Andy's Glasses

So Matt Taylor, the man responsible for sending a ‘lander’ the size of a washing machine on a comet, 370 million miles away and traveling faster than any speed camera could hope to detect, after a 10 year voyage to get there, is in shame. After achieving the most amazing scientific feat of several generations, he is in the shit because of a shirt. This shirt. The ‘sleeves’ are him, not the shirt.

Because Matt Taylor is not exactly your stereotypical boffin. He’s not a bow-tie kind of a professor. He doesn’t do the Einstein look, nor the wheelchair and voice-box now favourite among the physicist classes. He’s a heavy metal guy who happens to be a genius at space-stuff. And he likes tattoos. What would be known as an ‘individual’. But the shirt caused outrage because it depicts scantily-clad women in suggestive poses. And that, according to his detractors, makes him almost a rapist. No better than Ched Evans or Jimmy Savile. A predatory sex-fiend who should be castrated then locked up for a very very long time, then registered on the Sartorial Offenders List forevermore. Amen.

Because that shirt is what’s known in fashion circles as ‘well dodgy’. A bit tacky. Awfully lairy. Hawaiian style shirts generally are an affront to mankind and the brighter they get does nothing to help their cause.

But its a shirt. A fucking shirt. Not a political statement. Not a dig at womankind. Not a mission policy. That it has pictures of cartoon babes scantily clad and in chains, holding guns and ‘pouting with menace’ does not make it evil. Its fun. Its funny. And its ironic. Would these detractors be happier if Matty wore a ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ t-shirt, made by slaves in Mauritius? Just because the sentiment is so ‘on message’? Even though they’re female slaves working 100-hour weeks for $2.50. That’s ironic.

And Matt’s shirt is ironic. 90% of t-shirt slogans are ironic. Clothes can be ironic, as can perceived ‘statements’. Sadly, Americans just don’t ‘do’ ironic. Even Alanis Morrisette (ok, Canadian, American, whatever) missed the point in about three quarters of her famous song. Thus we must assume that these proto-feminist fascist gorillas (that’s ironic, don’t complain, more importantly, don’t hit me) are Americans, thus immediately miss the point completely and go into attack mode. Well keep yer Doc Martens on, gels, its only a joke.

I hate political correctness when its used at the expense of wit. What a dull fucking world these people aspire to.

Though it is a world in which England, once again, showed Scotland who is the boss(es). Stunning display by Rooney et al. I’ve always loved the man. Always. I bet he wears wife-beater vests.

Happy wednesday

A xxxx

Its Tuesday. Bridge night chez nous. Ever since Mel decided, about 5 years ago that playing the beautiful (card) game is the only sure way to stave off all forms of dementia and… well, I’m sure there was something else, its gone now. Where was I?

So we play bridge. We had lessons then became world masters (ish) and now play untutored and for the game I’ve grown to love. But tonight there’s no bridge. Mel has a work thing. Thus I’m ‘free’. And coincidentally (because the FA don’t have my bridge schedule, I’m pretty sure) England are playing Scotland at football tonight at Celtic Park. Ohhhhhhh. That’s big. Ish. I could recline myself on the sofa, pour myself a large something or other and watch the game. The tv is mine. And mine alone.

But I’m going to go to Tai Chi instead.

Because even though England haven’t played Scotland for years, and they are the ‘Auld enemy’ or whatever, and they faiiled to secure independence and we hold their entire nation in total contempt, its a ‘friendly’ and thus becomes a fairly meaningless exercise. The managers will try new things, will tinker with the teams, use unlimited substitutions to work out partnerships that may be beneficial in ‘proper’ matches. Or it will be an exhibition match. It means nothing. Thus it will be devoid of passion, of emotion, of meaning and purpose. Its like playing bridge with all the cards facing upwards. Its like having sex with someone unconscious. Though that has at least some merits, as Ched Evans would agree. ‘Friendly’ football has none.

Which is why tonight Old Trafford will be half empty. When playing there will be Portugal and Argentina. Featuring; the two, the only, the magnificent, the godly, incredible, outstanding… best players in the world. Messi and Ronaldo will face each other (like they do about 15 times a year in the very very meaningful Spanish league) on the international stage. And truly international, as I’m fairly sure that Old Trafford is part of neither Argentina nor Portugal. To my knowledge. If an army of Argies had laid siege to Manchester, I like to think I’d have known that. Captured the city and claimed it as their own. Though its safe to think that they wouldn’t want Manchester. No-one wants Manchester, its just kind of ‘there’.

And yes, Messi and Ronaldo are beyond wonderful, but if they play, for how long? Managers hate friendlies too. Meaningless exercises that cause injury and lose them players.

But to engage the fans there needs to be something at stake. Old rivalries aren’t sufficient when it counts for nought. The old home internationals were fabulous. Then they stopped them. Yet they had meaning, as they do in rugby.

Friendly Internationals? I’d rather go duck hunting.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx

Susannah Constantine is a tv presenter. Talks about clothes. Bitches about other women’s sortorial faux pas. I’ve never watched her. Until she learns to kick a football, becomes a man and puts on a Spurs shirt (and trust me; we’ve fielded worse, much worse), I have no interest in her tv antics.

But yesterday I read an article by her and I’m growing a new respect for this woman who initially found fame by dating a minorish royal for a few years.

Then she and Viscount Linley split up (I was devastated) and she married someone else and had child/children. Nice.

Her daughter is now 11. And, being ‘country folk’, the daughter was taken on her first duck shoot (sounds like a Marks Brothers movie, but that was Duck Soup, and was even funnier than killing ducks) at which the daughter managed to kill a duck or two with her shotgun. Good for her. Susannah, steeped in country tradition and rural culture, ‘blooded’ her daugher by putting a dab of the dead ducks blood on her face. Which to us townies seems a bit pagan, a touch Rambo, a symbolic act not out of place in Seven Samurai. But which passes for ‘normal’ in the big green bits outside the M25.

And there is big brouhaha about this. Big one.

Accusation of encouraging murder, duckicide, of teaching children to kill. As if today’s duck hunter is tomorrow’s high school shoot-em-up perp.

We have similar customs in the Cities. When my daughter first bought a piece of beef from Tescos, we tore off a bit of the cling-film and stuck it on her forehead.

Yet ‘duck-gate’ is the new fox hunting, so it would appear. On the radio yesterday afternoon some guy (read: ‘tosser’) called in to have his say. Which was that killing all animals is wrong. Become a vegan. All killing is murder. Blah, blah, blah, and missed the point by a country mile. This is not about the perceived morality of eating meat. Its about kids actually learning what meat really is. That is was once part of some animal. That in some ways it is sustainable. That killing ‘free range’ animals is perhaps much more acceptable than factory farming. And most importantly, its about the right to perform perfectly legal activities, put food on the table and educate your children without a bunch of fascists moaning that its not politically correct and that ducks have ‘human rights’ too. Actually, they don’t.

I’ve never been on a fox hunt, nor shot a duck. But if that’s what people in the countryside choose to do, its surely a better use of their time than incest. It controls otherwise saturated animal populations and feeds the good folk in the rurals.

As for the horror of ‘putting a gun in the hands of a child!!!!!’, she was supervised (obviously) and guns are part of country life. So teach ’em young and teach ’em well. Guns aren’t dangerous. People are dangerous. Surely better to be taught the appropriate time and place to use a shotgun than sitting a child in front of a ‘first-person-shooter’ video game for six hours, like most vegan parents do. Possibly.

Susannah’s only real ‘crime’ was to post a picture of the blooded daughter on instagram. Some things are best kept within the cultures that understand them.

Happy monday

A xxxx

I hate to keep blaiming Gwyneth Paltrow for all the evils on the planet but she’s right up there with ISIS and Arsenal when it comes to the ruination of our culture. In this specific case its food. Or ‘not food’. Her (and others, but I prefer to have a focus for my scorn, preferably a rather fit, blond one) insistence on the corruption of our diets has now resulted in a spate of ‘organic’, ‘holistic’, even ‘homeopathic’ restaurants and food styles. Now, not content with dairy-free, gluten-free, taste-free food, the new way is ‘paleo’.

Paleo? Yeah, ya nob, P-A-L-E-O. As in ‘palaeolithic’. But for Americans who can’t spell proper. Because this fad is about going back to a time before wheat and corn had been cultivated, the single most cataclysmic event towards the death of the planet. Apparently. Before that no-one touched bread, (obviously), sugars, or pizza. Just roots and free-range veg.

So they’re actually opening restaurants which are completely ‘gluten-free’ and ‘paleo’. So you go in, get a plate of raw carrots and turnips, unpeeled, I sincerely hope, eat them presumably accompanied by some Ganges-water, unfiltered, uncleaned and filled with bacteria, which is, after all, free range and organic. Thank you Sir, that’ll be £72.90 + 15% service.

For a fucking turnip.

You can go to Waitrose and buy it yourself for 42p and ‘prepare’ it. Ahhh, but no-one puts a raw carrot on a plate like Luigi.

Make mine a double cheeseburger with extra cheeseburgers on the side.

Wayne Rooney is 100 years old today. Oh, he’s not, he’s celebrating the hundredth time he’ll be sent off for being a nasty, shitty, petulant, swearing little fucker. Or maybe its his 100th cap.

So Roy Hodgson has been raving about his captain all week. Which, to be honest, is probably good for England football, but not so great for honesty when he says that ‘Rooney will be remembered as a legend like Bobby Charlton’.

Rooney will doubtless end up with more caps than Sir Bobby; he’ll probably score more goals by that time too. But that’s where the similarities end. Rooney consistently underperforms for England, much like he does for Man United. He struggles to score goals. He gets sent off. Though his temper seems slightly more under control these days, he’s still always gobbing off at referees.

Bobby Charlton played from when he was 3 years old til his retirement when he was 82. He scored shitloads, never lost his temper, always delivered the goods and was the best player England ever produced. Wayne Rooney is not fit to clean his boots, never mind fill them.

Happy whatever day Sky see fit to repair the broadband-day

A xxxx

“Can I just plug my charger in somwhere; my phone’s gone dead”.

No you can’t. Fuck off. You think electricity’s free? “Yes, of course you can, Michael, in fact let me make you a cup of tea and I’ll service your phone for you too; delete the obselete apps, enhance the screen, upgrade the battery and abuse your twitter account”.

Its a fact of life. Phones ‘die’. All the sodding time. The better they become, the more sophisticated, the more complex and all-consuming, the lower the battery life. All that R&D invested into making phones into computers, into control centres for people’s lives, and yet they’re all limited by the charge they can hold. “I can switch on my central heating at home from my phone, and record Eastenders and wash the car remotely, all from a new app”. No you can’t. Cos you’re battery’s dead.

I reckon we spend up to 87% of our lives with something or other ‘on charge’. Don’t ask me how I calculated that, you’re not bright enough to follow, just trust me, 87%.

Why can’t they just invent a new battery? One that is the size of a pound coin and could power a Prius for a month? In fact they could if they would just use nuclear power. But we’d all be dead from radiation poisoning as soon as we took the first pre-recorded call from Barlcays about our PPI claim. You can’t have it all.

Yet there are others with power issues too.

The quite amazing feat of landing a spacecraft onto the surface of a comet 317 million miles away (that’s measured from Marble Arch, presumably, if its from Sydney then deduct a bit… or add it on, depending on the time of year…). No-one’s done this before. Which I suppose is not a massive surprise. And it is a remarkable journey, which has taken 10 years and actually involved a traveled distance of over 2 billion miles. Not because they caught a cab and the driver conned them into a ‘short cut’ but because the craft had to go around gravitational fields of planets. And ended up in the right place at the right time and landed. Almost perfectly. Almost.

Because when the Philae landed on the comet’s surface, it ‘bounced’. Ooops. The bounce took several hours and the lander eventually came down next to a crater, in the shade of a cliff. A bit on its side. So its just like when your wife parks at Waitrose. But the problem is the ‘shade’ bit. Because the lander is solar powered. And in the shade there ain’t no sunshine. Michael Jackson told us that years ago. Prophet that he was. Or that Bill Withers was.

And this could be a modern tragedy. The most incredible feat of science thus far, fucked up by a flat battery. A metaphor for our times. And this is not just any old space project, but a proper, European one. Which, in this instance, and this one only, I’m prepared to include Britain as part of ‘European’. Don’t tell Nigel Farage.

Happy Friday; may your battery be permanently on 5 bars

A xxxx

It is with great relief and joy that we can today announce that the 2022 World Cup will, after all the controversy and scandal, indeed be played in Qatar. As originally voted, selected, elected and chosen in a very honest, uncorrupt and logical way, organised as ever, in the impeccable standards we’ve come to expect from FIFA, the world’s governing body for football. Following the Garcia investigation (ish) Sepp Blatter’s reputation is once again in tact and beyond any question and in fact the former Swiss wedding singer will now take his rightful place among the world’s best ‘leaders’, along with Kim Jong Un, Hitler and Prince Albert of Monaco. Don’t go changin’, Sepp, we love you just the way you are.

And the reasons for Qatar winning the bid are as valid today as they were when they first bought the vote in 2010.

1. Qatar is a lovely country. And rather rich, so the hotels for the footballers should be nice, in the understated, Dubai-style of 9-star, solid gold and marble establishments. The fans, and other impoverished scum, could sleep on the beaches, but its probably punishable by death. As is adultery, homosexuality, various other ‘crimes’ and drinking alcohol. Gonna be a fun World Cup for the fans. Who, to fill the void left by the usual 19 hours a day of boozing, can instead follow the calls to prayer, which occupy 20 hours a day. ‘Ilicit sexual relations’ are also punishable by death. This is defined as: ‘if you sleep with his wife, that’s fine; if you sleep with my wife, that’s ‘illicit.”

2. The weather’s really lovely. Clear and bright and dry and warm. And by ‘warm’ I don’t mean ‘you may need a cardigan at night’, I mean hotter than the fires of hell. Its a fucking desert. And it acts like one. 45 degrees at least all through the summer. And no humidity. Perfect conditions for bear-headed running around 90-mintues solid. Extra time could be another death penalty.

3. Qatar is a ‘footballing nation’. Famous Qatari players include…. errr… hmmm… and… well, its definitely a footballing nation because someone there likes football. And its nothing about just the prestige and respectability that comes with hosting a World Cup. And Qatar, who will field a team as the host nation haven’t had a national team qualify for the World Cup since… well, never. They didn’t previously possess an international stadium. They would play with ‘sweaters for goalposts’ but no-one in Qatar owns a sweater.

4. As the investigation confirmed, there was no corruption involved in the bidding process. The various ‘sponsorship’ deals that coincidentally occurred around the time of the voting, in which 7 new schools were funded in poor countries and 19 new private jets were purchased in lands where they don’t even have airports, was nothing to do with the bid.

5. The Qatari government has no part in the fact that the terrorist organisations of Hamas and Isis are both massively funded by Qataris. Though the government is powerless to stop this rot. They’ll cut your bollocks off in a second for having lewd thoughts about a camel, but the tracing of vast amounts of money and arms to criminal organisations is apparently beyond their capability.

And that’s just some of the many reasons why the 2022 World Cup will be in that lovely nation. Better start bottling water now.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

An Irishman walks into Spearmint Rhino one night. Rather, an Irishman staggers into Spearmint Rhino one night, blind drunk, and, remembering nothing of events the morning after, finds a credit card receipt from that worthy establishment, to the tune of £7,500. Its not a joke, but sure has a worthy punchline. Had he been sold a used car by some unscrupulous saleslady writhing on his lap wearing nothing but a thong? Did he buy a work of art? Some bespoke suits?? He couldn’t remember. He apparently had nothing to show for his expenditure other than the receipt which includes the signed (by him; or a very drunk version of him) acknowledgment that he is in ‘full control of his faculties’. Yeah, right. And the bill was for some booze, sure, but mainly for the tokens they sell to be used for ‘private dances’. He must have danced the night away. And all his mates on the stag party too, at his expense, and a majority of the rest of the fair town of Bournemouth, where this travesty occurred.

And thus he is suing Spearmint Rhino for ‘exploiting’ him when he really wasn’t in a fit state to make expensive decisions. And he has a point. Though not a very convincing one. And accusing Spearmint Rhino of being immoral is like accusing a petrol station of ruining the planet when you go to fill up your car. Its like complaining that the ISIS soldier beheading a prisoner wasn’t very smartly dressed.

Spearmint Rhino are in the business of exploitation. They exploit weakness and frailty. In a very overt way. They sell you drink to the point that you make ridiculous decisions arising in your gonads. And if, as they say, ‘a standing penis has no conscience’, if you couple that with ‘a drunken Irishman has no fucking sense, other than to impress the women, drink more and lay a credit card on the table’, then a fair picture of this tragic scenario takes shape.

What’s the shortest distance between a virtually naked hard-bodied, pneumatic babe and my lap? The answer: Seven and a half grand.

In an unrelated incident, Emmanuel Adebayor, Spurs (alleged) striker has spoken out that the recent dire fucking disgrace of what the team call ‘form’ of late, is due to the fans. They’re booing. And this booing has caused the team to become nervous, jittery and unsettled.

I’m not one of life’s booers. I don’t boo. I can do. I know how. I just choose not toooooooooo. But the fans are allowed to express their displeasure, their unease, their collective shame at what the players are doing in our name. Because its our club, not theirs. We pay them, we adopt them, we provide everything for them and all we want in return is some loyalty… oh, yeah, forgot, and some DECENT BLOODY FOOTBALL. Surely that’s not too much to ask. And its our club because they come and go. Managers certainly come and go. Owners, we wish would come and go more frequently, but its sadly not the case at the moment. Yet the fans are loyal. Stupid, daft, like a bunch of hapless, hopeless labrador puppies, because we are the club. Its all we know. And we can forgive missing open goals. And we can ignore fluffed passes, stupid fouls and any and all measure of ineptitude and catastrophe. But we can never forgive a complete lack of effort. We can’t forgive lethargy, tying bootlaces when a corner’s coming across and apathy.

The booing is not the cause of the terrible form. Its the result of it. My advice to the Togan Tosser, and all others who are honoured to wear ‘the shirt’ is MAKE A FUCKING EFFORT!. That’s all we ask. Its not the defeats that irk but the manner in which they’re conceded.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Saw a great movie last night. This is where I leave you. That’s what its called. And it was a preview as part of the London Jewish Film Festival. Because being Jewish is not just about chopped liver and bagels. Its not just about supporting Spurs (oyyyyyy; see later) and having opinions about everything. Its not even about praying. We get movies too. In this case, really great movies.

Its a film about a dysfunctional family, brought back together after the death of ‘the father’. And they can’t really stand each other, but they really love each other. Oh, its that kind of film. Yep, it is. And its great. Its from a book by Jonathan Tropper who is, undoubtedly, the funniest writer in the world. And he wrote the screenplay too, which is quite brilliant. Its Woody Allen in Hannah and her Sisters mode. Its a series of disasters, emotional rather than Towering Infernos, around this family, bringing back all the old rivalries, arguments and good feelings too, from their childhoods. Even Jane (fucking) Fonda, as ‘the mother’, can’t spoil this film. Its funny, heart-warming and great. Tina Fey is simply fantastic. Trust me; you don’t have to be Jewish.

Spurs are funny too. But not in such a heart-warming way. Only in a peculiarly unfunny way that is way more tragic than Towering Inferno. Because Shelley Winters and Carl Malden can’t save us this time. No-one can save us. Its Groundhog Day. Every week we play someone really insignificant; Uttoxter Town, Torremolenos, Cliftonville United, Zakinthos Zebras, and oddly, we win. Then the weekend comes when once again we face proper opposition, and we crumble and fold and lose. And its not like we’re playing ‘good’ teams. Just mid-table (or lower) mediocrity who should be the definition of ‘three easy points’. And we lose. Not that there’s ever any such thing as ‘three easy points’, but ya like ta think so. Arsenal thought so too, according to the most subdued Arsene Wenger everrrrrrrrrr, after their loss to Swansea that the Frenchman had been apparently banking on winning. Confidence? Complacency? Arrogance?? Whatever, they lost too. Banks collapse.

Even ‘my’ Bournemouth only managed a draw. Though it was against fellow top-of-the-tabler Middlesboro so ‘we’ can be pleased with that. Except sneaky fucking Derby County beat Wolves and leapfrogged both Boro and Bournemouth to the top. I should just become a Derby fan this week, but sadly ‘we have a history’ me and Derby. Going back many years, to the Brian Clough days when they thrashed us on a cold wet night down at the Lane, in the days when we stood for the match. And Roger Davies scored a hat-trick and he was a big fat lummox and I can never forgive them. Never.

That’s why we have movies; to help us forget the football. If only they lasted longer…

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Living in London brings certain responsibilities. Most importantly you must always avoid any of the big tourist attractions. Even though no person with any degree of sense or taste should ever visit Madame Toussauds, whatever their nationality, for Londoners it is an imperative that such a shallow, hollow, pathetic facsimile showing of humanity’s obsession with celebrity, should be avoided at all costs. And it costs a lot. The Tower of London is great, one of our ‘national treasures’ so long as you’re just looking at it as you drive past and don’t join the queue to enter. Sherlock Holmes’ house is the best, probably. Or rather, the house that is situated at the address randomly selected by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle for his fiction. “Yes, on the left you can see the bedroom where Sherlock would have slept if he’d been a real person. On the right is the room where Watson took a shit in ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Constipated Medic’ and that window facing the rear is where dastardly Moriarty would have fired his sniper shot if he’d been real, if Holmes had been real and if the building behind had 9 stories, which it doesn’t”.

The only tourist attraction I’m ever interested in is ‘tea’. High Tea. I know, its not a strictly ‘London’ thing, but it is to me. Because its better here, it has more history here, its nearer to me and its certainly much more expensive here. Normally.

Yesterday Mel & I ‘took’ tea (you don’t fucking ‘drink’ tea, ya pleb, you ‘take’ tea; Jesus, where was you brunged up???) at the Charlotte Street Hotel. And as well as wonderful, it was free. On the house. Gratis. Because the ‘tea’ we took a few months ago had ‘issues’ for Mel, so she complained (shock! surprise!! horror!!!! my wife complains…) and yesterday we took our freebie. And there may be posher places to take one’s tea; there are certainly way more expensive places where you can pay a hundred quid for two people to eat a scone and drink a pot of Tesco’s Red Label, but there’s certainly nowhere cooler than Fitzrovia’s fabbest hotel. And when they bring that layered tray over, filled with cakes and sandwiches and scones and buns, to me that is ‘the challenge’. It has to go. All of it. And it did. Well, mostly. And I felt sick. Really sick. But, in a good way.

Whereas Chelsea make me sick in a bad way. Though recently, I’m almost horrified to admit; its sick with a big dollop of admiration. They just win. Ok, except when they don’t. But that’s rare. And poor Liverpool (the absolute, undisputed, champion ‘victims’ in the entire world of football) are in a slump. Which they pretty much have been since about 1977 but most Liverpool fans seem to be under the illusion or delusion that they’re still the ‘world’s biggest team’.

Even more fun is watching Manchester City just crumble and fade. I used to only enjoy such sick schadenfreude whilst watching them in europe but now every league match they play is fun, fun, fun. If it wasn’t for the quite unbelievably brilliant Sergio Aguero, they’d be in the relegation zone.

Spurs have a massive game today. Massive. Stoke City. Who are so bad that on the rule that ‘we always lose at home to shit teams’, they will see little resistance from my absolutely dire team.

But hey, the sun’s shining and I’m still full of scones.

Happy sunday

A xxxx

Anjem Choudary, the hate-preacher and probable radicalising all-round horrible person, wants to go to ISIS. Not, as he claims, to ‘participate in terrorist acts’, but merely to live his dream of being in a Sharia state. Fine by me. I’ll start a whip-round for his ticket today. The man is pure evil and obviously belongs in a place where bombings occur nightly, if you survive the gunfire during the day. But there’s a problem. The government has confiscated his passport, so he can’t travel. So along with the whip-round, I’m starting to ‘let Anjem go’ campaign in tandem so this poor man can get his passport back so he can go to the Islamic State. Where he definitely belongs. What is wrong with this government? One evil fucker less, even a British one, within these shores, is good by me. And if the fact that he is a jihadist, make-Britain-sharia piece of vermin, if that’s not enough to deport him, the man’s a lawyer too. Some people plumb the depths.

Whilst others start from a higher point and manage to descend, all by themselves. Like Ed Miliband. Poor, hapless, hopeless leader of a Labour Party that hate him, have no confidence in him and would like to replace him but even in a party so full of ‘rock stars’ (phah) its only 6 months before a general election so timing would seem against them. And who do you elevate, even if you could which, under Labour rules, is so impossible they couldn’t even get rid of Gordon Brown without threatening him with death unless he resigned.

But what do you look for in a ‘leader’. Other than, perhaps, some leadership skills which Ed M seems to be so distanced from? They were debating this on the radio as I came home from Tai Chi this morning. With David (tosspot) Mellor (conservative party) saying that Miliband is a hapless nob, and Ken (asswipe) Livingstone (very very old Labour party) saying that Ed is just fine. Why? Because he’s not interested in what people think of him, only that they accept his ‘vision of the future’. Which unfortunately changes with such regularity that by the time they’ve written a manifesto its out of date. Ed doesn’t need to look good, sound good or even be any bloody good, according to Ken, who can empathise with all three of those missing traits. He just needs to have a clear view.

And this is true. If you’re a 70 year-old has-been communist with a whiny voice. But politics must change to reflect and appeal to the changes in society. A society which now demands a more youthful, vibrant leader who is media savvy, who makes the right noises and, most important, who instils confidence. Ed doesn’t tick too many of those boxes either. The ‘young’ of this fair nation spend their time in a digitalised world obsessed with image and soundbytes. A world where celebrity is revered. So surely even if leadership skills and a degree of engagement were not natural, the ability to act that way would be of benefit? Like David Cameron??

Maybe they should make Anjem Choudary the labour leader. At least he has a plan. Albeit a fairly abhorent one.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx