Andy's Glasses

Much as it grieves me to ever agree with Jeremy Corbyn, I don’t think we should bomb Syria. Make mine a ‘non’ vote. Not that I get a vote.

Let me make perfectly clear (a political expression meaning ‘you won’t understand any of this’) my position. In case it impacts today’s crucial vote on the proposed air-strike action.

Firstly: I hate ISIS. Ok, that’s a given.
Secondly: I hate Jeremy Corbyn. But I’m not agreeing with his reasons, just the outcome.

Corbyn wants us to ‘have talks’. With whom? ISIS? Asad?? One of the many factions of anti-government Islamists who aren’t (at the moment) affiliated with ISIS? Maybe with Putin. That’ll be interesting. As Russia has its own agenda completely out there.

So whilst I’m generally ‘a lover, not a fighter’, I’m really not opposed to war, to bombings, to all manner of force, defence of principles, nuclear deterrents and martial arts. I just think you have to pick your battles.

You cannot destroy ISIS. Something that for some reason Obama, Cameron and the other nations and combined 22,752 expert advisers don’t seem to comprehend. Its an ideology, not a ‘thing’. And if you did manage to kill every single member of that hateful organisation, another would immediately spring out of the ground to replace it. ISIS is merely the end point of a sick and distorted philosophy, armed with religious fervour and which feeds on vengeance and victim status. It exists to exact revenge. Bombing will make the philosophy grow, it will not diminish it. The creation of thousands more ‘martyrs’ would make them stronger. They have no fear of death. Radical Islamists revere death and happily sacrifice themselves, their children, anyone, for ‘the cause’. That’s just one measure of how fucked up they are. They love to be persecuted.

And you can’t persecute much more than 20,000 bombs. That would be the best recruiting device ISIS could ever dream of. You can’t apply our logic that ‘life is sacred’ and ‘give up or everyone dies’ thinking it will get results. It won’t. Not the results we want anyway.

The result will be revenge. In London. Paris. Washington. Berlin. Who knows.

But I don’t fear that. I just think it shows the futility of the intended action and the lack of understanding by us and our allies, who really, we have no choice but to support. Even though we’re all stupid in doing so and inviting horrors to be enacted upon us.

And if the bombing is successful, then what? Asad is a bad man. Putin is armed up, in the neighbourhood and keen to defend the man. The ‘rebel militia’ in Syria who aren’t ISIS are simply a different type of terrorist. Mainly because they’re Shia, rather than Sunni. So you get rid of ISIS and Hezbollah take over. Great plan.

We don’t understand Syria. Which is why we’re now bombing to effectively protect the man we wanted to bomb ourselves 2 years ago.

Every other middle eastern action has ended disastrously. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. Awful. Create a vacuum for extremists to fill. You can’t impose democracy on people who have no understanding of it nor desire for it. Its a philosophy as alien to middle easterners as suicide bombing is to westerners.

Its a lose-lose situation, whichever way you look at it. So I’m voting an emphatic ‘non!!’ thank you very much.

Happy Black Wednesday (well we have black everything else, why not??)

A xxxx

150 world leaders gathered in Paris yesterday for the first totally all-world global warming conference. I wasn’t invited. Bit annoying really, as I’ve reduced my carbon footprint to a size 2 and don’t burn any coal whatsoever.

But conference they did. If ‘conference’ can be a verb. Probably is in America. Like ‘golf’.

So the first thing to note was that someone inevitably calculated the carbon cost of getting the 150 most important people in the world together for the day. And its big. Hundreds of private or personal jets, thousands of big, bulky, bullet-proofed limousines chugging out their diesel fumes between airport and meeting. They’d have been better off on video link. The planet would be better off.

Global warming is a ‘thing’. Its a fact. Its a problem. But most of all, its a cause.

And a cause that has to be addressed at a national level. Because we can turn off the central heating for an hour each night to ‘do our bit’ but all you end up with is a wife with freezing cold hands moaning at your concerns for the future of polar bears. You can change your car to a Prius and adopt a suitably smug attitude, but in reality, carbon emissions on a personal level are totally negligible. The major sources of carbon are industry, air travel and taxis.

However, there has actually never been a satisfactory link established between carbon emissions and global warming. Lots of scares, lots of scientific papers, but no causal link.

There are schools in several London boroughs where the pollution is terrible. Above the acceptable limit set by some boffin or other. So our kids are being polluted, which is horrible. But that is a different problem to ‘global warming’. Its localised. The assumption being that local pollution will lead to the polar ice caps melting. But it doesn’t. It just leads to kids getting coughs and colds. And thus is a bad thing. But a different bad thing.

China has the worst pollution in the world. It hangs over their cities day and night like fog. So they are now doing things the Chinese way and building solar ‘farms’ the size of small counties to produce some of the electricity that would formerly be made by fossil fuel. But only some.

India on the other hand have three quarters of their population living without electricity. Not in protest, but because they’ve never had it. And they want it. They just sit there at night watching a blank tv screen. But to produce the electricity they burn coal. Which they have in such abundance that its cheap. Much, much cheaper than any alternative. And the worst thing of all for carbon emissions and pollution.

I don’t know what the answer is. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t invite me. I’m not even sure what the question is any longer.

But whatever: IT MUST STOP. NOW!!! (but what?)

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Not mine. I wasn’t fatigued. My team were. Spurs. Knackered. Shattered. Exhausted after their ‘quick’ trip to Azerbaijan for Thursday night’s game. Its a fact. Proven statistically. And statistics never lie. Except when they do. Which is often. But that’s mainly when they’re produced by some government agency or other. When produced by Carling Opta, the people who measure every step, run, pass, slip, shot and fart, they’re right on the money.

And according to them, the Spurs team yesterday collectively ran a total of 108km. That’s a lot. A 10k run for every outfield player whilst the goalie runs round and round his area for 8. Something like that. But in games that haven’t followed the Thursday night Europa games, Spurs have run over 120km. That’s 10% more, and some. 10% more energy, 10% more effort, 70% more goals. Ok, I made up the goals bit, because we didn’t score one yesterday so even 1 goal would be an improvement of (literally and mathematically) infinite proportions.

Sadly, you don’t get more points for excuses, even if they’re validated statistically. So we just got the one point for our nil-nil draw against Chelsea.

Is that a good result? Would have been great last year, when Chelsea were ‘unbeatable’. Yet, oddly, that was when we beat them 5-3. I remember it vividly. The best day of my life. On the grounds that the birth of children is an inherently messy, slimy affair with lots of swearing and abuse.

Still, we kept a clean sheet, unlike childbirth. Morinho, the greatest hypocrite when it comes to accusations of bus parking, played with caution and consideration. As should any manager of a ‘lower half team’. So arguably 0-0 was an even better result for them.

I missed the game completely. 12 o’cock kick off? We were lunching to celebrate my dad’s 91st birthday (the grand old man seen here with his elder granddaughter).

So I returned in time to see the second half of the Arsenal match. Alexis Sanchez had already limped off, Koscielny had gone too and Norwich were really fantastic. Delia must have been proud.

So the weekend was ‘the dream’ for Manchester City. They won, everyone else (who matter) merely drew. Liverpool are in fact starting to matter, though they don’t do their mattering in a very convincing manner.

Amazing game at Bournemouth with the seeming winner scored in the 95th minute by Everton, only to be equalised in the 98th minute by the home team.

13 games undefeated. The pressure’s on, the heat’s turned up, and I’m only hoping my own fitness is sufficient to see out the season properly.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

There’s just no point avoiding it any more. Christmas is rapidly approaching. Which I know because:

the ads on tv that you can’t fast-forward to escape are all about Christmas.
there are lights in all the big streets of London
you can’t drive anywhere near any kind of shopping centre or mall because there are queues of monumental proportions jamming up the roads
we’ve just had ‘black Friday’. Black because if you love shopping as much as I do, that single day represents THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD. As far as shopping goes. Even online is too busy on that day, so I’ll pass.

And also, we go away in 3 weeks, 4 days, so Christmas must be near.

The good thing about Christmas is that its one of the few times a year when they bring out good movies. You wait months and months and suddenly there are loads you want to see. We’re going to see Carol on Wednesday. Its not fast paced, its a love story. Set in the 50s. And its a lesbian love story. Not like Blue is the Warmest Colour, which was more lesbian hardcore porn, this one is soft, tasteful, sweet, moving, nice. But I’ll let you know. And I have no issues with lesbian hardcore porn but it does have a shock value.

There’s also loads of good stuff on tv. As well as football. (Which is not really an exclusively Christmas thing; more of a constant in our blessed lives).

And its odd how we choose our tv series. None but the terminally dull can watch them all. And of those only the ‘barely alive’ then watch even more on box sets.

So I missed all of Breaking Bad, I shunned The West Wing, ignored House of Cards and instead selected Homeland and Fargo. Homeland because the first series was set on a brilliant premise, of a POW from Iraq returning after 10 years imprisonment to the States. And has he been ‘turned’? Great idea. They killed him off at the end of series 1 and in fact its become better since. Series 3; wonderful.

And Fargo. The best movie ever… made about North Dakota. Certainly in my top 5 all time greats. The first series of the tv spin-off was outstanding. The now half-way through second series is spectacular. Beyond merely ‘great’. As a reviewer said yesterday; ‘its perfect’. As long as you like dark, very funny, rather weird and extremely violent. The perfect combination. True to the Coen brothers original game plan.

Certainly better than trying to play tennis in the pleasant combination of driving rain and gale-force winds. Even supermen baulk at that.

Happy wet, windy Sunday

A xxxx

Politcs is crumbling, before our very eyes.

The entire fabric of government is in a shambolic mess.

Grant Schapps, former chairman of the Conservative Party has resigned over involvement in the bully & rape scandal of the Tatler Tories. Or rather, his lack of involvement because he was in fact made aware and chose not to get involved. Shame, I’ve met Grant Shapps and he’s a nice bloke. Not a diamond geezer, not a total star, just a nice bloke. But he’s fallen on his sword because, probably, Cameron has told him to.

The Labour Party is in a total mess. A shambles in total disarray. The tossers to the left and the plonkers to the right. And in the middle, with his finger on the button (though not ‘that’ button; never ‘that’ button) sits Comrade Corbyn.

Meanwhile they chose for BBC Question Time on Thursday night, as the representative of the Labour viewpoint, one Kenneth Livingstone. Who in fact left the labour party years ago and has done nothing to endear himself to them since. So how he’s qualified as ‘Labour’ I don’t know. And I don’t care.

But when the question came to the inevitable bombing in Syria, Ken’s point was that bombing never does any good. Which indeed is a fair point. That Afghanistan and Iraq did us no favours. Nor did it do much for Afghanistan or Iraq really.

And Ken, when asked, said that the horrendous 7/7 bombings in London, when he was mayor, involved four young men ‘giving their lives’ for their cause, which he saw as a direct response to Tony Blair’s illegal invasion of Iraq. Where did her learn this? On the Jihadi Bastards of Birmingham website. And so actually blamed Tony Blair for the 52 Londoners who died on that terrible day.

As if he believes a jihadi/al qaeda website as ‘fact.
As if he buys into any ‘justification’ of an unjustifiable act.
As if 9/11 wasn’t a completely unprovoked action.
As if there is ever any ‘justification’ for any act of murder of innocent civilians, be they in Paris, New York or London.

As ever, Ken won’t apologise for his statement. He is prevented from doing so by the total ignorance of almost everything, which he has steadfastly maintained for his entire career. If not his entire life.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

David Cameron wants to bomb ISIS. His parliamentary party are largely, but not totally, in support. Fine, that’s what is known as ‘democracy’. Dissenters get a vote too. The Scots will vote against bombing, most of them, so Cameron needs support from the very many Labour mps who are in favour of the action. And there are lots who believe that Britain joining America and France, as well as Australia, Saudi Arabia, to a small degree, Qatar… ish, is what is needed. But it all depends on whether they get a ‘free vote’. Whether their esteemed (joke of a-)leader allows them to vote with their conscience or whether he applies ‘the whip’ to force his whole party to vote with him against the bombing.

Which, for a man (using the term loosely) whose entire USP is in total democracy, the party that talks, and listens and everyone has their own views and we’re just a collective, blah, blah, meaningless fucking blah, seems a bit off.

So Corbyn is in a damned-if-ya-do, damned-if-ya-don’t situation. Which to be honest, is just where he belongs. If he forces his mps to vote with him, half his cabinet (at least) will resign. And he struggled to find one cabinet full of ‘fans’ let alone another. And if he allows them a free vote, knowing they’ll all vote against him, his leadership skills (currently approximately zero) will plummet further.

That’s what you get if you vote a tosser to lead your party.

I didn’t mention Russia because even though they’re bombing in Syria, no-one’s convinced that they’re actually bombing ISIS. They have their own agenda out there.

Meanwhile in Azerbaijan, Spurs beat the mighty Qarabag (who?) to qualify for the Europa League knockout stages. Yippee-yiy-ay.

The journey to Qarabag is 2,500 miles each way. Probably a 6-hour flight. Which translates in real terms, as always, to ‘a day’. Travel always take a day. So my boys have lost 3 days to the Very Far Eastern wilderness, and now have to be superfit to play Chelsea on Sunday. Ironically, a ‘home’ match. Its all al bit much.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Ain’t it great wot billionaires find to do with their money. Or, in the case of Jeff (Amazon) Bezios and Elon (paypal) Musk, wot they do with our money.

They’ve been competing to produce the first rocket that can go into space and come back, unscathed, upright and intact. Oh, and on land. No prizes for ‘yeah it was fine and in perfect condition… when it sank in the Pacific’. Because its all about re-usability.

And Amazon won. Bezios’ rocket, catchily named BE-3, soared up 62 miles high and landed just yards from the ‘bullseye’ on the landing pad. Wow, 62 miles! But that isn’t very high, in real terms. The moon, for instance, is at least 135 miles away. At least. The sun, probably almost as far away as Australia. So 62 miles is basically a rocket that (were it to fly horizontally) could take you to Milton Keynes. In about 1 minute.

Which is really good news, potentially, for Spurs fans, who may end up spending a season, when they rebuild our stadium, playing at Milton Keynes. And we’re all worried about the journey time and wasting days on the M1 in traffic jams. Well here’s the answer. A rocket. That can travel 62 miles, land safely, AND, being reusable, it can bring you back again. Landing in your own back garden. In one minute.

Its the dream.

How much can rocket fuel cost anyway? Surely be cheaper than a British Rail weekend return ticket.

And George Osborne, another man great at spending our money, has made a famous U-turn on scrapping the tax credits for the lowly waged. And the rule is: when ‘we’ do it, its called ‘listening to the public and parliament and responding to what people are saying’. And when ‘they’ do it, its a U-turn; the ultimate cop-out for any mp. I’m not sure about George Osborne. But I am sure about his opposition, John McDonnell. I’m sure he is an absolute and total wanker. Who should be on the next text flight of any rocket going anywhere and not coming back.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

There are times when single events have massive, world-wide repercussions. That’s how wars start. Franz Ferdinand gets killed in Sarajevo, the next thing we have World War 1. They never called it ‘1’ at the time, that only came when the next one started and they needed to differentiate.

Similarly events in Cuba 50 years later almost resulted in World War 3, with the Russians and Americans on the verge of pushing the buttons.

And yesterday, the Turks shot down a Russian jet. My first thought when I heard was ‘ooooohh, you don’t wanna do that’. My second thought was ‘where’s the nearest air raid shelter and can I take my car in there too?’ ‘Oh, and my family, maybe’.

This is a bad thing. A very bad thing. Turkey indeed has a right to defend its air space and apparently gave 10 warnings, in perfectly clear Turkish, to the Russians that they should basically FUCK OFF OUT OF TURKISH AIRSPACE, LIKE NOW!!! They didn’t and ka-boom, the world went all Roy Lichtenstein.

Oh well, never mind, Russia’s got loads more planes, I’m sure Putin’s hardly even bothered.

Yeah. Right.

A rescue helicopter was sent to help the 2 pilots who’d wisely ejected from their plane. And it was also shot down. Not by the Turks but by the anti-Assad, not-ISIS, Syrian rebel forces. Who hate the Russians. Because the Russians bomb Syria to protect Assad, even though they claim its to attack ISIS. The Russians are very anti-ISIS, nominally, because it sits well with the Americans, and they’ve used the Sinai bombing as a great excuse to let rip with some serious hardware because of ‘the terrorist threat’. But they like Assad.

We (us and the Americans) hate Assad. Or we did. We even almost started bombing him when he was gassing his own civilians to try and suppress the uprising. But Parliament wouldn’t agree the bombing. So now we’re putting it through the government again, this time against ISIS, which helps Assad, which almost makes us allies with the man we wanted to bomb last year. Such is the ever-changing face of the middle east.

At the moment America and Russia appear to be on the same side. But appearances can be deceptive and allegiances change in moments in Syria. Similarly America’s ally, Saudi Arabia appears to be on the same side as its own nemesis, Iran. With the Saudis declaring hatred for the ISIS that they pretty much fund.

Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn has decided to sit in bed for a week, with or without Diane Abbott, and sing ‘all we are say-ing, is Give Peace a Chance’ repeatedly until everyone kisses and makes up and takes their horrible weapons back home.

Happy Wednesday, let’s hope its not our last

A xxxx

There’s a new, new, NEW Star Wars movie out next month. I think its the 7th. But probably will be called Star Wars 3.2, because they have a habit of bringing out prequels, sequels, before-they-were-all-borns, born-agains and a whole mish-mash of chronological confusion. Doesn’t really matter though; what’ll happen is that a bunch of planes/rockets/spaceships will fight and the good guys, the ones who don’t suffer from acute asthmatic conditions, will win!!!

Anyway, as its December, with Christmas coming, the Church of England decided to advertise in cinemas. Yes. Advertising to… errrr… increase… hmmm… or get more… something. But advertise. So they constructed a 55 second advert in which the Archbish of Canterbury and numerous other Christians say the Lords Prayer. I’ve seen snippets of it on the news and its not exactly a ‘wow’, like a Cadburys Flake ad, or captivating like the Guinness ads of old, but its sweet. Bunch of people reciting the Lords Prayer between them. Bless.

And its been banned.

Well, not exactly ‘banned’, more withdrawn. They won’t show it. Its ‘offensive’. A fucking prayer. How offensive can it be? And that’s the point. The advertising agency have stated that ‘it may cause offence’, presumably to non-Christians, so they won’t show it.

Everyone’s complained. Muslim groups, presumably those deemed by the advertisers ‘offendable’, have spoken out against the withdrawal. As has everyone else. Of all religions, or of no religion. To stop the ad is the worst kind of cowardly fascism. Its the Lords Prayer, for Gods sake (oh!), it can’t offend anybody.

Yet even if it was to cause offence to anyone, is not the freedom of expression, the freedom of religious beliefs, what makes Britain special? What separates us from ISIS? Because we allow everyone to pray, worship, express their beliefs, unless human sacrifice or eating babies is involved.

They’re saying that ‘its being forced down people’s throats’ by showing it immediately before the start of the film when everyone’s seated and ready. I think they’re mistaking the prayer with popcorn. And the truth is, everyone is busy talking, eating, playing with their fucking phones, in the minutes before the credits roll for the big movie. Showing an advert to a group who really aren’t paying much attention is hardly an attempt to radicalise a bunch of Christians, is it?

Otherwise they’d only be showing ads for Volkswagons. Which are much more harmful.

Blessed Tuesday

A xxxx

Leicester City are top of the Premiership.

This is not some oddity on the first day of a new season when the Foxes happened to play the early match, beat Stoke 1-0 and go above all those still in alphabetical zero hell. No. Leicester have won matches. Loads of them. Jamie Vardie has scored in 10 consecutive matches, a feat only achieved once before, by Ruud Van Nistelrooy. And he’s not even fully fit.

Manchester City looked simply awful against Liverpool on Saturday, who in turn looked sublime. Chelsea won a game. The fact that is even worth mentioning indicates the weirdness of this season. Because they haven’t won many.

Arsenal lost a match and yet another player to injury. Their 26th so far, out of a squad of 29. Next weekend Wenger’s cleaning lady is playing holding midfield and Martin Keown is being brought back to the defence.

Manchester United are shit, dull, drab and boring. But keep winning in very unspectacular fashion. As they did at Watford.

And Spurs…

What about Spurs? We beat West Ham. In case you missed that, or didn’t hear me screaming all afternoon. And we beat them well. But most importantly, we played brilliantly. Stylishly, effectively, mercilessly, and it all paid off. 12 matches unbeaten. Wonderful. The team look confident, play well and most importantly, they look fit. 95 minutes of high pressing football takes its toll, yet press they did. Let’s hope that after our Europa match on thursday we can produce the same energy against Chelsea next weekend.

Everton look good, but there again Aston Villa look awful, new manager or not, so most teams look pretty good against them.

West Ham, without Payet, looked awful too. Spurs played well but West Ham looked decidedly uncomfortable throughout. Some would say that was a good thing.

And Barcelona beat Real Madrid 4-0 at the Bernabau. Messi only came on as a late sub, when they were already 3-0 up and Madrid had given up, because he’s been injured. You can imagine how that must have gone down in Madrid. We’re 3-0 down and can’t even get the ball and oh, here comes the world’s best player for a run-a-round.

But there’s a malaise at Real this year. Too many good players. They don’t know how to accommodate them all in the same team at the same time. What a terrible problem. What do I do with the two most expensive players in the world? Ronaldo wants to come to Spurs. To be a bench-warmer for Harry Kane.

What a super weekend

Happy Monday

A xxxx