Andy's Glasses

I hate to keep banging on about politics, but…

Its kind’a all there is. And its big. Massive. So big and so massive that even Wales beating Northern Ireland in the Euros yesterday takes the back pages to the total fucking mess that is ‘Europe: the aftermath’. The analysis, the post-mortems, the political flack. Which is actually colossal.

And here’s the problem. We’ve voted (well, YOU have) to leave Europe. On two promises. Firstly that ‘Europe costs us 350 million pounds a week!!!!! and that money can instead go to the health service’. Except that figure was shown to be wrong and a joke, randomly plucked from somewhere in the inside of Boris Johnson’s head, just before his bike experiences and below his Prime Ministerial aspirations. Then, immediately after their victory, it was stated that actually, in reality, there won’t be any money from the EU ‘savings’ for health service at all. Neither 350 million nor 173 million a week. Not even tuppence a week. Nothing.

The other issue was immigration. Though this too was a myth and a lie. Farage showing Lybians entering Slovakia my have actualised the worst fears of many, but immigration from outside Europe is nothing to do with our membership of the EU. Never was. Immigration from EU countries is the EU thing, and unlimited. Ahhhh, we’ll put a stop to that then!!!! Actually, it’ll probably be the first item on the table when we go with our begging bowl to sort out our new, outsider, trade deal. Oui, they will say, you can ‘ave ze trade deal, but you must allow Europeans into your country, as is was before. Otherwise, sell your Queen’s 90th birthday mugs somewhere else.

Cameron’s gone. And now Corbyn has lost 4 cabinet ministers in the last 24 hours. So far. They want the tosser gone for his tragic mismanagement of the Labour voters. So we’ll have no Prime Minister and no leader of the opposition. So who gets to be Moses and lead us out of the promised land?

We are in a national disaster. We are a national disaster. This referendum was the biggest mistake since Donald Trump’s midwife didn’t just flush him down the loo.

Happy Sunday. Though I don’t know what there is to be happy about.

A xxxx

at least they didn’t vote us out of the football. We’re out of Europe but not the European finals.

The City was like a morgue yesterday. Like a funeral. Awful. Everyone devastated, everyone a bit pessimistic about the future. What future? they seemed to say.

Britain is now divided into 2. We have London and Scotland, the most bizarre coupling as Scotland’s main reason for its own attempted ‘leave’ was down to its anger at being controlled by ‘Westminster’. But ‘Scotlond’ as its already been termed, are both massively ‘in’. Other than Wayne, of course, who wears his British bulldog t-shirt adorned with UKIP badges, with pride. Nothing to do with today’s ‘pride’; that’s different.

And then we have ‘the rest and the Welsh’, in no particular order. The ‘outers’. And as Wales are one of the few nations to be a ‘net earner’ from the EU, its rather a strange move on the part of our neighbours to the west.

I would further divide things (well everyone else is being and has been rabidly ‘divisive’, why not me?) into the old and the young. The former wanting out, the younger massively ‘in’.

As of last night someone came up with a new slant. That victory (if it can be so viewed) was one for ‘normal people’ over ‘globalisation and corporate culture’. Funny that in the combined 97,384 hours of endless fucking rhetoric pre-referendum, no-one thought to make mention of such a fictitious issue. Yet within 10 minutes of the result, they’re all banging on about it.

Oh well, we beat Australia at rugby. Possibly our new best mates now that Europe hates us and America has declared its intention to make life very difficult for trading purposes. So if you want to order a new chevy truck, do it now. Or… what else does America make? Oh yeah, guns. Loads and loads of guns. Anyway, as that nation is swapping lame-duck Obama for stupid-fuck Trump in the near future, they have other things to worry about.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

WE ARE OUT!!!!

We are no longer part of ‘Europe’. We are now applying to become the world’s smallest independent continent, on its own, and nothing whatsoever to do with those smelly garlic eating nations which just happen, by mere quirk of geography, to be much nearer to where I live than is Glasgow.

The obvious irony, the final blow, the coup de gras, is that to extricate ourselves from those foreign nations, we basically need to overcome 17 miles of red tape and 2 years of negotiations and essentially, we need to get permission from the EU to leave.

Then we can move on. Assuming by that point that the pound is worth more than half a Euro, or a US quarter.

And the first thing we need to do, once Article 50 of the Lisbon Convention (nothing even vaguely bureaucratic about that very title, is there?) is get rid of all the French. Well, the men at least. Turf ’em out. Send ’em back. There’s too many here and they contribute nothing more than a silly accent and a nasty attitude and we’ve got the Scots for that. Who will probably leave the UK to join the Germans anyway.

But here’s a first: this is LIVE (well, it was when I wrote it); David Cameron has announced his resignation. Holy shi-i-i-i-ttt. Had to happen. He picked the wrong side and his position became impossible. He’s out by October.

The magnitude of the result was interesting. 48% to 52%. An exact reflection of the actual feeling in most people’s minds. I was actually 52% stay and 48% leave but I’m a Londoner. We were innies. We’re good at… errr… staying in things. Hmmm.

This is a very exciting time in UK politics. Unlike the pre-referendum shit which got very boring and stupid very quickly. Oddly the most profound move in the entire campaign was Nigel Farage’s ‘faux pas’ just last weekend. When he adorned a bus with a picture of a boatload of Libyan refugees landing in Slovakia. (Don’t quote me on the exact locations there, but you know the picture). Because although it was a morally repellant thing to do, a terrible image that was irrelevant, for many people it showed their worst inner fears. Brought out their latent xenophobe.

I voted in, I can keep my moral high ground whatever the fuck happens next.

Wacky Friday

A xxxx

The last time Roy Keane had his hands round someone’s throat he finished the job, strangled the bastard, then killed the wife, three kids and Alfie, the Labradoodle. Then he ate them. Raw. Yet this was a genuine ’embrace’ with Ireland manager Martin O’Neill, having just witnessed their team’s quite amazing victory over Italy last night, which saw Ireland through to the knockout stages for the first time. Roy had tears in his eyes, the emotion profound. Ahhhhh, even fucking psychopaths can get all emotional; niiiiice.

I have voted. Done it. No point messing around. And I’ve decided we need to stay in. For the future. For the past. I’m so overloaded with Europe-bollocks right now that even in the car on the way to the polling station I was still a bit undecided. And I do appreciate that if we leave, then Boris will become President (he’ll disband the monarchy), Farage will be head of his secret police, and they’ll find me and either deport me to Syria or put me in a gulag in Shrewsbury.
I’M JUST GLAD ITS OVER. CAN WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE NOW, PER-LEASE.

Just before bed last night, I was channel-flicking, as ya do, and watched my second instalment (10 minutes; could take no more) of Top Gear. Have you seen what they’ve done to that once great programme. They should just call it ‘high five’ and be done. Never seen so much hand slapping and man-hugging in one place. Other than the football. But scoring a goal in a international football game in a massive tournament is, I feel, slightly more worthy of celebration than simply walking into a room full of people. I may be wrong on that.

The show is horrible. Its taken all the best bits of the show and turned them into pantomime. Its lowered the whole thing from subtle and wry to custard pies and ‘OH YES HE DID!!!!!’ Its bollocks. Total bollocks. Chris Evans makes up for any lack of talent by shouting louder. So he shouts a lot. Some German tart learned her sense of humour by reading Mein Kampf at school. Really hilarious. And Matt LeBlanc is for some reason more acceptable in such a horrible and contrived environment.

Nice to know what my license fee buys.

Happy Polling Day

A xxxx

Scumbag Ben Butler was jailed yesterday, for murdering his own daughter. Who was just 6. This tragedy is even more profound by virtue that Butler should actually still be in jail for abusing the same child in 2009. But he (obviously) wasn’t. They not only released him but exonerated him of all crimes which gave him a massive power. That during his constant visits to hospitals with poor little Ellie after yet another ‘accident’, he became almost untouchable by the authorities.

He’s a motherfucker of the first order. No doubt about that.

But the real criminals here are the ‘experts’. Who are the bastard second cousins to statisticians for providing the results that are required by those paying their excessive bill, regardless of any ‘facts’ that may indicate otherwise.

Butler’s first offence was ‘baby-shaking’. He’d shaken tiny baby Ellie so hard she’d haemorrhaged in the brain. Ah! said the authorities in 2009, that’s yet another case of ‘baby-shaken-sydrome’ that’s really big in American courts, brain bleed = shaken baby. Its incontrovertible. Experts hath spoken!!!

A couple of years later, another group of experts decided that there are loads of ways babies can bleed in the head. Thus a few haemorrhages here or there proves NOTHING. Better appeal Butler’s case and get him released. Not because Ellie, already a veteran of hospital services for burns, bleeds, fractures at the age of 2, would be safe, but because he may not have shaken her on that one occasion. Its not ‘conclusive’.

Ben Butler met Ellie’s mum (who whilst not proven to be complicit in the murder, certainly was so in the attempted cover-up) in March 2008. Ellie was born in that December. I think she was actually conceived in the car park behind the outside toilets on their first drunken scummy meeting. I have no evidence for this statement. But could probably find half a dozen ‘experts’ and statisticians who could ‘prove’ that to be the case. If the price was right.

Meanwhile, over in Las Vegas, a young British man with Aspergers is facing jail-time for attempting to kill Donald Trump. How is that a crime? They should put him on the Democratic ticket. Give him a Nobel Prize for Peace.

His only crime was that his weapon of choice, doh, a gun, was to be stolen from a police officer’s hip. Like they’re kind’a ‘open’ and fall out all the time and just easily grabbable. He must be the only man in America who didn’t have a gun. What; they’d closed all the pawn shops in Vegas? Give the man another chance, that’s what I say, and I’ll buy him the gun.

Happy unjust Wednesday

A xxxx

Ok, we’re in a bit of trouble. We played Slovakia. Top player: Martin Skrtel, the tattooed Liverpool blood-sucking zombie. They have one other ‘star’ but as he wears a Mohican hair-do we can discount him. The game went pretty much according to plan, with England bossing it totally. But the plan was, probably, that goals would have been involved in the 87% possession, 29 attempts on goal and all other statistical nonsense that, in hindsight, are totally irrelevant. Because we didn’t win. Couldn’t score. The Slovaks proved to be somewhat, as its known, ‘resilient’. Otherwise known as being a bunch of neo-nazi (probably) bus-parkers.

But that’s a tactic. A very good one, as it proved on the night. Their goalie was fantastic, their defenders throwing themselves in front of everything. The nearest miss we had (and there were many) was that Skrtel didn’t actually strain his groin when lunging for a block, as it appeared, but sadly recovered to finish the match.

Eric Dier was magnificent and majestic and, in search of alliterative inspiration, mutherfuckingly brilliant. Nathaniel Clyne was superb on the right, by miles our biggest threat. But the others? Tossers, the lot of them. Barn door, 3 yards, you do the rest.

So now we wait til Wednesday when the outcome will be realised. Who we play in the ’round of 16′. And as all four teams can qualify, we have no idea. Could be Portugal, could be Iceland, even Hungary or Austria. We’ll play a better team, position-wise than Wales. Because they actually won our group. Therefore get an easier tie. That’s life in the Euro.

But Wales deserve it. They played 3 shit teams and beat 2 of them. Job done. And faced with a threatless (the team, certainly not the fans) Russia last night, they breezed past them 3-0. I should’a watched that one. And claimed Welshness on the grounds that my bridge teacher is Welsh, thus by association…

Enough football. No really, its enough. Because the referendum is on Thursday. And if nothing else (and there really is nothing else of a positive nature) this has now proven, if there was any doubt, about the sheer ridiculousness of statistical analysis. As yesterday the ‘Remains’ claimed that if we leave Europe it will cost us the loss of 35,000 jobs. And the ‘Leavers’ claimed that if we leave Europe we will benefit by 35,000 additional jobs. Doubtless both sides could produce ‘proof’ from economic ‘facts’ and ‘data’ to prove their case.

And they are therefore, all tossers. Oh, and some of them must be liars.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I’m glad I have a beard. Even though I’m not in Afghanistan. Because over there they have an expression: bacha bareesh, which means ‘boys without beards’. Which in turn means that they’re pre-pubescent. Not that they choose to be clean-shaven, but that they simply aren’t old enough to shave yet. Maybe its to differentiate them from the older women of that nation, most of whom do have beards. But in the seriously fucked up, screwy world of the Taliban, these boys are great fun. There’s even a saying over there: women are for child-rearing, boys are for pleasure. No irony then that both homosexuality and paedophilia are strictly forbidden under the strict Islamic rule. Because these poor kids, their version of rent boys, are a perfectly acceptable part of Afghan culture. Go figure.

All I know is; despite the constant protestations from the females in my immediate family: THE BEARD STAYS! Otherwise I shave it off, the next thing, I’m on a plane to Kabul, nooooooo…

Over in Europe, the football goes on. And on. And on. In last night’s ‘thrilling’ battle of the pickpockets, Albania beat Romania 1-0. And the question on everyone’s lips is: ‘who gives a shit?’

The competition started with 24 teams. The finalists. Two weeks in and countless group games later, we’ll soon know which teams qualify for the knockout stages! But of those 24, sixteen qualify. So we’ve endured two weeks of Slovaks and Ukrainians and Albanians and virtually everyone is going through. Its the very opposite of ‘excitement’. It is ‘dull-ment’. And you can bet its all about tv. The more matches that are on the more the tv companies have to pay for the rights. Even though I can’t imagine Albania vs Romania taking many viewers away from Downton Abbey. How many adverts for beer and online gambling does any nation need?

England play their last group game tonight. Against those very Slovaks that I really don’t like. I don’t like any of the East Europeans, they’re all racists and anti-semites and vile thugs. All of them.

And I’m bored with the dramatic headlines about England. Will we get through? Albania will fucking get through, if England don’t we really don’t deserve to even be there. Wales should hopefully get through too but I really can’t be bothered to work out the infinite number of possibilities hinging on tonight’s results.

Come on England!!!! ish…

Happy wet, rainy Monday

A xxxx

just 4 days to go til the referendum. Or, as its now known by everyone outside of Westminster: the Fucking Referendum.

Because we never wanted it. We never asked for it. But we have it. Due to a momentary Farage-panic by David Cameron. And everyone is now asking “how divisive will this be for the nation???” “Will we ever get over it???”

Yes we will. Oddly, the referendum is not in any way divisive among the population. Mentally unstable right-winger murderers aside. We talk about it, we discuss it, it is now the standard dinner party question: ‘In or out?’

And it never gets heated, it never gets nasty, its just opinions and speculation. And most people really don’t care that strongly.

So unlike the Scottish referendum which indeed divided a nation completely, even though it was only Scotland, we will get over it. In fact we’re over it already.

The politicians though, in particular the Conservative Party, will not get over it. It has become a nasty, yes divisive, slag-fest of anger, passion and misplaced and overblown exaggeration on both sides. Consequently, they all hate each other, and we couldn’t give a shit. Either about their fictitious arguments and doomsday scenarios, nor about the fact that the Government is doomed. On Friday it will have to be rebuilt. Completely.

Never mind, we won the rugby in Australia, which is as brilliant as it is unique, and we can all look forward to Romania vs Albania in the football tonight. Wow. Doesn’t get much bigger than that.

Arrived home last night just after midnight. And, as usual, spent the entire return process swearing that I’ll never travel Easyjet again, and never use Gatwick airport again. Til next time, at least.

Happy homecoming Sunday

A xxxx

Coming home tonight. Bummer. Leaving the peace, quiet, sunshine and delightfulness of blue-skyed, beautiful Mykonos for… for… for frikkin’ Gatwick. Asshole of the world. But there ya go.

And although ‘London’s’ least favourite airport may be the asshole of the world, its not the only contender for the prize. Oh no. There are soooooooo many candidates. Not based on race, religion, gender, transgender nor political affiliation. Not even about football team supported nor the tendency to sit in the outside lane driving at 35 in a 50 speed limit. No there are assholes everywhere.

Its just that at this specific, precise moment in time, its the right wing extremists that seem to be tipping the balance in their favour on the scale of world asshole claims.

The killer of Jo Cox had some kind of right wing something. He had affiliated to both American and South African extremist organisations, but like, back in 2003, 2008. Maybe he’d been reborn as a jihadi? A Jew for Jesus? A communist? Who knows, but he’s tainted by his right winginess, as he should be.

And then there’s all the trouble at the Euro football. All in the cause of ‘nationalism’. First the Russian ‘ultras’ attack the poor, innocent(ish) England fans. All the Russians are affiliates of right wing, racist organisations who supply swastika tattoos and black balaclavas with every membership application.

Last night was the turn of the Croatians. Not happy with being 2-0 up against the Checks, their fans decided that what their team needed was some help from a bunch of neanderthal neo-nazis in the stands. Who answered the (silent) call with flares and violence.

What the world needs is to rid itself of right wingism altogether. Then it would be happy again. Ok, and left wingism. And probably centrism too. Right; abolish the entire political spectrum, grow your own food, live in a tent in Wilshire, hug trees, worship the weather. Back to basics. Like they do in Wales.

Happy un-nationalistic Saturday

A xxxx

Went down to the beach bar to watch the football yesterday. Biggest day in English football since… the last biggest day in English football. As we never really win anything, every match becomes its own ‘biggest’ thing by default. Though safe to say it probably was Wales’s biggest day in football for over half a century.

And unlike any European beach bar anywhere else in the continent, this one was a sober affair. Ok, Tory-boy and I dutifully drank our beers and shouted a bit at the screen, its in the contract. But there were, approximately 6 people actually bothered about the match sufficiently to look. What were we to do? Who could we heckle? Abuse? Insult? Hurl chairs and bottles at?? Then I realised that its not because the Greeks don’t like football, we know they do. And the others at the bar; Russians, French, Germans, Americans, Italians, weren’t watching because Mykonos is an island famous for its gayness. And gays don’t do football. Its in the rule book. Whilst straight kids did extra football practice, the gay ones were doing a voluntary course in interior design. And you can’t hurl chairs and bottles at gays because that’s homophobic. And they’d only re-cover the chairs with something more Mediterranean-appropriate and put scented candles in the bottles anyway.

I’m not the biggest England fan in the world. Otherwise instead of being on a beach in Mykonos I’d be in a hospital in Marseilles recovering. But unlike England teams of the last 10 years, I kind’a like this one. Lots of Spurs players and no-one really obnoxious other than Rooney but I’m forgiving him for his past sins. Slowly. So an England win could only be a good thing. But a Welsh win would also have been good because Wales are Gareth Bale. And even though he’s recently descended in the inevitable pre-match Anglophobic bollocks, I still just love watching him play. If he was a bit more beautiful I’m sure the gay guys would have watched it too, but alas you can’t have everything in life.

Tragedy about Jo Cox, total tragedy. Even ultra-left Corbinite Hamas-lovers don’t deserve that. Interestingly though, the murderer was mentally unbalanced. No surprise there given the sheer brutality of the attack. What was really unusual was that he had a gun. If 5% (out’a no-where, just a speculative number) of any population is mentally unstable, would you want them armed, as they would, quite legally be, in America? Hmmmm…

RIP Jo Cox. What a horror for her lovely, young family.

Happy but sad Friday

A xxxx