemicals, detergents, radioactive waste… and that’s where the sailing, rowing and open-water swimming will take place. Add in the ever-present threat of muggings, the Zika virus and the danger from eating way to much beef (I’ve been there, the beef’s wonderful, and much bigger than beefs here) and Rio is where its at.

The contemporary Girl from Ipanema got mugged on her way to hospital with suspected Zika virus, bacterial infection of the gut and diarrhoea.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

When you’re in a hole; stop digging. Sound advice. Heeded by all men (and that’s the inclusive use of ‘men’, not the sexist one, it includes anyone who has a pair of testicles). But no-one ever told Donald Trump. And if they had he wouldn’t have listened. Or, he’d have listened, but only after digging another 18 feet. Because he’s a tosser. And a moron.

A muslim couple stood up at the Democratic conference to tell of their son. An American born muslim who, as an American soldier, was killed in a war (can’t remember which; so many to choose; middle East somewhere). Ergo: said son is an American hero. By any definition. And so the parents were basically pissed of with Donald Trump’s overtly Islamophobic stance. Fair point.

Enter the Trumpster who, basically, mocked the couple, made a big issue that the man had done all the talking, probably because ‘the woman wasn’t allowed to’. Good work, Don.

So the couple laid into the Presidential wannabe, as they rightly should. To which Trump moaned that he was being ‘attacked viciously’ by them. Combed-over-cry-baby-tosser. This is Donald Trump, the man who attacked, personally, professionally, nastily, every man, woman and political opponent he met en route to his candidacy. The man who called women ugly, who slagged off the wives of his opponents, questioned their American-ness and insulted virtually all of America. Yet to ask questions of him provokes the inner-cry-baby. Mainly because he is not a great thinker. He can’t counter an argument, he can only get nasty and rude.

WHY CAN AMERICANS NOT SEE WHAT KIND OF A MAN THEY ARE SERIOUSLY THINKING OF MAKING THEIR PRESIDENT?????

Whilst on the other side of the world, the Russian bit, Putin is a very angry man. Someone shot down one of his helicopters in Syria. And that helicopter was in Aleppo to ‘deliver humanitarian aid’. And Santa Claus is not only real but a transgender hermaphrodite, the tooth fairy has been filmed tooth fairying in Bolton and Leicester can win the Champions League.

Russia don’t deliver aid. They deliver bombs. And lots of them. Its so complicated out there that I’m really not sure who are the ‘good guys’, if there are any. But one things for sure: it ain’t the Russians. Who have been bombing the shit out of Aleppo for 6 months. Civilians, rebels, their bombs aren’t capable of differentiating and they don’t really care one way or another. The rebels are anti-Assad, who is a very bad man, but has held stability there, the Russians love Assad, thus hate the rebels. None of which has anything to with ISIS, upon whom the full might of the Russian military was supposed to fall, but that never really happened. The Americans are bombing ISIS, supposedly with Russian support, even though they’re bombing somewhere completely different. What a mess. What a lot of bombs.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Must have been about 12 years ago. We were on holiday that summer in Florida; and we went out for dinner. Which is the same as going out for dinner anywhere else in the world, except much earlier. You eat by 5 because last orders are at 6 and the places closes at 7. Seems odd but with a state-average age of 92 you can almost understand it.

We ordered drinks. Beer for me. I like beer. Mel likes brightly coloured concoctions in long glasses filled with ice and little plastic toys. And so ordered a ‘sex on the beach’ or a ‘banana, peach and peppermint daquiri’ or something along those lines. Chocolate mojito, whatever. She tasted it, said the usual ‘oh, that’s lovely’ and we all had a sip to confirm. When the straw (one of the 9 that came with the drink) was in Rachie (then about 13 years old)’s mouth the waiter started screaming. But like, really screaming.

“WE COULD LOSE OUR LICENSE!!!!! SHE’S A CHILD!!!!! CAN’T DO THATTTTT!!!!! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?????!!!!!” kind’a along those lines. He would have called me a motherfucka or some other Americanism but, along with ‘underage drinking’, swearing with children present, or ‘cussin’ as they call it in the South, is probably illegal too.

And you have to admire the Americans. No, really, you do. They have this ‘no means NO’ attitude to things. There’s no flexibility, no ambiguity, no room for wriggle. Its not like Rachie was on the floor with a bottle of vodka in one hand, her mother’s knickerbocker-glory flavoured margerita in the other singing football songs. That came a little later in her life. She just took a sip, to taste.

Because our kids were never strangers to alcohol. With a mother like theirs that would have been impossible.But I place no blame. The kids were little we gave them sips of wine. They grew up, they tasted our drinks. It was never VERBOTEN!!! it was never a deal, big or otherwise, its just a drink. And for them, I hope, it simply de-mystified the whole booze thing. It wasn’t to be, when they reached that inevitable milestone, something illicit and unknown and therefore more likely to become a problem. It was no big deal. Like they do in Europe.

So Liz Hurley goes to a party with her 14 year-old son. Damian, if you’re interested, the kid with the awesome MILF if you’re not. They drank champagne on the lawn of some manor house or other and ‘Hello!’ did what they do best; filmed vacuous people being vacuous.

And then they edited out the glass from the kid’s hand. Photoshopped. Gone. Never there. Just looks like any other kid but with a deformed hand. Because although its no crime to drink in private whilst ‘underage’, it is apparently, and stupidly, ‘against medical advice’. Like they know anything. So Hello! did what it does best; act like a bunch of tossers.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Happy Anniversary to the England World Cup winning team of 1966. 50 years ago yesterday. Or, as someone else said to me yesterday: we’re celebrating the fact that we have won nothing for 50 years. Glass half full, half empty, ya take your choice.

But I read a fact today that is much more telling. In these 50 years, in ‘major competitions’ (World Cups, European Championships), England have won, in all the knockout stages combined (I make that 25 tournaments) a total of six matches.

Do the Germans celebrate how many years since they first won a world cup? They don’t care. They’ve won loads. Brazilians are too busy designing new bikini bottoms to worry about the first, second, third world cup wins. Too many. Its a work in progress. Football is dynamic. It moves on. Its all about the NEXT World Cup. You don’t, as England appear to have done, just give up when you win it for fear of being disrespectful to the legends who won it for us. And legends they are. But they shouldn’t be. We should have had new legends from the 80s, from the noughties, who are also winners. And then the stars of Bobby Charlton, of Geoff Hurst, Roger Hunt et al, would be allowed to fade. With dignity.

Don’t get me wrong. I love those guys. Every one of them. Ray Wilson, George Cohen, Nobby Stiles. They’ll always have a place in my heart. It greatly upset me to learn that Martin Peters has alzheimers. As have Wilson and Stiles too. Peters always was ’10 years ahead of his time’ and this proves it.

And as I watched Bobby Charlton on one of the hundreds of 1966 programmes on tv yesterday, talking about Bobby Moore (the 2 best players this nation ever produced, by some way) it made me emotional, and it made me sad. Let these guys retire already. Its been long enough. Time to pass the baton onto the next ‘winners’. We’ve heard all the stories. ALL of them. We know how good Bobby Moore was. That Geoff Hurst was trying to put the ball into row Z when he ‘accidentally’ scored the final goal. That Nobby Stiles took Eusebio completely out of the game in the semi-final even though Jackie Charlton gave away the most stupid handball in the entire history of the game. Its time to move on.

They think its all over,

It SHOULD BE BY NOW

Happy Anniversary

A xxxx

Nuclear power is the thing. A big thing. A powerful thing. Unquestionably the thing of the future. Coal runs out and makes a mess. Gas runs out, eventually, and is carbon-unfriendly. The sun don’t shine enough to be viable and windfarms are all well and good but simply don’t produce sufficient power for half time during the the FA cup final when 26 million kettles get turned on simultaneously.

The best way to conserve electricity is to stop people filling up their cars with the stuff. Its a waste. All those hybrids getting plugged in to avoid paying the congestion charge takes power away from all those machines in hospitals the keep people alive!!! (Its very ‘of the moment’ to indicate any benefit against its impact to the NHS or health. OMG!!! people think, if I charge my stupid Renault Leaf someone in St Thomas’s loses his respirator!!! I’m going out to buy a new car that runs on… petrol, which won’t be murdering sick patients).

So we’ll go nuclear. The good things: its relatively cheap; a few pounds of radioactive stuff will last for 37 million years. The sun is a nuclear power plant and that hasn’t run out yet. Its clean; you’re not burning anything. Its very efficient, if done properly.

Bad things: people are inherently scared of anything involving the words ‘nuclear’ or ‘radioactive’, with pretty good reason. ‘Accidents’ on a nuclear scale tend to be a bit more catastrophic than in conventional power plants. Like the destruction of 150 square miles of neighbouring everything plus the added bonus of nuclear fallout. Chernobyl, Sellafield, hmmmm… And its rather costly to set up a nuclear plant. Particularly if the French are involved.

So Hinckley Point. Our ‘nuclear plant of the future!’ As it was hailed 9 years ago when the plan was conceived. Nine fucking years of French bureaucracy-bollocks waiting for an offer so financially punitive for us (but only for the first TEN YEARS) that it will be probably cheaper and more efficient just to burn migrants for our power. I’m just sayin’.

Furthermore, the technology for Hinckley is completely untested anywhere in the world. You really wouldn’t wanna be in that part of England for the ‘snagging’ process.

There is new nuclear technology used in Japan that is neater, safer, more proven. Didn’t exist when Hinckley started. So why use something immediately outdated? And if getting ‘into bed’ with the French isn’t bad enough (and it really is bad enough all by itself) then why not add the Chinese into the mix too? Let them take a third share and grab what little financial opportunities may present themselves in decades to come.

The plan is flawed. The French are even more flawed. Theresa May is right to bale us out. I hope.

Happy saturday

A xxxx

Two weeks tomorrow the new football season starts. Wow. Where’d the summer go? As usual, in a continual saga of clouds, sharp showers (they only became ‘sharp’ in 2014 and haven’t blunted yet) with the odd day yielding 32 degrees and 800% humidity. The perfect day for tube travel. Never mind, football, our ‘winter game’ is returning, with all the joy and excitement it brings. Though its really now our ‘winter, spring and autumn game, with a bit of summer too’. And I’m not sure how wintery its gonna be in Qatar in July but I suspect some way short of the ‘full arctic experience’.

So they’re playing ‘friendlies’. Good to do during August because the transfer window’s still open and you can see what’s missing. Managers earmark their preferred players and the owners and financial people go negotiate for a ‘deal’.

Like Paul Pogba. Euro failure but Manchester United want him desperately. So desperately that they’ll pay over £100 million for him. Even though they gave him away for nothing a few years ago. The price was originally less to pry him out of Juventus, then the pound suffered the Brexit crisis and the 85 mil became over a hundred.

So best buy your players from English clubs, then you don’t suffer the exchange rate hit. You can buy John Stones, the (very so-so) England defender from Everton. In pounds. But if you’re Manchester City he’ll cost an eye-watering 50 mil. Last summer he’d have been 20 mil. Maybe. But with the new tv deal payout arriving at clubs this year, its silly season for player prices. Because clubs now have much more money. And Manchester City weren’t exactly ‘short’ before that windfall.

If that deal goes through, Barnsley will immediately net 7.5 million quid. Barnsley. That’s more than they normally earn in 9 seasons. They can stop darning old socks and buy some new ones. Its part of an old ‘sell-on’ agreement from when Stones went to Everton from there. Who said that the 5 billion pound tv deal for the Premiership doesn’t ‘filter down’ to the League??

This season will be defined by the three new managers who are elevated (in their own minds, at least) to the status of gods. Morinho, the Unstable One, Conte, the Unknown One and Guardiola, the Nice One. Though the words ‘nice’ and ‘Manchester City’ share very few sentences together.

The chances of Samir Nasri featuring for City this season are slim. Unlike Nasri himself who apparently has some issues of a ‘slightly overweight’ nature. The obnoxious ex-Gooner has eaten a lot of pies this summer and is a fucking porker. According to reports. Guardiola has exacting fitness, and fatness, standards and Nasri failed at the first hurdle. In fact he ate the first hurdle.

15 days to go.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

In the Vietnam war, in the 60s, American soldiers were given steroids and amphetamines to enhance their battle performance. Greater strength, longer endurance, less tiredness. Some drugs do that. That’s why they’re called ‘performance enhancing’ and became the mainstay of the athletics industry since then. In ever less-detectable forms. Steroids for strength and muscle, amphetamines for energy; how can you go wrong with that? The rest of the drugs they took, in massive, vast, industrial quantities during that awful war, they did voluntarily. The heroin, the cocaine, entire forests of cannabis. That’s what happens when you go to war in a jungle. Drugs just grow wild.

But the steroid/amphetamine grounding is kind’a logical for soldiers doing physical exertion for ridiculously long stretches and trying to stay sharp, focussed and energised.

However, due to this pharmacological paradigm being embraced by many athletes, gym-heads and virtually every Russian who ever donned a pair of running shoes, there have been found to be associated problems. Steroid psychosis is a big one. You build someone up into a be-muscled mega-god, then he goes nutty and runs wild. The metaphor used in ‘The Hulk’. Be careful what you wish for. Amphetamines are great. Until you actually do need to sleep, then you have to end up taking other shit to force slumber. Drugs to overcome the drugs. The old lady who swallowed the fly.

So now they’ve come up with a new kind of ‘drug’. Something more appropriate in the post-Pokemon world. Something delightfully digital.

Its a headset that looks like the same ones all those tossers wear on the street so they’re never not blue-toothed from Facebook, but in fact the rubber pads that hold them in place send electric pulses into the brain (Facebook types, contrary to their appearance and actions, do in fact have a rudimentary kind of brain) which stimulate muscle action. Its called ‘neuropriming’ and they’ve found that soldiers (in America where its tested; you wouldn’t wanna try it on real people, just in case) developed up to 12% extra strength using the device. Wearers develop ‘more precise, more co-ordinated, more explosive movement’. Brilliant for soldiers. Hmmmmm, brilliant for everyone. Especially athletes.

Upon whom, its already being tested.

Is this cheating? How long before (let’s say) the Russians develop an incy-teensy version powered by a Tesla battery, that sits inside the ear/under the skin? Will it be banned? Its not a drug. Its a… a thing.

And I want one. Just for hauling myself out of bed in the morning, or watching a particularly strenuous tv show.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx