Andy's Glasses

This is Yekatarina Tikonova, (and friend), an ‘accomplished rock’n’roll dancer’. How this is accomplished is presumably that she can boogie-woogie like there’s no tomorrow. She has in fact won prizes for her boogie and her woogie. And she’s worth 1.3 billion quid. Not rubles, but your English pounds. That’s a lot of dancing.

The secret of this massive fortune though lies not with her career, but her ‘other name’. Yekaterina Putin. As in ‘Vlad’.

Her ‘spouse’ (true status unknown) is the son of a Putin henchman, who happens to be the main shareholder in Bank Rossiya. That’s a bank, presumably. And the positions held by Yekatarina and main man, Kirill, are the usual Russian thing that they head up various organisations that acquire loads of state funding after bidding against no-one else and surprisingly winning.

There has been no indication of illegal money acquisition by Yekatarina or Kirill, but they seemed to have amassed a vast fortune nonetheless. In their early 30s, having done not a lot more than dance around in a leotard. And be the daughter of a man who discloses an annual income of £77,000 for 2014.

Nice work if you can get it.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world, another surfer in Australia has been attacked by a shark. That makes the score, this season: Great Whites 12, Humans (assuming Aussies…) 0. Though not all attacks are fatal. Only 2 so far. The most recent one, right at the top of New South Wales, and unsurprisingly on the coast, left the surfer able to get himself back to shore. Before collapsing in a pool of blood. He’ll be ok.

And much as a great part of me shouts out to these Aussies: DON’T GO ANYWHERE NEAR THE FUCKING WATER; THERE’S FUCKING SHARKS OUT THERE!!!! another, slightly quieter, more considered part is impressed that these dudes (all surfers are ‘dudes’, they invented the word) and dudettes, will not be cowed by the potential presence of the world’s most accomplished killers, other than Robert Mugabe. They will not wimp out of the sport they love just for fear of death. Their freedom to challenge the forces of nature are so important that they accept the risks.

Because they’re brave. Because they’re Australians. Because they’re fucking stupid.

Happy Shark Day

A xxxx

What a mess. What happened to international sport? Where did those lofty ideals of fairness, honesty and hard-working competitiveness go to?

First it was FIFA, left worthless in a flurry of revelations about corruption. And now the Olympics and International athletics, brought down by cases of pharmacological enhancement. Oh, and by Russia.

Though not exclusively.

Drugs have been rife in athletics for decades. I remember watching Ben Jonson beating Carl Lewis in 1988 and thinking ‘wow!’ He was fast. Superfast. Steroid-fast, as it turned out and his gold was taken away and he was shamed. But he wanted to beat Lewis and really there was no other way but cheating.

During the Cold War years the East German women were fed on testosterone from birth so that by the time they reached maturity they could shot put like no women before them. They also had facial hair issues, weighed 20 stone and suffered male pattern baldness.

Really its all about nationalism, rather than individuals. Lance Armstrong is an obvious exception. But for Russia; cold, arrogant, image-obsessed Russia, they have to be seen as the ‘perfect nation’ because that would justify, in their eyes, all the shit that goes on there. Starvation. Secret Police. Gulags in Siberia. That shit. “yes, but look how great we are at sport, how we are superior to all the capitalist nations on the planet, so our communism is the best, healthiest, winningest way”. Yeah, right. And don’t use the word ‘winningest’; the Americans have sole rights on that one.

So the entire Russian athletics team is pumped full of steroids. Sponsored by the government, aided by the Sports Ministry, probably signed off by Putin himself. Its not the cheating itself that so cynical but the sheer scale of the problem in Russia. And apparently in Turkey too. Though not with quite so much success for the Turks.

So whilst we ponder what we need to do about Russia (World Cup there in 3 years; Olympics coming up next year; barely time to get the drugs out of their systems), let’s take one minute to look at Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi seems to have won an election, although in a much more meaningless way than winning elections normally implies. But one problem in Burma is the hatred there for the Muslim minority, treated so badly they’re not allowed to vote, get thrown out of their houses, have to live in walled compounds for protection. Because of ‘militant Bhuddists’.

How can you be a militant Bhuddist? Its a complete contradiction. Like being a ‘nice Chelsea fan’. A Bhuddist extremist is one who never actually moves. Just sits under a tree every day contemplating his former lives. How do you get from there to ‘militant’?

I want to see one.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

If you’d have offered me a draw against Arsenal yesterday morning, I’d have taken your hand off grabbing it so fast. Spurs playing the Arse is traditionally like England playing Germany. Whatever happens during the 90 minutes is largely irrelevant; the bad guys win in the end.

Manchester United were annihilated in the first 20 minutes of their visit to the Emirates the other week and all other recent attempts to prevent the Gunners from winning league matches lately have failed miserably. Different in the Champions League but we weren’t playing in that tournament; this was a league match. And Manchester City had drawn the early game yesterday so with a win Arsenal would go top. Or, The Doomsday Scenario, as some see such an occurrence.

But who would have known, about 6 weeks ago, when I agreed to attend a rather important Annual General Meeting at 5 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, that it would end up being November 9th; Arsenal Spurs Day?

So I watched the first half, with my usual anxiety-verging-on-all-out-panic-attack that always accompanies this fixture. Then I had to fucking leave and go out. Unbelievable. I must buy a diary. From the Spurs shop so it has all the fixtures in it and such conflict can be avoided.

The first half was brilliant from a Tottenham perspective. Just wonderful. We bossed them. We ruled. We closed them down. We played a high line. We tackled better, went in harder, shut them down more efficiently and pressed. And in the 32nd minute we scored. Fab goal. Harry Kane; the one and only.

That’s when the panic set in. Is a goal a good thing? Generally, yes. Would it make the Arse angry? Probably. Memories of being 3-0 up and losing 5-3 suddenly sprung to my mind. But this time we stayed solid, kept cool and played out the first half much as it had started, with Spurs on top of everything.

Then I went out.

Fuck shit bollocks.

During the meeting two texts arrived. One from a daughter: “Gibbs just equalised; shit!”, the other from me mate Dom: “C***********************nt!!!!” He’s a man of few words; all of them obscene.

I came home and, knowing the score and result, watched the second half a little more relaxed. They scored their ugly little goal but we were better. We were great. The Arsenal suddenly turned into Arsenal for the last 10 minutes and we foolishly adopted a deeper position. But we were tired. 3 games in 6 days tired. I was exhausted and I hadn’t played in any of them.

It was in fact a brilliant game of football. Exciting. Clean. A moral victory for Spurs. A proper victory would have earned us 2 more points but we’ll take what we can get.

Rather happy Monday

A xxxx

My wife and I (love that phrase; so royal, so 1940, so classy) recently had a quote for a life insurance policy. In case we kill each other. Then the kids would at least be rich orphans. So our Independent Financial Advisor (spit now) or ‘IFA’ acquired a quote for us, by hiking round to every insurance company in the land, flying over to Zurich, taking a slow boat to China, to ascertain what the best possible deal in life insurance for us, his loving clients.

In reality he probably spent 10 minutes online looking for the best deal for…

And that’s where it gets a bit interesting. The ‘best deal for us’ turned out, in the very last line, the afterthought, after all the other smallprints and afterthinking, to pay a commission of about 10 thousand pounds for his ‘services’. So certainly the best deal for him.

For the first two years, 60% of our monthly payment goes straight to the IFA.

I questioned IFA about this rather large amount of payment. To which he replied that they get a commission from the insurers otherwise “I’d have to invoice YOU!” Like that. With an exclamation mark included to let me know how funny this all is. Even more hilarious, we pay him a yearly retainer. Laugh???

We’re still in discussion. My half of the conversation along the lines of: I’d rather be homeless forever and forced to eat my own legs than give you 10 grand for nothing.

Then on today’s papers a new scandal. Footballer players being given terrible advice by IFAs losing millions and millions. Whilst the IFAs ‘earned’ themselves 5.2 million quid in ‘fees’.

Property deals in Florida, film-backing tax avoidance schemes, condos in Spain. All crumbled, fell, never quite materialised, or just failed miserably as any kind of ‘investment’ and all covered by that horrible ‘investments can go down as well as up’ line they put in everything.

The fact that this has come to light is great. IFAs are legally bound to act in the client’s interest and NOT in that of the investor, nor purely for their own gain. Yet time and again ‘clients’ are put into contracts that benefit the IFA. Who is then not in any way responsible for the shitty advice he’s given you and been paid a fortune for. That sounds fair.

Life goes full circle. 40 years ago a ‘life insurance salesman’ was a euphemism for a dodgy-dealing, foot-in-the-door cowboy. So they regulated the job to total fucking death until now they’re fully qualified to rob us blind.

Doesn’t seem right.

Happy Sunday

Come on you Spurs

A xxxx

The director who made the movie Senna, which was fab, and Amy, which was brilliant, has just released his third bio-pic. Ronaldo. Man and ego. It takes 5 minutes to sum up the man (he’s a footballer; how long can it take?) and 2 hours on the ego. Because its big. Bigger than big; its humungous.

I haven’t seen the film and I’m not sure whether I could bare it. The reviews and the trailers would indicate that it is something of a psychological study of an egomaniac, a man obsessed with not just how he is but more importantly how he is viewed by the world. His desire to be ‘the best in the world’. His achievements. Not his club team’s, nor his national team’s, just his. If someone thinks that Lionel Messi is the best player in the world, then that someone is entitled to that opinion, even if its wrong. According to Christiano.

He also has a son. A mini-me. Who is destined to either become the next world’s best footballer, or a spoiled waster drug-addict by the time he’s 12, a life of rape, crashed Lamborghinis and lots of quality time in jail/rehab.

For my opinion, which indeed may be wrong, Messi is the greatest in the world. Simply because there is no film about him.

Ok, enough six-packs and Ferraris, let’s get back to earth. More precisely, to the Emirates stadium. Where tomorrow afternoon, to break with tradition, they’re allowed to have some atmosphere in there for just one day each year, when Spurs go to play there. And the magnitude of this match is massive. Its way beyond mere football, its over and above any other Premiership match played. The number of points this game is worth is beyond measure. Apparently even God has suspended all activity tomorrow and has renewed His Sky subscription.

In terms of league position it is definitely worth 6 points. But its beyond that. Way beyond.

Arsenal were royally shafted in Munich on Wednesday, in case you missed that, whereas Spurs managed to beat Anderlecht. I think that says a lot. Though I’m not sure precisely what.

Arsenal have injuries, as they keep telling us, and Spurs are on a bit of a roll, having gone 10 league games without defeat. Arsenal have won six in a row. Because they cheat.

Its all about pride, its about relative excellence, its about good and evil.

Happy Saturday, Sunday remains unknown

A xxxx

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