Andy's Glasses

I came out of Charing Cross station yesterday and walked along the Strand. As I do. And for some reason, that entire area is ‘wino central’. Tramp District. Every doorway filled with waking, or still sleeping, homeless people. Its tragic, but after a (very long) time, you almost become immune to it. Which may sound a bit heartless but you can’t help everyone, particularly those who don’t want help anyway. They just want oblivion.

There was a man in a doorway, but he was quite respectable looking by relative standards. And in front of him were two half bottles of whiskey, one full, one nearly empty. And a bottle of coke. And he was pouring whiskey into the coke bottle. Itself odd because most street people drink either cans of extra strength lager or bottles of very cheap wine. More alcohol for your buck.

But oddly, my first thought on seeing this man, at about 9.30 in the morning, engaged in his preparations, was: ‘that coke will kill you!’ Real coke. Red coke. The real thing. 37 spoons of sugar in every glass. Surely, from a purely health perspective, if you want to drink whiskey for breakfast, drink it neat. And assuming (quite a fair assumption, I feel) that this drinking pattern would probably be repeated all day, I was more concerned about that coke than about the booze.

Homeless people are the mark of a civilised society.

You wouldn’t see them in Moscow. They’d be there, but swept aside, locked up, shot. Especially if any state visit was forthcoming. ‘Clean up the city’ has a different meaning in many places.

The best homeless in the world are in San Francisco. Walk round Union Square (if you absolutely have to) and you’ll be accosted by dozens of ‘bums’. But these do not sit there in a boozy haze with an outstretched McDonalds cup. No. These guys walk along with you and, in a wonderful, eloquent and charming way, make a perfectly logical and compelling case for helping those (war veterans, down on their lucks, reformed whatevers) who are deeply in need. But, like, ‘only if you’re really comfortable with that, Sir’.

And why are there so many ‘bums’ in San Fran? Because the city allows them. Whereas many US cities don’t. If Americans did irony they’d perhaps question where you send a homeless person to in order to get him off the streets. But that’s what they do. You can’t sleep here. You can’t stay here. We don’t want you here.

God bless San Francisco.

God bless London.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

There is no French word for ‘morality’. Ok, they use our word and just say it with that ridiculous, allo-allo type accent and say ‘morrrraliteee’, but they don’t mean it. No use for it, no clue as to the concept. Whereas there are 57 words for ‘scumbag’.

Why would Karim Benzema try to blackmail his own mate over a sex tape?

Yet he is currently in prison, in France, awaiting the guillotine. Well, awaiting a charge of extortion. (In French: ‘extortion’, but with a funny accent).

Mathieu Valbuena plays for Lyon and France. Benzema plays for Real Madrid. And France. So Benzema has his mate’s sex-tape and allegedly threatens to make it public. Unless…

Unless what? What would Benzema want? He’s a world famous ‘galactico’. And they earn serious dosh. Probably not in Ronaldo’s 250k a week league, but not far short. So what; he’s going to blackmail his mate for 500 quid? Even for 50 grand, its nothing for someone like Benzema.

Yet this is what you get when you mix French rabble with lots of money. Sex scandal. Mix French anything with French other things and you end up with a sex scandal. Its the nation’s default setting. Plus ca change…

Meanwhile Chelsea won a game of football! All by themselves. Beat Dynamo Kiev amid their chaotic week of in-fighting, statements of manager-hate from undisclosed ‘senior players’, Jose off the rails, law suits for constructive dismissal, and on and on. Yet win they did. More than they’ve done in the league much this year.

Whereas Arsenal, seemingly invincible in the league, got Mullered (in every sense) by Bayern Munich. Five goals to one. And Arsenal don’t concede 5 very often. Was this what Spurs need? A ‘softening up’ kind of ‘reality check’ for the Arse before Sunday’s derby? Or will the repercussions be severe as the Goons ‘bounce back’. Ooooohhhh, I hate the uncertainty.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

We live in a commercial world. Not always in a good way. Everything has its price. As you may note observing the FIFA fiasco in which World Cup hosting bids were accompanied by bribes and bungs and cases full of cash.

A few years ago we had the ‘cash for honours’ scandal when donors to political parties were promised peerages for ‘donations’. Is that just quid pro quo? (In this case, a lot of quids), the rewarding of party loyalty with an honour, or were people just buying what they want from people who are happy to abuse the system for their own (party) gains?

So its comforting in a way to see an organisation as old and conservative and seemingly unchanging as the Roman Catholic Church getting its serene and monastic head around the concept that everything has a price and we can make a shitload of money by selling stuff.

Like a Sainthood. You wanna be a saint? No problem, its 750,000 Euros, per-lease. Ok, there are certain issues that it would be imprudent to change, like the need to have been dead for a hundred years or so. You couldn’t be a living saint. Even though I am often referred to in just those terms, albeit in the metaphorical sense. Probably only because I don’t have a spare 750k to hand or maybe they’d bend the rules.Yeah, we’ll all be dead pretty soon anyway, so no point fussing over details, you can be a saint tomorrow, cost you a mil. And we’ll throw in the halo.

But no, this is not some ‘bung’, some ‘bribe’, some payment for beatification. Heaven forbid. Literally so. No, this is ‘fees’, charged by the committee who investigate worthiness for sainthood. And even though these geezers (no fuckin’ women, that’s for sure, not at the Vatican, at the pointed end) are all following a life of poverty, sacrifice and humility, having a few bob in your cassock never goes amiss. Poverty never felt so good as at the seat of a Ferrari.

There’s a book out tomorrow, revealing secrets at the Vatican. Cash for Sainthood, dirty dealings, money scandals, not sure about sex, drugs and Rock & Roll, but we’ll wait and see.

Blessed Wednesdasy

A xxxx

This is what a man looks like. Apparently.

And according to the nation’s prison service. Because a man’s prison, in Bristol, oddly and coincidentally enough, was where Tara Hudson was sentenced for 12 weeks for an assault charge after headbutting a barman. Ok, not a very ladylike thing to do but she was provoked.

The prison service decided on HM Prison for boys because Tara was born a boy. And you go to prison dependent on your birth certificate. I mean, how fucking 1957 is that? Just because you’re born male, or female, doesn’t mean that’s how you’ll end up. There’s nothing in the statutes to say that some degree of common sense might be useful in such circumstances.

And in the very week that Her Holy of Aussieness, Germaine Greer, pioneering feminist and loud-mouthed Antipodean, declared that transgender ‘women’, like Tara, are not ever actually ‘women’. They’re just men without dicks. I don’t know what you’d call that.

What I do know is that generally women are more dangerous than men. More vicious. More deadly than the male. So if you couple that degree of danger with masculine strength, you have something really to be scared of. And that fear is in no way diminished by adding a pair of double Ds to your chest.

Tara was moved to a woman’s prison on the weekend. For the safety of the men in HMP Bristol.

Meanwhile, back at White Hart Lane, Spurs go marching on. Another bottom 6 team, another 6 points. I think Arsenal at the Emirates on Sunday may prove to be a little more testing.

And I hope we can pass that test. But my life is built upon hope. Which is a bit like building a skyscraper on quicksand, where football is concerned.

Spurs ‘breezed’ past bottom-of-the-table Aston Villa in a way that was not as breezy as I’d have liked, as I sat there in panic mode for all of the second half watching my team degenerate into lacklustre, lazy, complacent and ever more disorganised at the back as the half progressed. It was Stoke all over again. Get a 2 goal lead and slip into ‘job done’ mode. Fortunately, Villa are so bad they couldn’t equalise, as Stoke did in the same situation. And right at the very end, the denouement, the coup de gras; Harry Kane scored a fantastic goal after a super move. To make the scoreline look comfortable, which it really really wasn’t. And to let everyone go away smiling and happy.

Because we could forget the preceding 45 minutes on the back of that super-slick goal. My advice to my team: FUCKING CONCENTRATE!!!!! The game is 90 minutes long, playing great for 23 of them is seldom enough.

Ahhh happy days,

A xxxx

Yesterday was the most beautiful of beautiful days. Hot. Sunny. That barely happens in July, never mind November. The younger daughter and I sweated on the tennis court in the morning in a proper, sweaty way. Her from the heat, me from the superhuman efforts in the game.

And then, as Mel wasn’t bothered to watch Southampton play Bournemouth (can’t imagine why, other than her near-hatred of the beautiful game), we had to decide. To go to Perth for the Scottish Labour Party conference or over to the Tate Modern where we had tickets for Pop Goes the World, a pop art exhibition (you’d never have guessed that one). Hmmmm, that’s a choice, a six hour journey into the frozen north or a 20 minute tube ride down to the Wobbly Bridge? We love pop art. We fucking hate the Scottish Labour Party.

Ok, sorted. But the exhibition was not full of Lichtenstein and Warhol, this was ‘other’ pop art. From Brazil, under their repressive military rule years, from Rumania under the communists, from all kinds of interesting and non-American places where pop art was used heavily to make political statements. In the states it was just for fun.

The problem being that I like ‘fun’. I like garish pictures of girls with red lips and come-to-bed eyes. I like planes shooting each other out of the skies. I even like cans of Campbells soup and multi-coloured Marylins.

So although this ‘other’ pop art was definitely interesting in concept, it lacked much of the vibrant aesthetic that I really love.

So we went into some other galleries whilst there, as ya do. The first one looked like it featured the works of children with learning difficulties or severe disabilities. But no, it was ‘modernists’ from somewhere in Eastern Europe. At which point it was time to visit my favourite gallery at the Tate Modern. The one where they serve you scones and cream and jam. Its more ‘interactive’ than the other galleries. Nice.

Meanwhile they went ahead without me in Perth. The Scottish Labour Party. Which comprises about 3 mps and 14 people who as yet haven’t defected to the Scottish Nationalists. They didn’t use a conventional conference centre, just the back room in the pub with the pool table covered up so they could put the statue of Lenin on it.

But they decided (all six of them) to vote against the parliamentary party and support the renewal of the Trident missile system. Which Jeremy Corbyn thought was great. That they voted against him and his wishes. Because it ‘makes the party so wonderfully democratic’. Actually Jeremy, it doesn’t. It makes it a totally fucking shambolic and fractured insult to democracy.

I hate Jeremy Corbyn. But love a bit of ‘Wham!’

Happy Monday

A xxxx

What a day yesterday was. Amazing. My two favourite things: rugby world cup finals, and curry. Brilliant. The rugby was sensational, the curry possibly even better. Though as I ate it the rugby was long over so there was a strong ‘recency effect’ at play. As in: what’s the best thing you can do? The thing you’re doing now.

Only with the less affected benefit of hindsight can you assess more accurately and say that the rugby must be better because it only happens every 4 years and the curry can happen every night. And should do really.

The All Blacks were just amazing. Every one of ’em. The Aussies were good too, just not quite good enough. And although David Pocock, the Australian flanker, was everybody’s pick for ‘player of the tournament’, and with dirty deeds partner also quite extraordinaire, Michael Hooper, combined into an awesome ball-winning unit, in the second half Richie McCaw showed why he in fact wrote the book on the fine line between legality and brilliance at the breakdown. As for Dan Carter? What more can you say. Best player ever???? Wow, that’s a hard one to say, especially in rugby where different positions have such markedly different roles. But he’s up there with the Gods.

But away from the heavens, several other sporting teams came down to earth with big bumps. West Ham continued their almost ridiculous run of beating the best teams whilst losing to the others, yesterday at Watford. Somewhat at odds with that nice Mr Bilic saying how they were the ‘real deal’.

Chelsea are no-one’s real deal at the moment. And didn’t so much come back to earth because that happened in week 1, but dug themselves deeper into the mud and shit with yet another loss at home to Liverpool. Morinho blamed the ref!!!! Wow!! Hasn’t done that since… since the last time they played. But just to clear it up for the little Portugueser, yes, I do think Lucas should have gone off for a second yellow card after a very cynical tackle. No question really. But Diego Costa should have already been off for kicking Martin Skertl in the stomach. An act which Jose seemed to miss entirely.

Spurs play Villa tomorrow night in the ‘big one’. Though why its ‘big’, I haven’t worked out yet.

Happy Sunday, especially for us Kiwis.

A xxxx

So we’re no longer going to treat ‘foreigners’ under the NHS. Bloody good job. Let ’em rot where they fall. Then go through their pockets and see if there’s anything worth nicking, take their boots and let the ‘bring out yer dead’ geezer pick ’em up with his wheelbarrow in the morning. Now that’s what I call progress towards putting NHS money back where it belongs; into the well-being of good, honest, Ingish people wot pays for it in the first place.

What about the Scots and the Welsh? Should we treat them, or are they ‘foreign’ too? Especially if the inevitable happens and Scotland takes itself out of the Union (Jack; leaving a big hole where the blue bit used to live).

People’s dying words will be: “do… you… … take… Amer… ican… Expr… …”

Ah but its a noble plan by Jeremy Hunt, the Health Minister. And it has mass appeal, unlike most of what the government does at the moment. This brings out the very heart of the ‘why should we pay for those ‘orrible bastards wot don’t belong ‘ere’ matter. But its all down to the implementation, to the point of entry, to the responsibility for the decisions.

A sick Nigerian turns up at Casualty. Is it the nurse’s job, or the doctor’s for that matter, to do a credit check? To check for documentation? Swipe a card? In a nation where carrying Id is not a requirement. Do we know that this Nigerian isn’t British? Works here? Pays his NI. Some do. Ok, not many, most of the ones who contact me are only interested in swindling their government out of someone else’s money. So if the guy is unconscious, who takes the responsibility for declaring whether he/she should be treated? A big responsibility. Hypocratic Oath time.

And the point of initial contact is the only place to ascertain this. Sending a bill afterwards is just pissing in the wind. So therefore do hospitals now need to employ ‘account managers’ or ‘payment bastards’, who sit there 24 hours each day vetting the sick for their eligibility for free treatment? In which case, either you’d need loads or you’re gonna have big queues. Very big queues.

Therefore what is the cost of these additional people? And the cost of chasing payments?

Because much as I disagree totally with ‘NHS tourism’ and freeloading foreign people in general… in fact with most foreign people in general, if the cost of implementing the system is more than the 50 mil a year they stand to save, then WHAT IS THE SODDING POINT?

And whilst we’re there; what about the kind of ‘reverse health tourism’? When people go to Turkey because breast enlargements are only 50 quid each there (that’s 100 quid a pair, or sometimes, buy one get one free). But the silicon bursts, the scars inflame, infection sets in and they end up getting new breasts, paid for by me, on the NHS at six times the initial cost that having it done properly in the first place would have cost?

The NHS is such a mess. And getting messier.

Happy Saturday. Unless your an ill Indian.

A xxxx

Its here. Well, it soon will be. The rugby world cup final. Tomorrow at Twickenham. And though England won’t be in it, the game has an amazing power, even here. Its just two teams left. Australia. And us.

That’s the New Zealand ‘us’. Obviously. My team. My boys. My haka.

I’ve always had a thing about the All Blacks. Just the name was enough to conjure fear when I was just old enough to hear about rugby. England back then were all white and everyone else was shades of grey. Then they invented colour tv. And New Zealand were still All Black.

I loved the Haka, I loved the fact they wore black and most of all I loved the way they played the game. It was different. Faster. Harder. Somehow more natural, more comfortable. As if they were all born throwing rugby balls in the maternity unit at Wellington.

So I personally twinned Aukland with Ilford and adopted that nation as my own. But only for the rugby. The rest of the time you can keep that sorry, sheepy, empty waste-of-space for yourself, stuck out in the middle of fucking nowhere just above the South Pole.

New Zealanders are not just closet Aussies. Even though they can sound that way. Much as Canadians aren’t just closet Americans. They’re nations that are 99% similar to each other, but its that 1% that makes the difference. (Remember; we share 99% of our DNA with monkeys, so 1% can mean a lot. In my case. Not sure about you.) New Zealand is the Jeckyl and Australia the Hyde. The Kiwis being gentle (ruby aside), considered, quiet, thoughtful. The Aussies BIG, BRASH, FUCKING LOUOUOUOUDDDD, MATE, and spend most of most days swilling beer and swatting flies. If I was into national stereotyping I could have a field day with the Aussies, but quite frankly that’s beneath me.

And being my other half English, I’m fairly used to losing to both these nations at rugby on a fairly regular basis. So I can attest that its much nicer losing to the Kiwis than the Aussies. Its more understated. Just a matter of ‘job done, let’s go have a quiet glass of wine together’. Rather than FUCKING POMMMMMS!!!! And gloating, teasing, ripping and all that horrible really drunk stuff that Aussies do so very well.

Oh well, its all about tomorrow.

Bring it on.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Oh Sepp, Sepp, Sepp. Thrice Sepp. Once, Twice, three times a tosser as everyone’s favourite Swiss person (name one other, I defy you, just one, not counting tennis players) starts what could prove to be the most protracted and in-depth bean-spilling exercise in recent history. Even the great Mexican bean spillage of 1952 will pale into insignificance against the truths and lies spouted from the mouth of FIFA’s main dude. Ex-main-dude.

Blatter had decided that Russia would be awarded the 2018 World Cup. It was pre-arranged. Decided before any ‘vote’. And its very undemocratic of FIFA to make such decisions before all bribes, back-handers, bungs and corruption generally has had the chance to make their case. The deal was already done.

Whereas the 2022 Cup was already earmarked for the USA. And at the last moment French Presidential Dwarf, Nicolas Sarkozy arrived at FIFA with a Qatari Sheikh and… well, who knows what happened, but we can guess (Qatar… money… cash… hmmm…), the outcome of which was that instead of going to America; temperate, safe, humane, it was suddenly, out of the fucking blue, awarded to Qatar; unplayably hot, stupidly remote, tragically inhuman, a nation as famous for football as it is for equality. But football is ‘above politics’. Or ‘below politics’. Whatever, it ain’t about politics. Qatar wins, yippee-yiy-yay.

The shit hit the fan, the bribery exposed, Blatter called into question. Which he denied for ages. Though, at 107 years of age, it was probably time for him to retire. Even taken by the throat to Dignitas. Because ‘death & taxes’ are the specialities of the Swiss. Creation and avoidance. Not saying in which order.

Sepp’s successor was to be Michel Platini. French fat-boy, one-time striker extraordinaire, now gone to seed at UEFA. The natural progression. He’s good, he’s French, he’s ‘clean’.

Alas, they found that FIFA had made a mysterious payment to Michel, ma belle, of £1.35 million in 2011. “Oh!” they said, “that 1.35 mil”, errrrr… “that was for ‘consultation'”. Oh, that’s ok then. Helluva consultation.

Never mind, we’ll get Sheikh Salman of Bahrain as the new president. He’ll get to the bottom of it. He has form. Murder, torture, he’s just perfect for the job.

Who said a safe pair of hands can’t have a little blood on them?

Happy thursday

A xxxx

What a strange week this is becoming. And I love a strange week.

It started with Spurs beating Bournemouth. Oh, that was nice.

Then it continued with George Osborne getting his tax credits proposal rejected by the House of Lords. An ‘unelected house’, no less. Having the sheer audacity to overturn the democratic House of Commons. How dare they!!! But dare they did. The first time that House has ‘interfered’ with financial planning since 1283 when Ethelred the Priapic tried to impose a tithe on mobile phones. Or whatever. The Lords interfering doesn’t happen often. But it is kind’a their job to act as a reviewer of intended policy.

As it happens, George Osborne is right in wanting to abolish the tax credits. They’re stupid and very very expensive. When Gordon Brown introduced them (what? 6 years ago? 7??) they cost 1.1 billion quid. Last year that had risen to 30 billion. And its a credit for lowly paid individuals. And has thus become a subsidy for horrible employers to encourage them to keep wages as low as possible. Because the government will top it up. If they raise wages those workers would lose their benefit. So they don’t. And everyone’s happy. Except those of us who pay for it. The employers should pay higher wages themselves, then we wouldn’t need a tax credit. Ok, not quite so simple, I grant you. Some jobs can’t justify higher wages.

But George went too far. He needed to bring the changes slowly, to ease people out of them. Not just ‘ok mate, we’re taking £1300 a year off you as from tomorrow, even though you only earn £18,000. Tough shit’. Its not nice. It doesn’t exactly appear ‘caring’ or ‘benevolent’ in any way. And appearance is everything. A conservative government can’t ever appear to hit the poor. Not in such a big way.

Then last night the world turned upside down.

Arsenal lost to Sheffield Wednesday in the Capital One Cup. Didn’t just lose to the low-league club, but 3-0. That’s a big one. And losing players to injury won’t please them much either. Time for Wenger to start bemoaning the ‘lack of depth’ in his squad. The same squad he steadfastly refuses to increase every summer on the basis that he doesn’t need to.

And Chelsea lost at Stoke. Not quite such an upset as Chelsea are losing to everyone at the moment. But I fear for Jose Morinho. He’s now totally insane and the loss of his job, albeit with the inevitable 25 million pound pay-off, might push him over the edge. Time for his meds.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx