Andy's Glasses

Will there ever be another? Almost impossible to believe so. Taken from us in his prime, after decades of loyal service and reaching almost god-like status to his legion of devoted followers, its over. That shining career, that charm, wit, poise and all that talent and the incredible love of his many, many fans. All over. A national treasure is lost. Poor Terry.

Yes, John Terry is leaving Chelsea this summer. The club won’t give him an extension to his contract. A modern day tragedy. Probably along the Julius Caesar mould of tragedies, with lots of back-stabbing and two-faced bastardism and definitely with a very strong Roman influence.

A banner held by Chelsea fans yesterday proclaimed their captain as ‘The Legend’ and in many ways he really is, despite the horrendous over-use of the term currently in which if you let someone have a seat on the tube you get “fanx mate, yer a legend”. Achieving legendary status was harder for the ancient Greeks, for sure.

But JT was there before the money. He wasn’t just one of the hundreds of journeymen arrivistes pitching up because the money-laundering Russian would enrich their lives beyond the dreams of a thousand Shahs. He was Chelsea from the start and he’ll be Chelsea… well, almost to the finish.

He’s 35. Old for a footballer. Yet this season, due to the ‘all turned to shit’ start to their campaign, he’s been even more important to the team. Dragging them by their bootstraps to start playing. Leading by example, as he always does, showing 73 billion quid’s worth of international superstars how to score goals. A lumbering English defender.

However, I do in fact, as per my original metaphor, come to bury Terry, not to praise him. Because he’s a bastard scum-bag and always has been. BUT, and (as you can see) its a very big ‘but’; he is 140% (I learned maths from Alan Shearer) committed to Chelsea football club. He played (almost) his entire career there and is, for many, the face of the club. He is for me. Because his face is really ugly, horribly aggressive and looks like that of a thug. So why let go a player, however old, who is firstly still playing very very well, and secondly, is the embodiment of the spirit of Chelsea football club. Something even Abramovich’s billions can’t buy.

Its all to do with power, so I reckon. That’s been the whole issue this year. The Terry/Morinho/Abramovich axis of evil became destabalised just before Jose left. Costa and Fabregas got the brunt of the blame. But in my mind, nothing happens at Chelsea, and certainly not in the dressing room, that isn’t controlled by John Terry.

Next season I can see it all; he’s playing for recently promoted Middlesboro’ and in the last game of the season heads in (from a corner; what else?) the game-winning goal which sends Chelsea into relegation.

Terry Wogan died.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Its not a reference to the travelling cricket fans, currently in South Africa, but a minor reminiscence about the old tv show ‘Dad’s Army’ which graced our screens back in the 70s and has just been given the tribute of a full length movie, released very soon.

Dad’s Army was the nickname given to the ‘Home Guard’ during the war. Those too old or exempt from military service signed up to guard the ‘home’. The benefits were that you got a proper uniform, even a weapon, and a rank and everything. Which helped you tell old ladies to turn off the porch lights during an air raid.

So it was a very easy target for a sit-com. They were an old, bumbling, clumsy group of wannabe soldiers, fantasising about fighting nazis whilst in reality performing the most mundane of tasks.

I fucking hated Dad’s Army. I hate ‘farce’ generally. Slapstick. Its awful. And yet here it was, on our tv screens every fucking week for a decade. Back when it was either watch that or watch ‘the other side’. No checking the reruns on ‘Dave’, no skyplus, not even video. And on ‘the other side’ might be Fanny Cradock’s cookery (think Paul Hollywood in a long skirt), Songs of Praise or Coronation Street. So although Dad’s Army was viewed by a massive 18 million sad and sorry souls every week, I weren’t one of ’em. I’d rather do my homework. Ok, maybe not but I wouldn’t watch it; made me cringe.

But at the time farce and slapstick were big in Britain. Monty Python hadn’t yet arrived to save world comedy from an eternity of custard pies in faces and people going ‘oooops!!!’ as they slid on a banana skin and ended up with their head up fat old Mrs Beagley’s ample skirt!! We didn’t have Louis Van Gaal to laugh at either, back then. We just had Dad’s Army.

So they’ve made it into a remake movie. I saw the trailer last night when we went to see ‘Spotlight’ the multiple oscar nominated film about the exposure of child abuse by Catholic priests by journalists, in the 70s in Boston. Back when such a thing was ‘news’. Not just ‘oh what, agaiaiain???’

Spotlight has been fabulously reviewed. As being fabulous. Oscar-worthy. Probably because its a true story that is still, tragically, relevant. Cover-ups by the highest levels of the Catholic church to horrors being perpetrated by priests.

But its loooooooooonnnnnggggg. Way too long. The story’s fascinating, the cast superb, but it is unnecessarily long. 45 minutes on the cutting room floor would have made it a great film. But they didn’t. They laboured the point. Every fucking point. Until you just think; LET IT JUST END NOW!!!!! I DON’T CARE IF THERE’S NO RESOLUTION; LET ME GO HOME TO MATCH OF THE DAY. ALREADY!

Shame because otherwise we had a super evening with Kung-Fu Graham and Mrs Kung-Fu Graham.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I keep thinking about the Google thing. The tax avoidance. They cynical use of Euro rules and regulations to pass intellectual property (cos they don’t own or sell anything physical) through to Ireland for tax purposes, even though my clicking takes place in London rather than Dublin.

And as much as I think about it, I don’t get too upset about it. I should. Its immoral (possibly) its robbing England of tax money, which costs me, personally, and its little hypocritical of a company founded on a ‘moral’ ideology and on being ‘young and hipster’ and kind of anti-establishment big biz. ‘We do things right’, they claimed. And still I can’t get as upset as I do with Starbucks or even Amazon.

Because Google is free. Costs me (and you, and you, and you…) not one penny ever. And I use it every single day, repeatedly. And they hadn’t broken any laws. If, with our most amazingly complex and impenetrable tax laws, they can’t make some applying to this situation; more fool them.

So let’s say that the ‘Italian Deal’ of about 350 million quid, is right and is about 200 mil more than the UK one, which George Osborne thought was some major fucking coup, tosser that he unquestionably is. So 200 mil. And we have a population of 60 mil. So each person in the UK has been ‘cheated’ out of about 4 quid. Over 10 years. Let’s say only half the population use Google, so those who do are paying 80p a year for a brilliant and unfailing service that they use all the time. If Google did start charging (heaven forbid), we’d happily pay a fiver a month. Of tax paid income. So you’d need to earn £7 or £9 a month to buy it.

And we’re moaning about £8 over ten years. Well, you are, I’m special.

The government costs us billions each year to run and we don’t get anything like the benefits we do from google. In fact if they had elections tomorrow I’d vote for Google to be the next president. Even though we don’t have one.

So less of your whingeing. It could be worse. If you google ‘Donald Trump’, it says ‘billionaire, loud-mouthed, comb-over-king, quiz show host, racist, xenophobic tosser… who stands a good chance of becoming the most powerful man in the most powerful nation on the planet’.

Well, it should do.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

If you google ‘google’, it comes up with ‘tax evading bastard billionaire world dominating monopolist scum with no social conscience or sense of civic responsibility’.

Well it should do. If it was honest. But Google’s not honest. And that’s the problem. What we should do in light of ‘tax-gate’ in which the tech-giant has condescended to pay £9.32 a week in tax on income of £785 zillion, is abandon Google. ‘Talk with our feet’. Stop using it.

But how can we? Its just impossible. Google is software heroin. Once you’ve used it you can never ever go back, never stop being a ‘user’, never revert to Yahoo or… another ‘search engine’. That’s what we used to call them; search engines. Now we don’t. We just say ‘google’. They have become the noun, the verb, the everything to do with any kind of required knowledge or information.If I need to know if I’m hungry, I google it. Taking a piss is different; I use satnav. Or sat-lav.

Meanwhile, there has emerged an issue so old, so anachronistic, so ‘done that been there’ that I didn’t even realise it was still an issue. They’re thinking of stopping teaching evolutionary theory in schools. Not because evolution has stopped. Well, maybe it has, we’ll know in another 50 thousand years. But because it might offend religious sensitivities. Whooooaaaaahhhhhh; we’ve done all that. Nineteen twenty-something, the famous (ish) Scopes trial in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee; one of those southern states with too many repeated vowels (always a bad sign). The teacher, Mr Scopes, Science 101, was ‘on trial’ for teaching evolution in the bible belt so they had a show trial to try and establish whether the terrible crime of sacrilege had occurred. He was represented by Clarence Darrow, the greatest of all American trial lawyers, with the best hat. The wonderful stage play ‘Inherit the Wind’ tells the story.

Basically, Scopes tried to introduce Evolutionary Theory into science. As approved by all right-thinking, open-minded, tolerant, good people interested in giving children an ‘education’ worthy of the word. But the forces of evil, the religious zealots, the bible-bashers, the dogmatists, the biblical literalists, the KKK, probably the NRA, Donald Trump’s grandpa, the paedophiles and a host of others from the cast of the Dukes of Hazzard, resented science for daring to challenge the literal word of ‘God’.

“YOU CAN’T TEACH THAT SHIT!” they shouted. “GOD CREATED THE WORLD IN 6 DAYS AND PLACED IN IT EVERY SINGLE CREATURE WE SEE TODAY, AS THEY ARE RIGHT NOW!!! THE WORLD IS 1004 YEARS OLD, NOT A DAY MORE!!!”

“What about all them dinosaur bones then? Whass’at all abart?”
“Ahh, God put those there too”.
“Why?”
“Because he can do whatever he wants. He’s God, for God’s sake”
“How could you form a mountain range in 1000 years?”
“Don’t question the bible!! Motherfucker!!!!”

And now we’re there again. Maybe we shouldn’t teach the Theory of Gravity in case it offends the Floatationists. Or integral calculus, because it upsets everybody.

Here we go again.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Well, not so much ‘life on hold’ as ‘blog on hold’. I’ve just run out of things to say. There’s nothing interesting happening in the world. No-one’s died for 4 days now. Syria’s at peace. The refugee crisis is over. The feminists are happy now. The anti-feminists have been told by the feminists that they’re happy too. Gender labeling has now been prohibited altogether. There hasn’t been a new planet discovered for over a week. Statistical analysis has been banned. No-one’s making films any more. And football is suspended until further notice. So what’s left for a whinger to whinge about?

Actually, you’ll be relieved to hear, the world is in fact still as full of shit as it was 3 days ago. But my time has suddenly become more precious. Maybe not ‘precious’ as such but in demand.

Because my colleague at work has pissed off and gone to Australia for a month. A fucking month. What an unbelievably kind boss he must have. An uber-mensch. Now I know what you’re thinking; that this isn’t Australia at all, but in fact a photo taken in Hong Kong. Maybe he got lost. Easy to do. You’re at Heathrow sipping coffee and see a queue of people getting on a plane and just assume its yours. Next thing instead of a week in Grand Canaria, you’re in North Korea and under arrest. We’ve all done it.

So whilst Robin’s away, I have to take up the ‘early shift’ slack. And that means that rather than enjoying my leisurely breakfast banana with the newspaper that always riles me up in some way shape or form, inspiring a flow of wordage to spew forth on my keyboard; now the banana gets eaten ‘elephant style’, just swallowed in one go as I rush out to the tube station. And fuck da newspaper.

And then, at work, we’re not just a ‘man down’ but we’re a ‘gay man down’. And that creates yet more issues. I’m a straight man; how can be everything to all people? Its impossible. How can I be ogling some killer babe’s legs whilst flirting shamelessly with the guy in the tutu? Its too difficult. Too many hats to wear at the same time. Some black felt and gangsterish, some more pink and fluffy ‘fascinatorish’.

I can’t. So something’s gotta give. Thus the blogging may be a touch erratic over the next weeks. Be patient. Or just piss off and read Caitlin Jenner’s. Or Jeremy Corbyn’s, John Terry’s or Kim Jong Un’s.

Happy something-day

A xxxx

I was just wondering whether there was, at Emirates Stadium yesterday, a more unpopular man anywhere in the world than Cesc Fabregas? Arsenal fans hate him because he left them. Chelsea fans hate him because they think him at least partly responsible for the Morinho fiasco earlier in the term.

So I make that 60,072 people all hating Cesc. And one (the ref) being ‘neutral’. One hopes.

And yet within 25 minutes of the kick-off, Cesc had a challenger for the ‘most hated one’ slot. In Arsene Wenger.

As football matches go, it was pretty fucking dreary. Yet it had one moment of spectacular silliness. In which Per Mertersacker, the ‘last man’ before the goalie, hacked down the wonderfully acrobatic Diego Costa to earn himself the inevitable and unquestionable red card. The game’s 18 minutes old and the Arse are down to 10 men.

So Arsene is faced with a problem. If a midfielder gets sent off you can maybe leave the remainder of the team as they are. But if a central defender goes off he simply has to be replaced. So someone’s gotta go off. But who? Personally I’d have taken off Ozil. But that’s because I don’t like Arsenal and he’s their best player. Wenger took off Olivier Giroud. The striker. The only striker, other than captain-for-the-day Theo Walcott. Who looks like a winger; plays like a winger, but is apparently ‘a striker’.

Giroud is big. He’s an ‘aerial threat’, a bit like a drone near the airport. He’s quite strong. For a Frenchman. So he can hold up play when necessary. And muscle his way round the box when required. Though not necessarily against the likes of John Terry or any other properly qualified thug.

Whereas Theo is… well, he’s faster than the Roadrunner. And he’s taller than… the Roadrunner. Just. And stronger than… (I don’t know how strong the Roadrunner is, so…) stronger than someone much weaker. A child. Someone with a muscle-wasting illness, that kind of thing. And that’s who’s left to lead the line. Though Spain won a World Cup, often without playing a ‘proper’ striker, so there is precedent. It just didn’t work yesterday. Even though Chelsea still don’t really play like Chelsea. And long may that last.

So the Arsenal fans turned on Wenger for removing Giroud. On twitter. In his face. Everywhere.

Man City struggling. Arsenal dropping. It looks like its between Spurs and Leicester for the league. Its 1961 all over again. If only.

Happy monday

A xxxx

Sometimes we overthink stuff. In fact, when it comes to football, we always overthink, overanalyse, over everything.

Manchester United haven’t scored a first half goal in their last 11 home games. And that hasn’t happened since… ever. Or, since before they started counting every kick, every tackle, every stumble, every everything. We know how many metres every player runs in every game. We know how many goals per game, per player, per km run, per 100 tackles, per-fectly irrelevant.

They haven’t scored a first half goal (at home) for 11 games. So what? They may have scored 27 second half goals in those games. Then no-one would complain, would moan, or boo, or even care. In fact it wouldn’t be mentioned. They’d be too worried about how many goals conceded per kg of pasta consumed by the team before each game.

Unfortunately for Manchester United though, they haven’t scored 27 second half goals in their home matches. They’ve only scored 28 all season, in 23 matches, and that’s not just shit; its depressing shit for their fans. And I couldn’t be happier about that if I was a Liverpool fan. There’s no law that states Manchester United have to win the league at least one year in every three. Nor one preventing them from playing really crappy, boring, useless, uncreative football. The only incredible thing is that they are currently 5th in the league.

Though fortunately, Spurs are 4th. And underneath us; there’s a GAP. I love a gap, even if its only 5 points but I like it. Like it a lot and wish it to grow. Because we all know the ‘mind the gap’ thing at Spurs, we know it all too well. But its comforting. For the time being.

And its there in part because of Dele Alli and his ‘goal of the season’ yesterday at Palace. What a goal, what a game, what a result. The world is at peace this morning and the sun is even shining. All because of Spurs.

Liverpool tried as hard as they could to avoid winning at Norwich yesterday but Norwich outdid them and managed to throw the game in the dying seconds. Don’t know what’s happening in that part of Scouserland, and as long as they’re below ‘the gap’, I don’t really care.

Chelsea at Arsenal today. Arsenal should win. But maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll lose. Maybe they’re done for this season. Peaked too soon. Shot their load. And then, if Leicester slump too, and Manchester City get a few more injuries…

Perhaps too early to really ‘believe’ now, but its coming. Its really coming.

Come on Chelsea (3 words I’ve never written before and probably won’t ever again, so I may just repeat them:) come on Chelsea.

A xxxx

I like to think I cover the entire political spectrum in my personal life. I’m a socialist. Always have been, always will be. So I vote conservative. My values are truly, always, only liberal (small ‘l’) but could never ever vote Liberal (big ‘L’) because they’re hapless tossers and useless anti-semites. I’m a dictator at home, but only when my wife tells me to be so. And I’m a fascist on the roads. Sadly, without the military support I need to enforce my will and remove every speed camera in the land and dump them in the garden of the bastard who invented them. And I worked, many years ago, on a kibbutz, the only viable demonstration of actually working communism on a micro-scale. Where you’re valued only by the work you do and how you do it.

So I think that takes us from the ultra-violet to the infra-red of the political world.

And I still can’t understand Jeremy fucking Corbyn and his acolytes. Because they are hard left socialists/almost communists. And yet their ideal political models are the systems used in Russia and Iran. Mainly because Corbyn is an anti-democrat.

Never mind the deep involvement with the IRA, that in itself is bizarre. In a ‘why would any political party support terrorism and the inevitable resultant deaths of innocent people?’ kind of way. And their constant defence of ISIS and any kind of Islamic fundamentalism murderous insanity on the grounds that you reap what you sew and England and America did it when they invaded the middle east.

Which is further reasoning (in a ‘fucked up’ kind of way) for the New Left to hate America and, yes, England too. ‘IMPERIALISTS!!!’ they shout. Yeah, you wouldn’t want that when you can instead be like Russia, China or North Korea. That’s the aspiration. The dream. Ahhhhh, to be free of democracy, to be free of… errr… of human rights, of free speech, of normality.

Instead you gain the freedom to lock people up forever and if necessary, just kill them, the freedom to control the press, the courts (if you decide to keep them) and the freedom to instate secret police to ensure that everyone agrees with you or just ‘disappears’ (see ‘lock up and kill’ above).

You also get even more corruption than we have now. We get mps over-claiming on their Uber bill. Over there you get national sell-offs creating billionaires, oligarchs and exceptionally rich party leaders. Communist party leaders.

So please tell me how extending socialism to the left creates the worst kind of totalitarianism. And how that’s a good thing.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Have you ever bought any Polonium-210? Do they have it in Sainsburys? Will Ocado deliver it? Amazon, maybe?? No. Generally radioactive substances are not in common circulation. For fairly obvious reasons. And, like all radioactive stuff, they don’t exactly grow on trees. They have to be made. Created in labs. Polonium can in fact be processed, but the largest quantity ever made by this produced 9mg of the stuff from 37 tons of radium residues. What could be called ‘a poor yield’. And not really something you could do in a hotel room. Well, maybe if the room was on the ground floor near the car park. “I’m expecting a delivery today, will you have it sent to my room please”.

So we’ll establish that Polonium-210 is not readily available. You need to have it. And who is more likely to have some, ready prepared and pre-dissolved in acid (the only way to transport it)? A vicar? A traffic warden? A waiter on the staff of a west end hotel? A chambermaid (with or without requisite uniform)? Or a former (ish) KGB agent? Answers on a postcard…

Furthermore, Comrade Lugavoy, the KGB man, had flown in from Moscow that very morning. And it must be understood that Lugavoy, though doubtless deadly with a kalashnikov, a garrote-wire, ice-pick or blade, is something of a klutz. Because his hotel room was covered in radioactive residue. Not available in the mini-bar. So whilst preparing his poison of choice, Andrei splashed it all over the fucking place. Mel hates it when I splash shower gel all over the sink, can you imagine how she’d be with radioactive isotopes??

The trail then moves to the Milennium Hotel. And its an easy trail. By the very nature of radioactivity; its active. In the case of Polonium-210, it has a half-life of 138 days. Which means in that period, it loses half its potency. In the next 138 days it halves again, becoming a quarter the potency of the original. You following this? You should know it from year 9 physics, ya dipstick.

The teapot used for the victim’s tea set the geiger counter into a frenzy. As did the cup. And, later, Litvinenko’s body. And then, as would be expected by any murderer, thug, hit-man, traitor, no-goodnik or any other vile and evil creature; they went to the Emirates to watch Arsenal. Where the trail of radioactivity continued. And oddly, this trail ended only when Lugavoy left the country the following day. What a coincidence.

As a ‘whodunnit’ its not a very good one. As a ‘why-dunnit’, Litvinenko was basically a traitor to Russia and hated by them all. The only interesting bit is the ‘who-sanctioned-it’? And when it comes to such things, in fact to everything, there’s only one man for whom the buck stops. Vladimir Putin.

We should… we should… hit men on British soil!!!!… we should… British subjects (he’d acquired his citizenship just days before the event) murdered in broad daylight!!!… we should…

I don’t know. What should we do?

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Tina Fey had the easiest job in the world. Satirising Sarah Palin. Because Sarah Palin says the most ridiculous things, all Tina has to do to get loads of laughs is just repeat them. Sarah did all the work, back when she was running to be vice-president to John McCain in 2008, creating the easiest path for Barak Obama to win his first election.

“If God had not intended us to eat animals, how come he made ’em out of meat?” she stated. And its a good point. One with which I heartily agree.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke”. Another statement that, whilst lacking subtlety (Sarah NEVER does subtle) is something that appeals not only to the gung-ho predominant spirit of middle American, but has a certain home truthism appeal to everyone except Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornbury (his new shadow defence secretary).

Sarah knew nothing about the economy. Not much about policy. Agreed with waterboarding. Loves guns. Shoots animals. For fun. And is more prone to malapropisms than was George W Bush (and that’s a very high bar).

Yet masses of Americans loved her. For her normality. For her hockey mumminess. For her ability to make a point they could immediately relate to and agree with, even if it was brutally unencumbered by any concession to political correctness or even common decency. She spoke her mind. What there is of it.

And like Nigel Farage and most of the far right, making outspoken soundbytes is an easy way to score points on a ‘gut reaction’ level’. That’s the success of the Daily Mail. To say things that most think but won’t say out loud. Things that don’t bear much scrutiny, aren’t in any way practical, but just ‘feel good’ on a very superficial level.

Sarah is now 120% behind Donald Trump. They are kindred spirits. Mind speakers. Joint believers that everything America ever does is right and good because America has done it. No other reason is required. A good nation can only do good. They’re not into objective validation. Not at all.

“People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation. Like building a mosque at Ground Zero”. Sometimes even Sarah gets it right.

Oddly, though I generally detest all hard-right people, I really like Sarah Palin. Probably just because she’s funny, but I kind of admire not only that some of what she says is indeed what we all think, but also because she makes no claims to be anything she isn’t.

But I just hate Donald Trump. He’s like the unfunny version with a stupid comb-over. All the spite and venom, none of the wit and humour. You can relate to her; not to him.

Happy Thursday, after a magical win for Spurs last night. Shame we didn’t get 3 points for it, but that’s the magic of the FA Cup.

A xxxx