Andy's Glasses

What’s the worst thing that can happen in the world? Other than Arsenal winning the league, obviously? Plane crashes by suicidal depressives? Invasions by Jihadi extremists? Ebola coming to a neighbourhood near you soon?? Or the Aussies winning a sporting event?

Other than the French winning football or rugby, the Aussies are the next dread nation to win things. Because they’re smug. Some may say they have a right to be, because they’re good at sport. I don’t say that. I say they’re smug first, good at sports second. If they weren’t smug about sports they’d just find something else. And they won the cricket world cup on the weekend. A weekend almost devoid of sporting distractions as the football was ‘off’ because of the International Qualifiers and there was nothing but the Head of God goal by Harry Kane. Plus Gareth Bale royally sticking two fingers up to the whingeing Madridistas by scoring twice for Wales to show everyone that he still CAN do it, but not necessarily for Real Madrid at the moment, even though they ‘stole’ him from Spurs for a poxy 86 million quid.

So they won the cricket. In Melbourne. So allegations of match-fixing, of corruption and umpiring bias are rife. Though only in my house. Everyone else has no problem with any of it.

But what is amazing is that they played New Zealand in the final. New Zealand. A tiny country which lives next door to Australia and has a population of about 84. Yet they have produced the world’s undisputed best rugby teams for the past 50 years, and now they reach number 2 in cricket. They also win the sheep-shearing world cup every year, or four, or whenever they have such a thing. If they ever have such a thing. But this is a massive achievement. India, the world’s most cricket-obsessed nation has a population of over a billion, all dressed in white and ready to bat. Half of them are even called ‘Bhatt’, just in case you doubted their cricketing credentials. Pakistan is big and cricket-mad, shit-loads of people, though since Imran Kahn retired to marry his Goldsmith, enter politics, get divorced, marry again and cause havoc in his beloved nation, they haven’t done shit. Even England, and we invented the bloody game (bit like football, then…) and we were abysmal. Though its only what we used to call ‘1-day’ cricket, now ’50 overs’, not the real, mind-numbing, goes-on-for-frikkin’-weeks, test cricket.

My tennis was even rained off yesterday and that hardly ever happens. Except when it does. And when it does you need a more ‘indoor’ pursuit. Something drier. So we went and test drove some cars. Pretending Mel wants to change her little Fiat. Which is really the prettiest piece of shoddy mechanics ever built. And this is what we found out, on our ‘Clarkson’ day.

That the Mercedes garage in Temple Fortune serves the best coffee of any main dealership. That Audi in Whetstone has the prettiest receptionists, but the tea is very sub-standard. And that Mini garages are busier than all the others put together.

Ahhhh, happy days,

A xxxx

Went to see a play last night. Called: Bad Jews. An unusual title, granted. An unusual play. A marmite play. Half of those who’d seen it thought it ‘great’ the other half ‘fucking awful’. But heh; all said it was ‘interesting’.

And that’s how we ended up at Leicester Square at 7 o’clock last night. Along with 35 million other people. Shoppers laden with carrier bags on their way home. Early night-outers arrived for the evening. Tourists in vast numbers. School parties of mini-Frogs, little-Italies, the entire Scandinavian under-14 population and loads of others. Crowds. Everywhere. Horrible. I prefer the back streets of London always. I share that with Jack the Ripper, but he probably didn’t like vast crowds either.

And Bad Jews. The title refers not to ‘jews who are bad people’, but just to ‘jews who are not good at jewish stuff’. Committing murder would not make you a ‘bad jew’, eating a bacon sandwich would. But only if it had butter on it (Jewish joke… Bad Jewish joke). But the title’s subtlety led to posters in tube stations being removed by some bunch of PC do-good-nobs or other.

Its a simple play; 4 ‘kids’ (stage ‘kids’ can be any age up to 47, as long as they wear pony-tails; you can ‘act young’) sharing a tiny flat after the death of a Granddad. Two brothers, one of their girlfriends and a cousin. And they argue. Oy, do they argue. Mainly about the right of every jew to proclaim his own level of jewishness and defend it against attack. And attack these protagonists do. Loudly, almost violently and with a lot of swearing. Which I have no problem with but Hettie (77) and Yankel (82) Finklestein from Hendon probably felt a bit uncomfortable about. But fuck them, this is ‘art’.

And the questions raised are interesting, they are relevant, they are almost uncomfortable-making in their accuracy and generality. Which is a good thing. The play is very funny. Also a good thing. And captivating, a very good thing as I often struggle to ‘engage’ with live theatre.
But none of the characters is sympathetic. They are horrible. Objectionable. Whether bad or not, they’re fucking awful jews. The worst kind.

Most of the people looked shell-shocked upon leaving. That made me like the play more. It obviously made everyone think. And it divided. You could hear ‘awful’, ‘terrible’, ‘amazing’, ‘brilliant’ from the open-mouthed masses as they left in search of (I hope ‘kosher’) food.

Leicester Square had advanced by 10 o’clock to ‘queuing for nightclub entry’ status. We stood out starkly as the only people actually dressed for a freezing night in London. They were all dressed for a beach party in California. Ahhh, the youth. Ahhhh, the numbing effects of vast amounts of alcohol.

Happy Sunday,

A (very bad jew) xxxx

What can you say about Harry Kane? That hasn’t been said already, thousands of times, in every newspaper, on every tv channel (including Al Jazeera), on the radio and all over the web? Even Her Majesty the Queen apparently said “well I’d have his children”. Apparently.

The man is a genius, a star, a god, and now: national treasure. He’s the league’s top scorer, which is great for Spurs, but to come on as a substitute for England and score within 80 seconds. So now yer gonna believe us, so now yer gonna believe us…

When I started my car this morning at 8.15, they were talking about Harry’s debut for England. When I arrived home from Tai Chi at 10.15, they were talking about Harry’s debut for England. This was not Radio Harry Kane, nor even Radio Tottenham, but BBC.

When Harry came on last night, 83,000 England fans all forgot their club loyalties and embraced the Man of the Hour. Standing ovation. When he scored, just a minute later, he could have become Prime Minister, had an election been called right then. People are building shrines to him all over the country. Pilgrims are walking from Tibet and Machu Pichu all the way to Stratford to see the school he (and David Beckham, coincidentally) attended. They’re printing Harry Kane postage stamps. There’s even talk of incorporating his saintly head onto the Union Jack permanently.

But I can’t help but think, amid all this fervour and press adoration: what happens when he has a minor ‘slump’? As all strikers do. Even the Jimmy Greaveses and Gary Linnekers and Alan Shearers go through bad times. Droughts. Can’t score. Confidence wanes. And the same press who are presently licking Harry’s boots clean after every sensational match he plays, can become instantly brutal, fickle and exceptionally nasty. They build up heroes and they then publicly castrate them. It sells newspapers. Gets higher rankings on Google.

And how would Harry cope with that? At just 21 years of age?? Its easy to ‘ignore’ the wonderful things everyones writing about you, to try and keep it all from going to your head, from believing the hype. But when it turns to shit, its much harder to ignore. When the insults and abuse are everywhere.

I sincerely hope that Harry plays for the next 15 years (for Spurs; telling Real Madrid to keep their £300 million and just FUCK OFF!!!!), scoring every week, hitting the winning hat-trick in the 2019 Champions League Final, scoring 9 against France when we win the 2018 World Cup and never hitting a lean spell. But life, and football careers, generally isn’t quite like that.

I need to work on my Harry Kane scrapbook. Lot of work to do today.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Great event last night, “MILIBAND vs CAMERON!!!!!”, the great political head to head, the semi-final of the General Election in 6 weeks time, the chance for the public to see the leaders of the main parties in the studio, debating, answering questions, getting caught out, LIVE ON TV!!!!!

But not necessarily at the same time, nor together. No, first DC answered questions from the audience before being grilled by Paxman, then when he was safely 3 miles away, Miliband was brought out of his cage for the same treatment.

Jeremy Clarkson would have gone head-to-head with Ed Miliband, no doubt about it, but David Cameron refused. He offered to go into a 7-way free-for-all with a load of leaders of parties no-one’s ever heard of, but not mano-a-mano with Ed. And judging from last night’s performance, you can see why.

Though I missed it. The most important event in the history of… of… of… tv let-downs, I decided that Tai Chi was more important. Politics may decide our nation’s rule, our next government, massive issues like the economy, taxation, education, immigration, national debt and the NHS, but Tai Chi concerns my place in the entire universe. So that’s more important. ‘Single Whip’ was of greater concern than the single currency. My body may occupy space in the UK, but my spirit is somewhere in China. Probably eating noodles in oyster sauce.

And I recorded the debate, not willing to miss it altogether but once I returned home and all everyone was talking about was ‘the debate(s)’ I simply couldn’t face watching it. I saw some of Miliband, sufficient to make my skin crawl, and on the news they showed Cameron facing Jeremy Paxman, probably wishing he’d faced Ed instead who is nothing as bright, clever or nasty as Paxo.

The difference between these two leaders is that Cameron has some ‘statesman-like qualities’ and speaks very poshly, but lacks the presence of mind to be a good stand-up, or even a third rate stand-up in a very dingy club in Camden. Whereas Ed, for all his odd looks and socialist agenda, is actually rather good in front of a crowd. Even a crowd baying for his blood.

……………………………………………………………

I’m not exactly ‘unshockable’ but you do get numbed by all the constant bad news and tragedy around. Beheadings, cities bombed to the ground, another 1986 overweight MP was fondling little boys, its all horrible and loses its power to shock.

But the GermanWings flight shocked me badly. Not when it came down, that was bad and tragic but we’ve been there before. The shock came when we learned that the co-pilot crashed it intentionally. That was a real ‘fuck meeeeee!!!!!!’ moment. Made the whole episode a million times worse.

The head of Lufthansa, which owns GermanWings, Stormbahnfuhrer von Bustenhalter (not his real name), said that “there was no way Lufthansa could have anticipated this, they did everything they could in terms of psychological testing and failsafes” and when questioned further he actually became nasty and arrogant and drew his Luger. Now we learn that the co-pilot has had serious depression and psychological issues which Lufthansa were all to aware of. So WHAT WAS HE DOING IN CHARGE OF A FUCKING PLANELOAD OF PEOPLE?????

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I can’t remember the last time I watched Top Gear. Yet in some ways I consider myself ‘a fan’ of the programme. Contradictory? Possibly, but I don’t care. I’m a fan because when I do catch bits of it I heartily approve. They slag off battery-powered Noddy cars, they crash lorries into school buildings, they put supermodels into a Vauxhall Nova and race them round a track in the rain and they insult virtually everybody. And they revere BIG fucking engines in ridiculously over-powered cars.

Its like the police. I never call them, don’t speak to them, but its reassuring to know they’re there.

And the problem is: Top Gear IS Jeremy Clarkson. Ok, there’s James May and Richard Hammond in there to make up the numbers, as straight men to share his insults and (much more mild forms of) abuse, to compete with and get pally with. But Clarkson is 76% of the show. (I could explain how I arrived, very scientifically and statistically valid-ly at that number but you lack the understanding of numbers to follow).

And now he’s gone. Forever. Which will cost the BBC (which is ME, and even you) £50million a year in lost income. Yet he had to go. You simply can’t punch a colleague in the face because he did his job badly, even if you want to and he deserved it. Its just unacceptable in any situation.

James May & Richard Hammond have stood out ‘in solidarity’ now and said they may not go on without him. Like in some Victorian romantic melodrama. But really they’re not in a great place, whatever happens. Because if there’s a new ‘main dude’ and its a success he will take all the credit. And if it fails, Hammond & May’s good light under Clarkson will dim significantly for being there as mere useless foils to Jeremy’s brilliance and they’re nothing without him.

There’s also the question; if the BBC don’t run Top Gear then who will? Because its a massive success financially. Yet would be very difficult to run on commercial tv upon which there are more car adverts than anything else. So would Top Gear be at liberty to slag off the new Skoda as a ‘worthless piece of shit’ when the parent company spends £10million a year on advertising on that channel? And if not, would it still be Top Gear? Or become a ‘nice’ and ‘sanitised’ and ‘inoffensive’ Top Gear that everyone would consequently hate?

Chris Evans is seen as ‘the man most likely’ because, like Clarkson, he’s objectionable and loves fast cars. But he’s just too enthusiastic whereas Clarkson was melancholy to the point of lethargy. Jodie Kidd is in the frame too. Because she managed to get her high heel stuck under the accelerator whilst being the ‘star in a car’ and did a fast lap as a consequence. Or some geezer no-one’s heard of who’s a TT bike racer.

Its all a worry.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I’m a disagreeable, reckless extrovert. And if you agree with that, then you’re not a Londoner. Because we’re ‘disagreeable’, apparently. Therefore you shouldn’t agree. Instead you should jump off a tall building whilst stark naked and singing the National Anthem at the top of your voice. That’s what reckless extroverts should be doing most of the time, surely?

Scientists at Cambridge (with nothing better to do and doubtless trying to justify a research grant) tested the ‘personalities’ of 400,000 people to try to find regional variations.

Before we concern ourselves with their findings, and the massive impact these will have on our lives (???), its worth looking at psychological testing in general, and online testing even more so, as this test was performed by the BBC online.

If IQ is defined (by many) as ‘the ability to perform well on IQ tests’, and nothing more, then personality tests should be pretty straightforward. But they’re not. Because we (the subjects) are humans, and the human condition means we think. Then we overthink. So when someone asks you a question, you don’t spurt out the immediate, visceral, knee-jerk response. You ask yourself what is ‘really’ being asked. What does the questioner expect me to say? How will various answers to that question make me look?

Q: “What do you think of Nigel Farage?”
A: “HE’S A C*******NT!!!!” (the initial, uncensored, honest reply)
A: “He’s a misguided man with seemingly honourable intentions” (Mr Moderate)
A: “He’s a bad joke that’s become its own reality” (Pretentious Tosser)

No-one wants to be seen in a bad light. So, particularly when you’re being tested remotely, in the time and comfort of your own home/office, you can consider your answers before carefully choosing your reply.

I cannot believe that there are 10 million ‘disagreeable, reckless extroverts’ in London. We can’t all be the same, that’s the very nature of ‘personality’, itself a concept so vague and unquantifiable that no two people will ever agree on the ‘personality’ of a third. That’s why so many people use ‘football team supported’ as a much more accurate measure for stereotyping people. It has far greater predictive value than the almost meaningless ‘personality’.

People in South Wales are ‘introverted and neurotic’. All of them. Yeah. Right.

The Scots are agreeable and calm. Though not necessarily in Glasgow on a Friday night. Nor at Auld Firm matches.

Northerners are introverted and agreeable. No they’re not, they horrible, rude and speak funny.

People in Norfolk don’t have any personality at all. (I made that one up)

In fact the only interesting fact to come from this study (or the quarter of a page in the Times relating to it) was that ‘neurotics are more likely to vote Labour’. An interesting thought.

Happy Wednesday. Unless you live in Swansea, Dumfries or the Isle of Mann.

A xxxx

The history of England is a long and complex affair. One the details of which I’ve managed to avoid for most of my life. Lists of kings going back 2 thousand years; who needs it? You just kind’a pick it up as you go along. A bit like geography. I learned the cities of our nation by the quality of their football teams. So Manchester, Leeds, Burnley and Coventry were BIG places because they had (then) First Division football teams. Whereas Plymouth, Oldham and Norwich were rubbish places with shitty lower league teams. Birmingham was a problem. Because Birmingham City were lowly, so didn’t count for nuffink, whereas Aston Villa and West Brom were big, but didn’t say where they were from. The best teams all came from London anyway, so it wasn’t THAT important. At the time. Nor now really.

While geography was football, history was more cricket. Because it was all about counties. Yorkshire, Lancashire, Essex. When they spoke of the War of the Roses I thought it had something to do with Geoffrey Boycott. And a box of chocolates.

Richard the 3rd was one of our many kings. In fact he was the last king of the house of York. Whatever that means. He was the last Plantagenet king. Again, no idea what one o’them might be. And he had a hunchback. Well, not a proper one but he suffered from scoliosis which curved his spine a bit. It was only when he was played by Kevin Spacey that he developed a proper hunchback. And an American accent. As if he didn’t have enough trouble already.

Richard (as I call him) died in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was a proper king. He led his troops into battle. Not for him, shagging his way round the assorted blondes of the European capitals, flying a helicopter or going round insulting exotic people in strange distant lands. He led from the front. Setting the example for heroics and, well, stupidity really, for every subsequent monarch to avoid like the fucking plague. He was the last one to die in battle.

And because his team lost that war, he was not properly buried but merely dumped into a hole in the ground in a car park in Leicester. Not very regal. Neither Leicester nor the car park. Though it wasn’t actually a car park when they dumped him. NCP didn’t exist until 1593 with the first multi-storey horse park.

It was a church. At that time. Later a car park. And a couple of years ago they found him (what was left of him) identified him as Richard and moved him, with all due modern pomp and ceremony, to Leicester Cathedral. Which they opened to the public yesterday. Queues round the block. Richard 3rd t-shirts, key-rings, hats, ice creams (special bent cones). They paraded the coffin around, as one tweet said ‘like the FA Cup on an open topped bus’ en route to his final place of rest.

Because Leicester is a scummy place. Their football team are currently languishing at the foot of the Premiership and the city’s main reason for being there is to make Walker’s Crisps.

They should bring the poor man to Westminster Abbey. Where he’ll be treated with the respect he deserves. And the ice cream’s better down here.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Botox?? Who needs botox? Injecting rat poison into your boat-race always seemed like a fairly stupid thing to do, though when you saw the wrinkle-altering effects on those injected, you then knew it was a fairly stupid thing to do. Their faces stopped working. Smiling like a zombie was never big on my ‘must have’ list of looks. As was ‘complete lack of expression’.

The ageing process bestows character. Its a sign of experience, of having lived life, of reaching a point where you may indeed look, not like shit but more like really fucking ancient shit, but you have a knowledge and understanding that the youth can only envy. They don’t though. They’re happy, they have youth instead and in a society tragically ranked on some glossy magazine cover version of ‘beauty’, there’s no place for the Jeremy Clarkson jowels in this superficial and size zero world.

But now instead of botox, they inject you with your own blood. In the face. Like you don’t have enough of your own blood in there already. Kim Kardashian does it so it must be beneficial. Or give you an abnormally large bum.

And thus with ‘old’ footballers. Once you reach 30 you’re on the edge. Some will play another 5 or six years. Ryan Giggs managed to play til he was 40 at about as high a level as you can get. But that’s rather unusual. The injuries and constant stresses and strains on the skeleto-muscular system mean that these superstars generally retire at 32, and then enjoy their billions in the bank from the comfort of a wheelchair. A really flashy one with solid gold wheel-spokes and sat-nav (or sit-nav as its called in a wheelchair), and stripes. Loads’a stripes.

But older players have a massive value to a club. Because ‘they’ve been there before’. Wherever ‘there’ may be on any occasion. They’ve played the big games, the crunch matches, the must-wins, and they know what is required. So they can add their calming and instructive input to the younger guys who will do all the running around. They can motivate, they can inspire, they are the voice of experience, the mentor, the guru, they have the benefit of wisdom.

So what the fuck was Steven Gerrard thinking yesterday when he came on for Liverpool at half time, into a bad-tempered match, as all matches against Manchester United tend to be, and lasted precisely 41 seconds on the pitch before being sent off for stamping on someone’s leg?

You may not like Steven Gerrard, may see him as a miserable, moany, unintelligible Scouse git who ran off shagging size zero babes when his woman was pregnant, but you have to admire his career. It has been stellar. Who can forget when he lifted Liverpool to win the Champions League virtually single-handedly from an impossible position? A feat he repeated in many other situations for his team. He’s always been a strong player, aggressive in a good way, as opposed to a Roy Keane type, more psychopathic way, and he has a deep understanding of the game.

And the first rule of that game is that you ain’t gonna win with 10 players on the pitch. Particularly when you’re 1-0 down to start with.

They need to work out some kind of ‘botox for the brain’, to stop minds from getting old, wrinkly and stupid. And give Stevie Gerrard the first jab. I’ll pay for it.

Happy Monday. But ain’t they all??

A xxxx

What a day was yesterday. What a feast. For sporting gluttons like me, it was just a wonderful, almost endless buffet. And I don’t even need to be watching all of it, just knowing its being played is sufficient. Such excitement, the likes of which the sporting world hasn’t really produced since… well, probably since last weekend. Amazing.

There were both sports. Football and rugby. (Are there any others? Really??) Spurs won. England won. Unfortunately Arsenal won too. And England, after the most incredible game of international rugby ever, and winning in record breaking form against the horrible French, failed by a whisker to win the 6 Nations title. So having beaten the Frog 55-35, all our players acted like they’d lost. Which was a shame because for everyone watching, the spectacle of the match almost over-shadowed the failure to top the table.

But what really stood out was the refereeing in our two national sports. And attitudes to referees.

The ref in rugby is God. His word is final, absolute and beyond question. He is thus treated with the utmost respect. He is never harassed, bullied, cajoled, pushed, shouted at, insulted, abused or ganged up on. But that is because the refs in rugby act totally professionally. Consequently, players in rugby don’t cheat. They don’t act, they don’t feign, they don’t ‘simulate’, they don’t dive. To be honest, they don’t really need to; its fucking brutal enough without that rubbish.

And how refreshing to see the ref call over the two captains, tell them what he’s doing, and why, who the culprits were, what they did and the action to be taken. The skippers don’t argue, they can make a point but often the ref just silences them. Without argument or debate.

In the football, just yesterday, a ref sent off the wrong player in the Manchester City match. And a sending off in the 2nd minute of a game is awful. The ref didn’t listen to players telling him ‘it wasn’t me/him’, he just acted alone and got it magnificently wrong.

The problem is that whatever happens on a football pitch, there’s always about 15 players in the guy-in-black’s face screaming and shouting, half proclaiming innocence, the other half demanding a red card. So when something significant actually does happen, the ref is simply immune to the protestations of the players. Boy who cried ‘wolf!’ syndrome.

And it could all change so easily, so simply. Just legislate to protect the refs from the John Terrys of this world, and the others who abuse and try to bully them, its so easy to do. Use the 4th official to check a few things on tv replay, just important things, and don’t allow managers anywhere near the refs. Particularly Morinho and Wenger, or the game would never reach half time as they demand a check on every dubious throw-in award.

The only arguments against such an action revolve around money. Its not good tv. The players are the Gods, even though they act like scum. They cheat, they dive, they are horrible.

So don’t moan about poor refereeing when it really is so pathetically simple to change the whole culture and improve the standards whilst protecting the refs at the same time. I can’t understand why the footballing authorities are so ignorant and stupid. There again, they awarded Qatar the World Cup in 2022, so we can’t really expect much sense from them.

Happy Sunday, (Man United at Liverpool; Chelesa vs Hull; the classico this evening, busy day for Mel)

A xxxx

You ask two people where they live, say, at a party. One says: “I live in Penge”, the other: “I’m domiciled in the UK for tax purposes”, could you guess which one is the hedge fund manager? Yes, right once more, all hedge fund managers love Penge. Even though 9 out of 10 couldn’t find it on a map of Penge. Also, no self-respecting hedge fund dude would EVER be domiciled here when places like Monaco, Geneva and the Caymans still stand and can reduce their personal tax liability by 80%.

Yet Ed Miliband has managed to find a hedge fund manager who not only still ‘lives round ‘ere’, but also one who supports the Labour party and has in fact bunged £600,000 its way over the last few years.

But rather than use this Martin Taylor guy as a shining example that not all hedge fund managers are total bastard, tax-avoiding, exploitative, capitalist shit-head, selfish, greedy, poor-bashing, child-labour-employing rapists, our Ed just kept him very quiet whilst still claiming all of the above for hedge funders and in fact using the term as a euphemism for ‘almost criminal Tories’.

Which, of course, makes Ed look almost as stupid, clueless and hapless as he did eating his famous bacon sandwich.

Yeah, well all hedge fund managers are total and unrelenting bastards, except our one.

Right.

Some people have issues with wealthy labour supporters. They simply can’t reconcile having personal wealth or extensive business interests with a level of compassion and selflessness that the Labour package theoretically brings. Like paying more tax, both corporate and personal, in order to perhaps increase benefits and services for those who don’t drive round in chauffeur-driven Bentleys. Or whose children don’t go to Eton. Or get pregnant at 13.

I want a better life for everyone in this country. I want a health service ‘free at the point of delivery’, I want good schools for every child, housing for everyone, blah, blah, blah. I just don’t want to pay for it all myself. Or watch the hapless economists Labour seem to employ piss all the money away without ever reaching the place its most needed.

So much as the whole pre-election business is about core values of ‘austerity versus increased taxation’, you have to think a little further. Beyond the principles, which are noble, and on to the reality of what those dimwits will actually do with the money they save or tax once they get into power. Squander it on a health service which is the biggest and most tragically inefficient organisation in the world. Or ‘lack of organisation’ in the world, having thrown away £2 billion on an ‘integrated computer system’ that doesn’t work. Yet still had to be paid for in full.

So Martin Taylor is ‘domiciled in the UK for tax purposes’ because he chooses to be so. 99.9% of the rest of us just live here by quirk of fate and birth. And taxes. And I am all in favour of you paying as much tax as its possible to squeeze out.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx