Andy's Glasses

Who wants another runway at Heathrow? I do. I want my own one so I don’t get delayed because some slack pilot has ‘missed his slot’, because he’s got a hangover and turned off his alarm. But in reality, we ALL need a new runway. 2 is just not enough. And it isn’t for a true international ‘hub’, which Heathrow is. The airport currently handles up to 200,000 flights a year and that is just not enough. Because if Heathrow is more successful, England is more successful. Although, obviously, Spain does better because they own our major airport now. Well, with the Qataris, who chose to invest when they weren’t harbouring Hamas leaders. Probably used the money which we gave Gaza through UNWRA but which never made it to the Gazan people. Anyway, more people coming in means more people spending money here. Unless those people arrive by boat, because they don’t have any cash left. And accessibility makes it that overseas businesses will choose to invest here. Making Heathrow even more important. More runways, more flights, more money. Simple.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, appreciates this in her quest for ‘growth’. Even though she lacks the sense to know that taxing businesses punitively will only create ‘growth’ in unemployment. But she met up with a lot of ‘big boys’ in Davos last week and she was impressing them with her ‘big plans’. Part of which, she decided, is a third runway at Heathrow.

The first problem is this.

Ed Miliband.

The man incapable of eating a sandwich without humiliating himself has become ‘Mr Carbon Neutral’ for the entire country, if not the entire planet. And increasing the number of aircraft taking off in Hounslow will produce such an excess of carbon that all the electric cars we can have in our driveway won’t be able to make up for it. And the fact that Miliband is an abject tosser does not necessarily mean that there will not be conflict of interest in our government and between departments.

The second problem is: where ya gonna put the third runway? You can see on the map the present 2. Long things running across the site, one ‘north’ one ‘south’. So where you going to put number 3? They’re 2 miles long. And in between is the terminals, so you can’t put one there. Which means you can either build vertical take-off planes or you need another two mile stretch, which will involve destroying part of the neighbourhood adjacent to the airport. That’s fine by me, I don’t live there. But there will be NIMBYism going on. And who can blame them.

Or you could build ‘Heathrow’s 3rd runway’ in Yorkshire. Plenty of room up there. And you’d get on a ‘train’ at Terminal 5, much like you do now, and it would take you straight to the gate.

Please arrive at the airport 7 hours before your departure time.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Winning isn’t everything, but losing isn’t anything. Isn’t that what they say? Oh, well, its what I say. Pretty much every week at the moment, just after they announce the football scores. But not on Thursday night!! No! It was all about the sweet smell of victory, the joy of the result, the total exhilaration of… of hanging on til the final whistle even though its all going to shit and you’re just a shadow of the team who came on 90 minutes ago. And about praying. Lots of praying. Which worked.

Because this was a lacklustre, underperforming, lower-table shit team of second-bests, has-beens, yet-to-be’s and third-rankers. And so was Hoffenheim. Who lost to Bayern 5-nil last weekend, just to prove their credentials before this vital Europa League match. Yet still, Spurs managed to make ‘a walk in the park’ look like ‘climbing Everest on a wheelchair laden with weights wearing a blindfold’. It’s a skill. We flew to an early 2-nil lead and then… and then…

But heh, we won. 3-2 is a win. As long as our number is bigger than their number, we win. If only someone would explain that to Manuel Arteta.

Equally as amazing, Manchester United won a game too! Who’d’a thought they could do that. Because, like Spurs, they’ve… struggled this season terribly. Changing the manager hasn’t done much to improve that either. But they won. In Europe. Where, as for Spurs, it looks nice in the next day’s newspaper but it doesn’t help us win the league over here, where it counts.

Arsenal had a convincing win in this week’s Euro fixtures, Liverpool won, just not quite so convincingly, and Manchester City were winning but then didn’t. Which was definitely the most pleasing result of the week as City squandered a 2-nil lead at Paris St Germain and lost 4-2. It was worth the price of admission just to see Phil Foden look that crestfallen at the whistle.

But football’s not all about schadenfreude, it’s also about… errrr… well, it’s about wallowing in the misfortunes of others, as well. But only if you don’t have anything left hope for in your own team.

And yet we have riches. We are 1-nil up against Liverpool in the Carabao cup semi-final. We look like we’re qualifying for the knockout stages of the Europa League of not quite so greats as the other thing. And we’re playing Leicester tomorrow. Lower league rubbish. Even lower than us. Not by much, but should be enough. And as we’ve lost to most of the bottom, relegation-battling teams already, it’s about time we beat one.

Tomorrow’s game is immense. Even more massive than the ones we play every other week. I’ve decided to deploy Joey. Just in case we’re struggling. He’s there. And ready. And dangerous.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Axel Rudakubana has been in the papers a lot lately. Because at age 17 he murdered three gorgeous little girls. For the simple reason that… He could? That he wanted to? That he’s a murderous psychopath with no idea about the value of life? Anyway, who knows? Why he murdered them, and injured 8 others in a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport will never be known. Other than to assume, with a degree of confidence, that ‘this geezer is not normal’. Today he gets sentenced. And there are times when even a devout pacifist like me, a preservation-of-life-ist like me, would like to see him hang. After some really nasty torture.

Ok, that probably won’t happen. Murdering 3 people is always a crime. But murdering 3 kids is so much worse. And it shouldn’t be. Yet it is.

So what if he’d murdered 3 other people? How about really useless people? Like if he’d murdered 3 people working for ‘Prevent’? The organisation which was aware of his fascination with murder, his acquisition of knives and his often voiced threats to use them? And yet, because prevent are ‘anti-terrorist’ and Axel showed no ‘ideology’ whatsoever, they just didn’t bother taking any further action. The absolute definitive example of ‘someone else’s problem, innit’. They were presented with the literal ‘accident waiting to happen’ but because that accident didn’t tick the ‘hard right wing’ or ‘jihadist’ terror model, they just left him alone. Or left him to someone else. Without telling them. And this was the other crime. That enabled Axel to commit the actual crime.

I just don’t get how Prevent knew this guy was the absolute epitome of a lunatic, violent attacker, a total danger to society and yet, for lacking in ideology of any of their tickable boxes, they did absolutely nothing. Didn’t refer him, though there’s big questions over who, if anyone, deals with such people, and they didn’t monitor him because he hadn’t yelled ‘alahu Akbar’ when he’d pulled a knife on previous people.

We can be so ‘third world’ here.

I’d despair if Spurs weren’t actually winning a football game at the present time!!!

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I lived in California for a year. 1982. Ronnie Regan was president. Donald Trump was just a spoiled rotten rich kid grabbing pussies and being obnoxious in a not yet famous way. I was staying with a friend’s cousin for the first few days of my arrival. And I walked into the room to see him watching a comedy show. Which turned out to be incredibly funny. So I asked him what it was. “Saturday Night Live”, he replied. But it’s Tuesday, I commented, obviously missing something. Ahhhh, these are re-runs of ‘the old ones’. From the ‘70s. Saturday Night Live was, unsurprisingly, live on every Saturday night, at the time led by ‘new kid’ Eddie Murphy. But the old shows, the ‘originals’ were revered.

SNL has always been a massive springboard for comedy talent. The original line-up featured John Belushi (the funniest man who ever lived), Dan Aykroyd (the funniest-man’s best mate), Bill Murray (STILL funny, but now in an even more grumpy way), Chevie Chase (incredibly funny), Gilda Radner (so funny she married Gene Wilder; the second funniest man who ever lived) and a bunch of others who never made that leap to superstardom. Later there was Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, the list goes on.

And because the program was live, it had a wild, raw, ‘anything can happen’ vibe. And quite often, anything did happen. When you have people like Belushi, not famous for their restraint, shit happened. Improvisation happened. By people who’d cut their comedy teeth doing improv. Which gave the ‘scripts’ an added dimension.

NBC basically gave a bunch of lunatic drunk stoners a prime time platform to go fucking wild. And they still are.

So one of the smaller, local, TV networks had the rights to the old shows and showed them every night of the week at 10pm. And at 10pm, every night of the week, if I was in, that’s where I’d be.

There’s always a ‘guest presenter’ for any particular show. And A-listers have queued up to do it. To go on and essentially get ripped apart by the regulars. Even Donald J Trump has been on it. Not someone who springs to mind when ‘self deprecation’ is mentioned.

And now they’ve made a movie of the early, early days. Called, inventively, ‘Saturday Night’, its directed by Jason Reitman, the son of Ivan Reitman, the man who produced Animal House and directed Stripes and Ghostbusters. All filled with SNL alumni. So surely his son is brilliant too, right? Like Hunter Biden? Like Brooklyn Beckham? We shall see. I’m going.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Today, in Washington, Donald Trump becomes God. He’s always acted in that manner but today will make it official. And following his ‘elevation’ he will issue his first ‘executive orders’. We don’t have such things here. I should add ‘thank God’ in view of our current government, or ‘more’s the pity’ with a normal government. Because we have something called ‘due process’ and ‘the rule of law’ and protocols of governing which prevent some great orange blabbermouth acting like a dictator. But Trump will issue his ‘orders’ and they will be immediately laws with no checks or balances, no debate or appeal. And who, in their right mind, would give such power to Donald J-fucking Trump? A massive number of Americans, that’s who. And his first ‘executive order’ will be an import tariff. Which greatly affects our trade with the US. But never mind, we have a ‘special relationship’. Had it for… long time. We’re bonded. There’s love. Unbreakable. Yeah, right.

So here’s the situation as it currently stands.

Kier Starmer reckons he’s Trump’s BFF. Going to do ‘special deals’ for us.
Trump, on the other hand, is taking action against Starmer for sending half his party over to American to canvass for Kamala before the election, and thus was ‘interfering in the elections in other countries’. Oddly, the same accusation our government has been throwing at Trump’s new BFF (at the time of writing, it can’t last), Elon Musk, who hates Starmer with a passion and wants Nigel Farage in power.
So Trump hates Starmer, despises David Lammy, even after ‘they had dinner’, because Lammy called him a ‘woman-hating Hitler’ not so long ago. Similarly, our new ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, was called ‘a moron’ by one of Trump’s boys. Which is deeply insulting as he is now ‘Lord Moron’.

Today’s ‘coronation’ of Trump is actually becoming a ‘Nuremburg rally’ for the tik-tok generation, even though they blacked out the app yesterday. It will be the most comprehensive gathering of the world’s right-wingers since Manchester City’s last spending spree. The only one missing will be the Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK, and only because all those white robes clash with orange.

And yet…

Trump will continue to support Israel in a world where, quite literally, no-one else does. And if his presence in the White House is what’s needed to get the rest of the hostages home, then its all worth it. And that ‘all’ may possibly be spectacular.

Happy Inauguration Day

A xxxx

They’ve released 3 hostages. As per the agreement with Israel, who will stop bombing the shit out of Gaza for a little while (to be decided, depending no so many things).

Am I happy?

For those hostages; incredibly. I’ve found myself rather emotional all day when watching the endless videos of the whole process. How their families must feel. They’re alive. And free. After 471 days. Of God only knows what.

One of them, Emily Damari, is British. And furthermore, in case being shot twice during her capture, losing two fingers and 471 days underground with Hamas is not bad enough, she’s a Spurs fan.

How much can one person endure?

I sincerely hope she wasn’t watching the Everton match when she was taken to Kibbutz Be’eri. She’s human. She can only take so much. I haven’t been kidnapped at all and the match was almost too much for me to take. Ok, it ended better than it started but losing to Everton? Seriously?? 3-nil down FFS?

We only appear to have two players, other than our goalie. Djed and Dejan. Odd and oddly similar names but both were shining stars in a sea of…

But once Emily Damari has had her medical and psychological check ups and started her proper therapy, she may be declared strong enough to see our recent results. Then she’ll need more therapy.

But my happiness for the three women released is marred. Firstly by the other 95 prisoners still captive. Every time I see footage of those released I can’t help but think of the families of those not.

And secondly because this ‘deal’ basically collaborates with terrorists and shows them the virtue of taking hostages.

I’m also deeply concerned by the reporting on all the main tv news channels which describes the Palestinians released as the quid pro quo on the deal as ‘detainees’. As if Israel kidnapped them or that they’re just innocent people, an ‘equivalent’ to the hostages. Whereas the reality is that they are terrorists and murderers. They are Hamas ‘soldiers’, the kind who slaughtered, raped and kidnapped 15 civilians on October 7. To call them ‘detainees’ is pathetic and moronic. What are they scared of?

So 3 are back. To great relief. Spurs lost, to great anguish. But let’s keep things in perspective. It’s a big day.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Wednesday night. Spurs playing Arsenal at 8 o’clock. Lila and Joey having a sleepover due to… stuff. And Joey is currently football-mad. The ‘football’ bit because he loves the players, the stadia, the league table and its numbers, and the ‘mad’ because he loves Spurs and that can only lead to misery and insanity, long-term. And his bed time, ‘officially’, is about 7.00. Which means by the time he’s finished running round screaming and jumping on the bed, demanding snacks because he’s ‘starving’ and being chased round with a loaded toothbrush, 7.30. So a ‘deal’ was done. The negotiating team from Qatar was brought in with me, Joey and his mum. Joe Biden was involved by went to Kuwait by mistake. Donald Trumps boys made it. And we agreed that Joey could watch the first half. I would then be forced to watch the second half as my punishment. Lila just happy that she could stay up late playing.

I turned on the tv just before 8, put up Sky Sports 1 and… they were playing darts. Darts? Before a football match? That’s not the ‘Sky way’. Before any big match is at least one hour of ‘football bollocks’. Jamie Rednap, Micah Richards, possibly intellectual heavyweight Alan Shearer for some gravitas, maybe some old Spurs players, few Arsenal retirees, to discuss a match which no-one in the world can ever predict.

Anyway; it wasn’t on. I tried Sky Sports 2 to 19, nothing. Puzzling. I tried various other channels, ITV, BBC, Amazon Prime, Apple. I have so many fucking ‘apps’ that I’m going to need a wider tv to list them all. Joey found it. Ahhh, there it is, on Netflix. “Spurs vs Arsenal!!!!!”, massive banner headline. Great. Ah, it’s just an ad. You click on it and go to TNT and you can get that (fucking) app for just 30 quid a month. 30 quid!!! I’m a pensioner FFS!! I’ve lost my heating allowance! I thought this was a welfare state!

So we didn’t watch the football. Joey wasn’t overly bothered in that amazing facility kids have to just get over things in 3 seconds. And then spent the next 40 minutes asking, every 30 seconds, “what’s the score now”.

However, in retrospect, this side of the match, I’d like to thank TNT for being obnoxious, over-charging, life-ruining bastards and stealing football matches which I might have otherwise watched.

Unfortunately, Spurs match tomorrow is live on Sky.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Happy Saturday.

I was really upset to learn that David Lynch, the film maker, had died. Even though I haven’t seen one of his movies for decades. And, if I’m honest, I barely knew the man.

But anyone who watched every single one of the… 36? 49? 123??? episodes of Twin Peaks, when it came out, has a part of them that forever belongs to David Lynch. (I’ll make the assumption that anyone who really hated it, and I can get that too, didn’t qualify as watching all the episodes).

Yet the man started with pure film. Elephant Man was the first one I remember. And it was basically a beautiful and beautifully produced, black’n’white, true-life bio-pic of a ‘bit of a freak’. He then followed that with a series of films of seemingly increasing levels of weirdness. Of strangeness. Oddness. From Blue Velvet with its ‘dark side of the American dream, suburban world’, to Wild at Heart, the dark side of redemption. Always a darkness lurking somewhere. And after Twin Peaks came the awesome Mulholland Drive.

But film is limiting. You got 2 hours. Possibly 3 if you’re really pushing it. Whereas a tv series gave the man time to expand his horizons in all directions. And Twin Peaks expanded everything, to everyone, all at once. It was a thriller, it was a comedy, it was noire, it was light, it was bizarre, it was fabulously non-linear, it had horror, paranormal and sci-fi. And confusion. Lots of confusion. The most surreal viewing I’d ever seen. But, in common with his films, it had loads of stunningly beautiful women. To hold your interest whilst your brain was trying to make sense of it all. The music was ‘haunting’ and when the first 4 notes played on episode 1 I was hooked for the duration. And even beyond that as I went to the cinema to see the ‘prequel’, Fire Walk with Me. Which took the ‘confusion’ level to a degree further. Into ‘WTF???’

Safe to say: there’s never been anything like it since.

RIP David Lynch, you brought a lot of people immense pleasure.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I wish Biden, or even Trump, had declared a ceasefire at the Emirates last night, just after we took the lead against Arsenal. But that didn’t happen.

Instead they’ve declared a ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza. From Sunday. The Americans, the Qataris, a few Egyptians and even one or two Israelis. It’s taken 8 months to ‘sort out the details’, but now we’re almost there. I say ‘almost’ because following Joe Biden’s desperate announcement yesterday, desperate because he needs it to be HIS ceasefire, and not Trump’s, Hamas are once again ‘shifting goalposts’ and its all up in the air at the moment of writing this. If I’d written it an hour ago it would have all been sorted. So I accept; it’s my fault.

What you also have to remember is that the last ceasefire prior to the current… shitstorm, was declared on October 6th 2023. And how did that go?

Firstly, I feel for Gaza. There’s virtually nothing left of it. So if there were any Gazans who were truly not Israel-hating jihadis or jihadi-sympathisers, and all the children, I truly feel for them. Unfortunately the line between ‘Gazan civilians’ and ‘Hamas terrorists’ is a very wide, blurry thing in lots of shades of grey. And yes, it’s been made even more so by the systematic destruction of their country. And the countless deaths. And I say ‘countless’ in the literal sense. Because no one has actually counted them. Certainly not ‘the Hamas controlled health ministry’ who fabricate the numbers for PR purposes. And choose never to differentiate between civilians and their soldiers in the interests of honesty or a good headline. The same reason Hamas chose to have its offices, its arms depots and its control centres under hospitals, mosques and schools. It’s called ‘human shielding’ and is only perpetrated by groups who have absolutely no care or consideration for the people they’re allegedly fighting for.

But the hostages will, hopefully, start to return. Dead or alive. After 450 days in captivity. I really have no wish to even think about how those days were lived. It’s beyond anything anyone who hasn’t been there could ever consider or understand. In return for each hostage Hamas get back 30 terrorists. 50 if the hostage is a soldier. That’s the current exchange rate. But initially it’s only women, children and the aged who will be returned.

Long term? It’s never really a term with any meaning or significance in that region but we’ll remain hopeful. At least for the return of the rest of the hostages.

And peace? That is such a ‘whole other question’ that it’s really beyond the amount of time I have… possibly ever. The Americans want this mythical ‘2-state solution’. The UK wants it too. In fact lots of people have thought it the best idea for decades. Unfortunately, Hamas don’t want it and never have. They want a 1-state solution. Called ‘Palestine’. With no Israel, Israelis or Jews. “From the River to the Sea”.

Which has its problems.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx