Andy's Glasses

Adam Johnson gets 6 years for grooming a ‘child’ and having some kind of sexual activity (he said, she said… we don’t want or need to know) with her. Good riddance to his career. But that’s a small price to pay, though not in monetary terms.

Yet there are some who reckon that 6 years is in fact too long a sentence. Not because the rotten shit doesn’t deserve it, but more because there are murderers and rapists who’ve received lesser sentences.

So much for ‘consistency’ or proportionality in the law then. As in so much else.

And although the crime is what he’s being punished for, that crime has a context. And in Johnson’s case its a very tragic context for his victim. Who, due to Johnson’s stream of constant denial, was reviled and accused of lying, trolled on social media which led to her taking an overdose. A girl of 16 (by then) who’s only ‘crime’ was to be naive and to have been preyed upon by an exploitative, entitled shit of a sportsman who’d been her hero.

But as ever, the ‘full details’ are never revealed until sentencing, lest they be prejudicial to the specifics. If someone can be viewed as ‘always a scumbag, does that all the time’ it would be rather difficult to find him innocent of the specific crime in question. But once guilty all bets are off. So the details emerge.

Johnson’s counsel claimed Johnson wasn’t ‘into children’, but it ‘just happened’. In her words: it was an aberration.

But its not an aberration. What is an aberration is the animal porn on Johnson’s computers. That’s seriously fucking aberrant. I didn’t even know animals watched porn. Ya live and learn. And the minor STD problems due to his confessed ‘flings’ with fans. Loads of them.

But on a happier note, the picture was taken this very morning at Daniel’s bakery in Temple Fortune. And they bake the sacred ‘challah’, the most holy sight in all Judaism. The Western Wall’s all well and good but you wouldn’t wanna eat one. Whereas these, mere minutes out of the ovens… aaaahhhhhhh…

Happy Friday/Shabbas

A xxxx

What’s happened to sport? Where’s the ideology gone? The problem is that someone made it a bit too competitive. Oh. It is competitive. That’s what its all about really. The nature of ‘sport’. Competition. They’re equivalents. So you want to win. Always. And sometimes you need to try a bit harder, work a bit longer, be a bit more aggressive. Sometimes you just need ‘an edge’.

So the cricketer puts some gravel in his pocket to rough up the ball. The footballer dives when no-one touched him. The motor racing driver has a car that is just 3mm lower/longer/faster than it should be.

And everyone else takes drugs. Shit loads of them. Steroids, growth hormones. Uppers. Performance enhancers. Go fasters. Throw longers. And we call them cheats.

Quite rightly.

All sports have rules. To ensure everyone’s on the same page. Then someone introduced a few more pages.

And now every sport is rife with cheating. And it all started with a Canadian. Typical. When Ben Johnson beat Carl Lewis in the 100 metres Olympic final it was the most mind-blowing run I’d ever seen. (Usain Bolt hadn’t been invented yet). It was amazing. Lewis was the world champion, tall, lithe and elegant. Johnson was stockier, pure muscle, pure power. Mixed with just the right amount of steroids as it transpired and they took his medal away. But the man flew. Just flew.

Baseball had the two biggest hitters of all time in the same season, both replacing the regulation chewing tobacco with something a little more pharmaceutically synthesised.

Then came the cycling fiasco. Followed by every Russian athlete ever. All on drugs. Regular ‘trainers’ replaced with pharmacologists. They’re cheaper and much more efficient.

Tennis. Sharapova is on drugs for a heart condition she’s never had, taking the prescribed 6-week course for 14 years.

And now its Chinese swimmers. Replacing their diet of rice noodles with a cocktail of something a little more potent, more helpful, more illegal.

All that happens is that the drugs, as they’re made illegal, are then made harder to detect. These chemists are clever and devious.

They should just have two parallel sporting worlds. The ‘natural’ one and the ‘drug enhanced’ one. And although the former would be more important, the latter would be much more fun to watch.

Shame on the whole fucking lot of them

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I love an election. (The late Benny Hill, in Chinese persona, made a career out of that sentence). And there’s loads of elections just around the corner.

First though you need to work out who is going to stand. And the American bandwagon keeps on rollin’. Now its the turn of Utah to vote. So Ted Cruz decided to use this poster of Madame Trump. To ‘offend’ those straight-laced, bible-bashin’ Mormons. A spokesperson in Utah stated that: “within the Latter Day Saints there is deep opposition to pornography”. I’m willing to bet that opposition isn’t quite so strong within the male, 14-25 group of ‘saints’. But this is how low Ted Cruz, Trump’s opponent for the Republican votes, is prepared to stoop in his quest to discredit his nemesis. And he’s spent $63million in the last 2 months trying to do so.

Meanwhile, incumbent Prez, Obama, is in Cuba watching baseball matches with Catro’s brother. The new Castro. And Obama’s message was interesting. A little parochial, some might think.

He told the Cubans that ‘they’ve come a long way’, that basically ‘they’re doin’ fine’, but need to work out more in the way of democracy and free speech before being fully acceptable by their (very very big) brother to the north. ‘We’re all Americans!’ shouted Barak.

Actually, you’re an American, they’re Cubans. They can do what the fuck they want. They don’t need to become a cut-out mini-me of the US of A just to get the approval of a President that no-one likes any more and didn’t think much of in the first place. They don’t need to emulate American values (free speech, McDonalds, democracy, obesity, pornographic political campaigning…) to be a proper nation. Even a nation that America will befriend. ‘There’s human rights issues’, Barak stated too. As if this is some stumbling block to… to what??

Nations can do as they please. Even if its the antithesis of our values. America has, to my knowledge, an embassy in Saudi Arabia, don’t they? In China? Russia? Why doesn’t he tell those lovely nations how to run themselves along American lines?

Cuba is a communist country. Whether you agree with communism or not, its of no concern, its what Cuba is. It doesn’t need to become Puerto Rico, a playground for American tourists. Nor does it need approval from patronising Americans. Just their trade.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

“I have a lot of respect for (fill in name of your choice); BUT…”

That’s the sentence that precedes a hatchet job. Always. No-one ever says they have respect for someone before praising them. Its not really necessary, the respect is implicit in the praise. But when someone starts by proclaiming ‘respect’ for; Donald Trump, George Osborne, Steve McLaren, Martin Dimichelis, you know its gonna get nasty.

Yesterday Serena Williams stated her ‘respect’ for Novak Djokovich… BUT…

She may as well have just called him a c**t. Its just more media friendly.

The world of tennis is in an uproar. Sexism is the new drug abuse in the professional circuit. And the drug abuse is only just starting itself.

In 2007, after decades of campaigning (it was actually decades of ‘complaining’ but again, we skirt round the issues with clever wordage), women were granted equal pay for winning tournaments as men. And its worth pointing out that the men’s money was not reduced in any way to kind of ‘subsidise’ their fairer colleagues, the women were just given more. And in case you’re concerned, we’re not talking about an extra £1.32p an hour here; we’re talking hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars/whatever.

To put this in perspective; in my entire tennis career, my total winning profit is 1 bottle of champagne for the bi-weekly round robin doubles at my little club. (If a woman had won it she’d have received a Babycham and a new iron. I’m not stating that my club is some bastion of post-feminism).

Some geezer stated that the women’s game ‘rides on the shirt-tails’ of the men’s game and the women should be eternally grateful to the men, without whom nobody would ever turn up or watch the game. So he said.

Which is patently not true. As long as long-limbed blondes turn up wearing very little there will ALWAYS be a place in this sports fan’s life for such voyeurism. Sorry, such appreciation, devotion, love of the sport, blah, blah blah. I’ve rallied for years to make them wear wet t-shirts but the Tennis Association don’t take it seriously.

Anyway… Novak the miserable Serb immediately took up the baton and agreed that men should earn more because they are the ones who draw the crowds. Why he became involved in this is another question totally. Firstly if women were paid less, he would not earn any more. Secondly, he’s stinking fucking rich beyond most people’s wildest dreams anyway, so its not ‘about the money’ itself.

Therefore its a matter of principle. Serbian principle. Because I think it safe to say that nobody at the top end of professional tennis is hungry or homeless. And they argue that ‘men play a longer game’ and ‘its more exciting’ and all sorts of irrelevance. No-one has to ‘clock on’ to Centre Court. The seats all sell out every day. And if you give women the chance to play, you pay them the same. End of. Its the way of the world. Other than in Serbia, obviously, and in Indian Wells, California, where this all started.

I have a lot of respect for Novak, but he’s a Neanderthal tosser.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

As the final part of the ongoing and intentionally excessive celebrations of Mel’s birthday, we went to see the show ‘Beautiful’ on Saturday night. With Mel’s twin sister who shares the same birthday. What are the odds? And a few other selected brothers and sisters and in-laws.

Its simply brilliant. The show. Ok, and the birthday. The story of Carole King. Songwriter extraordinaire, singer and pregnant teeny (I never knew that; wasn’t relevant listening to ‘Tapestry’, back in the day). So the starting point is fantastic music. But the show is spectacular. The whole production. Very funny, very up-beat and performed brilliantly. And those songs, so many fantastic songs.

So to continue with the weekend theme of ‘beautiful’, I went to Spurs yesterday. After playing some seriously beautiful tennis in the morning with Spurs Paul. Who, as the name would imply, also went to see Spurs.

But he probably left early enough, or avoided the 3-way temporary traffic light in Muswell Hill and arrived at the ground on time. We were 1 minute late. And thus missed the opening goal. Which Harry Kane scored after 44 seconds. Or Kyle Walker scored after 44 seconds but Harry claimed it anyway. Either way it was the goal that counted. And although I missed it, I was very happy. Because it was our goal. Its like they’re saying to me; “look, I’m sorry about the traffic (and the stop at the sweet shop; but that’s compulsory) but we just can’t hang around waiting for you to pitch up, we need to score goals quickly and we did.”

It wasn’t so much a ‘match’ as an exhibition. It was very one-sided. Thus lacked the drama of an ‘end-to-end battle’. But when the end that’s missing contains your team’s goal, that’s forgivable. When Harry scored again 15 minutes later the game was effectively over. Other than some wonderful attacking play by Spurs and some staunch defending by Bournemouth who’d parked their bus early and had no intention of moving it.

Yet at 2-0 down Eddie Howe is sufficiently astute to work out you have to come out of your own box and make an effort. So in the second half Bournemouth looked much better, more intent on attacking, more Bournemouth really. But inevitably left themselves open for the break. Which Spurs capitalised on wonderfully.

We were fast, we were accurate and we press teams like (currently) no other. I love this team. Its almost perfect. Eric Lamela remains the question he’s been since he arrived, and although he can be frustrating to point where murder becomes a viable option, he can also be quite sublime.

What a weekend. The best presents Mel could wish for. Beautiful and 3 points. Life can get no better. Though if Leicester had maybe dropped some points? For Mel? On her fucking birthday?? Is that too much to ask?

Very happy Monday

A xxxx

We need to talk about Turkey. Not the food, though that would be nicer, tastier and a bit more ‘nigella’, but the country, the nation, the state. And what a state its in.

Turkey straddles two regions. It borders Europe to the west and the middle East on its eastern borders. Syria to be precise. And on that border there lives (and sadly dies too) the Kurds. Well some of them. Less than before but the rest of the Kurds are spread across parts of Iran, Iraq and then distributed, like Amazon products, across the rest of the world.

And the Turks hate the Kurds. Always have. Don’t ask me why, cos I don’t know. Its one of those ‘wrong kind of mulsim’ things that seem to be plaguing the world currently. So the Kurds want their own land in Eastern Turkey and the Turkish response is essentially a policy of killing them. And because that’s frowned upon by the sometimes overly-sensitive Western world, they now adopt a policy of ‘letting ISIS kill them for us’, which is why Turkey has never raised any issue, let alone its army, against the marauding jihadis lodged on its shores.

Because of its position, Turkey has always been an important place from a military strategic standpoint. The Americans keep planes there in case Iran (another Turkish neighbour) gets stroppy, and the Turks have maintained the stance of overtly being ‘the friend of the West’ and desperately wishing to become part of the European Union.

But now that strategic importance has been raised massively by the ‘migrant crisis’. Because Turkey is ‘ground zero’ for migrants. Its the last place they get to before entering Europe. Normally by boat to a Greek Island. Thus its fairly safe to assume that most of the people-transporters are Turks. Or at least have some kind of sanction by the Turks. Because we’re talking about millions of people. You’d have to have more than one ‘blind eye’ to turn to be ignorant of that.

So the Turkish Prime Minister (they are a democracy, though do have a history of opposition leaders ‘disappearing’ and although they are officially ‘secular’ there’s an ever-increasing shift towards Islamic laws) is in a fabulous position in which Europe needs him. Really needs him. To control the migrants. Which he is prepared to do, with just a few ‘conditions’.

Like 6 billion Euros to ‘help’ with migrant aid, refugee camps and the massive administration required. Fair enough. S’only money. Quite a lot, but only money. Then he wants an acceleration of Turkey’s acceptance to the EU. And THEN he wants almost unlimited access for Turkey’s 80 million inhabitants, to travel in and around Europe. And work there.

I like Turks. Some of my favourite kebab makers are Turkish. But do we potentially want to swap a million tragic Syrians for 78 million marauding Turks coming to Europe?

So big a worry I’m going to White Hart Lane to consider the Turks in their natural environment; Tottenham.

Happy Sunday (we hope and pray)

A xxxx

Iain Duncan Smith has resigned his post of work and pensions secretary. And I’m going to miss him.

He was at one time the leader of the conservative party but lost his job due to excessive blandness and the almost unique ability of making the most exciting thing totally dull and boring in his expressing of it. He could tell wondrous tales of thrills and horrors that could put an insomniac to sleep in 22 seconds.

And now he’s gone. Well, he’s still an MP, I suppose, but no longer the welfare minister, as such a position used to be known. And all because the welfare changes that he proposed were horrible, nasty, discriminatory and unacceptable in any fair and just society.

Sounds a bit odd really; he can no longer live with the injustices put into place by his own department. You’d shoot yourself really, rather than resign, were that the case. Yet he didn’t. He slagged off George Osborne instead. Which just shows that he may be bland, but he’s not totally stupid. Or that he doesn’t own a gun.

And one can only assume that all the policies and cut-backs made under his watch, of which he is so retrospectively unhappy, were in fact made under duress by the Chancellor. And the last in the long line of those cuts, the proposed (but now in fact withdrawn about an hour before IDS handed in his resignation) changes to disability payments, was his final straw. He wrote so in his letter to Cameron. Basically stating that he couldn’t live with cutting benefits to the disabled in order to fund tax relief on pole dance club expenses and heating supplements for yachts. Ok, maybe I exaggerate a touch but that was the gist.

Meanwhile, in Molenbeek, they caught Salah Abdeslam, the last of the Paris murdering scumbags. Yet how big a scumbag is Salah?? Even from the very high starting point of all mass-murderers? Because although his brother died in Paris, with his suicide vest, Salah actually took his off and thus ran away. And generally jihadis are never caught, they die. Yet Salah didn’t die. He was shot in the leg. Mainly because he was unarmed. And why was he unarmed? Because he’s a yeller-bellied scumbag. So now they can ‘interrogate’ him. Which normally you wouldn’t imagine bearing much fruit, information-wise. But this guy shows a bit of lack of commitment to me. I think he might talk. Get the nipple electrodes ready, its time for a chat. How do you spell ‘water-boarding’?

Happy Saturday. Will fucking Leicester NEVER lose a fucking game???

A xxxx

You can’t buy class. Ask any football manager. But in Britain its actually a fact. ‘Class’ is what posh aristocrats have, what they’re born with, what they’ve inherited from their prestigious forebears and for everyone else, no amount of Ferraris, tattoos or semi-naked selfies can buy it.

An impoverished, unemployed scrounger is thus ‘better’ than Bill Gates if said scrounger had a great, great, great, great grandparent who went to war with George the Second who bestowed upon this ancestor a meaningless title and some land. Gates is just ‘nouveau riche’ and thus an upstart.

Yet they say that the class system is antiquated, anachronistic, meaningless. And very British.

Most people have heard of The Queen. She’s class. In fact she’s really number 1 in the class Class. All her immediate family are thus ‘class by association’. But as you move down to the 3rd cousins twice removed and the rest of the titled upper class of this fine land, that class manifests itself in somewhat less classy ways, as the ‘entitled’ ones feel just that, that they are entitled by their title. Lord this, the Duke of that, the Earl of whatever, they were all born with that metaphorical ‘silver spoon’ lodged between their teeth-less gums and for many they looked no further than sheer good fortune for their lifelong fortunes.

Some people of humble origins (‘scum’, as they’re known) rise above their birthrights and become titled. Lord Sugar is one. Total scum, nasty little self-made trillionaire who we forgive to some extent because he was involved in Spurs for a while, though a very moaning, complaining ‘while’ it was. But generally these ‘life peers’ (they don’t hand their Lordships to subsequent generations like ‘real’ peers) are just regarded as mutton dressed as a donner kebab.

Sir Richard Glyn is the real deal. A man so aristocratic and upper class that no-one’s ever heard of him. Even his parents apparently used to say ‘Richard who??’ But he’s from a long line of Glyns and Gaunts, dating back to Henry IV. And of course he has a stately home. Gaunts House. Just 2000 acres of Bournemouth countryside and its a small abode, just 60 bedrooms. Hardly ‘stately’ at all really.

And we can only assume (which may be doing Ricky-baby a big disservice but that’s really what I’m here for) that ‘being a rich bastard’ has been Richard’s career. Unburdened by the demands of paying rent, money for clothes, the buddy-can-ya-spare-a-dime-ism that plagues normal lives, he turned Gaunts House into a centre for the advancement of consciousness, for meditation, for all kinds of tree-huggery which occurred when he opened the doors in 1972. And it worked well. There was lots of successful… errr… consciousness, going on there, with almost everybody, to one degree or another. And for 40 years that’s what they did.

Then, last year, they changed. They adjusted their primary ethos to make it just a bit more ‘zeitgeist’. It became a survivalist centre for the post-apocalypse. ‘Preppers’ they’re called. Preparing for life after… something bad. Possibly just excessive carbon monoxide, possibly political and economic melt-down, but the modus is the same. Surviving. On road-kill. Berries. Eating weak or old people. Building a home out of twigs and leaves that can survive a nuclear blast. That kind’a thing.

And you need real ‘class’ to make that quantum leap from ‘advanced consciousness’ to ‘ninja survivalist warrior’ in one swoop. Mere commoners just couldn’t do that.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I’m closely following the American election… stuff. Closely. Every day a new state votes for… something, and then Trump and Hilary both win and the confetti flows and the champagne fizzes and we all hug and celebrate. Then we do it again tomorrow. In a different state.

I can’t claim to understand how it works. Not sure the Yanks can either. But once they’ve actually ended this season of ‘pure theatre produced to sell tv advertising’ (well why else would it drag on for-everrrrrrr?) I’m sure they’ll let us know who’ll be fighting out for the actual presidency.

Politics is all about numbers. And the system used to produce the eventual presidential candidates has more numbers than a physics degree from Harvard. There are so many contests, so many delegates, so many percentages, its bewildering. Especially as I don’t really care. Its not my problem anyway, I’m British. But it must give the pundits over there hours and hours of analysis, projections, flow charts, holograms and all the shit that you get come any election time anywhere. And its probably a great opportunity for sales of haemorrhoid creams during the commercial breaks. Chevrolet trucks. M&Ms. Supersize sugar-laden drinks that over here get taxed ‘prohibitively’.

Yesterday it was Ohio that got to vote. And Trump didn’t win. No, the Republican vote was won by the governor of that state, John Kasich. Who I didn’t know existed, such has been his massive influence in the process thus far, until I opened today’s paper. Well done John. He didn’t shout about sending Mexicans back to Mexico. And Muslims back to, errr, Muslim-land. He didn’t threaten to punch people in the face. He doesn’t want to reduce women to either silence or rape-victim status. He doesn’t want to rid ‘merica of the rest of the Soux nation; just in case. He’s no Donald Trump.

But John Kasich is now my hero. He may even become the Republican presidential candidate yet. Though for that to happen Trump would actually have to die. Or get deported to Syria.

I have another hero too today. His name is Arsene Wenger. Yes, you read that correctly. Because in all the French bastard’s 28 years and 47,000 post-match interviews, I have never before heard him gracious in defeat. He’s either gracious in victory (we call that ‘gloating’ round here, Arsene) or he’s horrible and the worst loser in the world, moaning about how his team were cheated. But last night, after the Barcelona somewhat inevitable defeat, he was positively glowing about the match. His team performed well, which they did, but were beaten by, let’s face it, the best team in the world. Who could argue with that? Only Bayern Munich, I reckon, only Bayern.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Oh dear. The Top Gear team took a wonderful, pimped up, drag-racery Mustang out in Westminster to burn rubber and make a bit of a noise and nuisance. Because its Top Gear, albeit Top Gear Nouveau, and that’s what Top Gear does, riiiiiight!!!! Its LOUD, its lairy, its irreverent, mean, nasty and don’t give a shiiiiiiiiit. RIIIIIGHGHGHTTTT????

But they did all this loud and lairy irreverence in front of the Cenotaph. The empty tomb of lost soldiers. And Commander Frobisher-Wright (5th batallion, 3rd army needlework corps) and Brigadier Ponsonby-Smythe (9th Naval Drag-Queens) both complained in their most proper and clipped English about how irresponsible and disrespectful this awful act of almost vandalism, certainly hooliganism, was, in front of such a sombre monument to dead heroes.

So Chris Evans, the new, ginger, Mr Top Gear elect (well, it hasn’t been on yet, has it? and I’m still not convinced it won’t self-destruct anyway), apologised unreservedly for the stunt and promised it wouldn’t be shown, blah, blah, grovel and whimper, suck-up, pander and crawl.

Jeremy Clarkson wouldn’t have apologised, like a sissy, wussy little girl. No. Clarkson would have told them all (the living ones, at least) to just fuck off, grow a pair and leave it to him to judge what’s in good taste or not. Whilst drowning a refugee with his foot and polluting the atmosphere any way he could.

Firstly, who is to say that all those dead soldiers wouldn’t appreciate a bit of fun and frolics? Rather than spending their days watching George Osborne walk past with his little red briefcase. (Though I stress; its empty; that’s the point of a Cenotaph; symbolic, innit?) Secondly, its an aesthetic. The rough, ragged Mustang juxtaposed against the gorgeous City of Westminster architecture, including the Cenotaph.

I’m a sensitive soul. I cried when Miley Cirus sang Jolene. I know, a lot of people cry when Miley sings anything but in that instance it was pure emotion. Feelings. Man-tears. Yet I cannot for the life of me find anything even vaguely offensive about a few wheelies in front of a symbolic obelisk.

And Chris Evans should have taken the opportunity to man up and make a statement that this new Top Gear is THE REAL DEAL. And you don’t do that by being a wimp. “Cenotaph???” he should have shouted, “BOLLOCKS!!!!” “WE’RE TOP GEAR; WE’LL SPIN WHERE WE WANT!!!”

Should be a great game at the Nou Camp tonight as Arsenal try to get something out of the season. Their last chance to do so, in fact. So they have, quite literally, nothing to lose. Whilst also, confusingly, standing to lose everything. Basically they have to go there and let rip. Lots of teams have won by 2 goals in Barcelona. Well, 3 teams in 289 matches actually. So it can be done. Come on Arsenal, be real men. Not like Chris farkin’ Evans.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx