Andy's Glasses

They’re introducing 20mph speed limits on numerous roads in London. What would Clarkson say about that? If he wasn’t in jail (metaphorically) and persona non-grata, he’d be yelling about the freedom to drive dangerously, about the inalienable right of every man to drive as fast as his Ferrari can possibly go, how the namby-pamby tossers at Westminster should leave the fucking motorists alone. If we all drive at 20 all the time we might as well all be Prius drivers now that gay marriage is legal. But he can’t say all that. So I have to say it on his behalf.

Though its the reasons for this imposition that I’m concerned about. Its ‘to save cycling deaths’. Because we have many. Too many. Well, (as a cyclist myself), one is too many. And we don’t have one, we have hundreds in London and its awful. So those in charge, as opposed to those who actually know, have decided that if you slow traffic down that will reduce cycling deaths. Like fitting dentures to prevent Ebola. It looks like ‘something is being done!!’ but obviously not the right thing.

Virtually all cycling accidents occur when trucks and other big vehicles are turning left with a cyclist unseen on the inside. The average speed of a vehicle of that size and weight whilst turning left is about 8mph. Very few cycling accidents are caused in or by fast moving traffic. I’m sure there are some.

All that is achieved by slowing down the traffic, even more than it slows itself down almost all of every day on every road, is increased driver frustration, anger and subsequent irrational behaviour. So for every one minor cycling accident you may prevent, you’ll create 10,000 unexploded bombs in the form of erratic, angry road-ragers.

What they should do is build cycle paths. Like they have even in third world countries like France. Somewhere for cyclists that motorists can’t reach.

Alternatively, my own fear whilst cycling, my source of terror as I pedal to the station in the mornings is women driving massive four-by-fours to take little Jessica, alone in the vastness of the back seat, to school. These women are dangerous, clueless and aggressive. And if that sounds in any way sexist, IT FUCKING SHOULD.

Happy Birthday to Mel

A xxxx

We need to talk about Jose. The Morinho one. Little Portuguese feller. Works for Chelsea.

And the question is: pretty much as always: is he an inspirational footballing genius with revolutionary ideas and a quite truly amazing track record, or just a moaning little tosser who only sings when he’s winning and is the stand-out worst loser in the entire history of our national game, preferring to destabilise his own team rather than accept any responsibility on his own rather pathetic little shoulders?

Is his obsession with pre-match ‘mind-games’ his greatest asset or the route to his demise?

Chelsea played PSG on Wednesday night. In case you missed that bit. They already had that precious ‘away goal’ from the first leg in Paris. So all they needed was to not lose. Or not draw at home by more than 1-all. That’s all. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently so. Because Morinho has always been rather schizophrenic in his management style. Always been 2 managers. One is the bus parker. His really true comfort zone. He first used the phrase ‘to park the bus’ in accusation of others (see; bad loser, above). Yet from his early managerial days at Porto he has consistently been guilty of doing just that. Piling on a massed defence and hoping to score the odd goal on the break, never compromising the strength in numbers staying deep. The other manager is the creative one. The one who has at his disposal the best players that dirty Russian laundered money can buy and he lets them run wild and free. Eden Hazard, Diego Costa, Willian, Cesc Fabregas. Oscar…

So playing at home and starting at 1-1 for the second leg gives Morinho a problem. Do you defend the ‘lead’ that the away goal bestows upon you? Or go for broke and actually try to win the game, put the tie to bed, but leaving inevitable holes if you do??

Before the game there has to be the inevitable mind-fuck session with Jose accusing everyone from opponents to referees, from schedules to conspiracy theories, of bias against his players. And then there’s the culture of ‘gamesmanship’. Which is very different from cheating. In that what WE do is gamesmanship, what THEY do is cheating. Ahhhhh, now I see.

So Chelsea get Zlatan Ibrahimovic sent off after a tackle on Oscar in which the skanky little Brazilian lived up to his name with the performance. Then all the Chelsea players, as they always do, mug the referee into sending the opponent off. They always try. John Terry’s protestations that ‘he was just being the peacemaker and all the rest of his boys followed’ is as pathetic as it is transparent.

Ok, PSG down to 10 men; we can just sit back and relax, other than a few cursory forays and a hell of a lot of ‘gamesmanship’.

Didn’t work. They drew 2-all. Away goals still counted double, so Chelsea go out of the Champions League and Morinho immediately blames his lacklustre players.

Chelsea are still horrible. Morinho’s still a tosser. Plus ca change.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

The National ‘Elf Service is apparently inundated with people… errrrr… with people… turning up demanding to be… to be… to be… to be checked for possible altzheimers. They forget where they put the car keys and so immediately take a… errrr, black thing… light on the top… yeah, take a taxi to the hospital requesting testing for… dammit… for… for dementia. Its costing the NHS millions, causing 6-month waiting lists and fucking it up for genuine sufferers who can’t get appointments.

Everyone suffers from… errrr… from memory loss with advancing age. Fact. Only a very unlucky few develop dementia, of which alzheimers is the most common. And the most devastatingly horrible.

So I can only assume that this sudden rush of suspected cases is people who have just been to see the film ‘Still Alice’. The Oscar winning performance by Juliette Moore as a relatively young woman with altzheimers. Because when you leave the cinema after that, you are convinced you have all the symptoms. Mel & I left the film last night, got in the car, once we remembered where we’d parked it, and cruised the streets of South Hampstead looking for a hospital. But couldn’t remember where they were.

The acting in the film, from Ms Moore, from Alec Baldwin, even from Kristen Stewart, for once leaving her role as vampire-whore, is fantastic. Its a ‘good’ film, even an important film. But its just not a nice film. On the criteria that you come out from that movie and start making suicide pacts. You talk about death, dying and depression. It does give you a slight insight into the nature of that horrendous illness. But not much you didn’t know before.

Though obviously degenerative illness is a big Oscar winner this year, generally.

Clarkson’s disease is different altogether. Its a condition that, if you’re unlucky enough, you are born with. It makes you funny, a bit nasty, ever so belligerent, opinionated, stroppy, offensive as a way of life and terribly aggressive. The only known cure is death by Argentinian hit-squad or being sacked by the BBC. It turns out that the hotel catering for the day’s filming failed to prepare a ‘proper’ meal and offered Mr Clarkson a cheese plate. Cheese???? If they’d have just thrown a slab of raw meat at him it would have all been fine, I’m sure. But a cheese plate? DO I FUCKING LOOK FRENCH?????

And however much we all love Jeremy Clarkson, how would you feel if your husband/wife/child came home from work and told you they’d been punched by the boss for some minor bit of nothing? It is just plain wrong. And to make matters worse for the man, he was seen at Chelsea last night. Oh dear.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

How did we ever become so celebrified? Why is ‘celebrity’ the most sought after, the most revered, the most… most celebrated thing in modern society? Whassit all abaaart?

The front page of the Times today, like this one on the Mirror (but I couldn’t find a nice pic of the Times, its too hi-brow to go banding its cover all over the web, or too slow, perhaps), features the winner of the ‘ugliest man in Britain’ competition. Ok, it actually features Jeremy Clarkson. An official ‘national treasure’. But why on the front page of virtually every national paper? When there’s an election coming up in two months time, which is fairly important, when ISIS are using children to perform their executions now, the world has gone to shit, the economy is wavering and Real Madrid lost at home? So why Clarkson? Because he’s gorgeous? A face made for radio would be a good description. No, its because he’s a ‘celeb’ and therefore he trumps all else.

But despite the fact that it should be a little snippet at the foot of page 8, just under the dog-poisonings at Crufts, what is all the fuss about?

Jeremy Clarkson is a great journalist. Who has elevated himself into a pantomime dame of a bad-boy for the sake of the world’s most successful ‘factual’ tv programme, Top Gear. He plays a role. They all do. And Jeremy’s role is the ‘vox populii’ He says the things that we’d all like to but feel restrained by things like ‘decency’ and ‘suitability’ and ‘appropriateness’. Clarkson feels no such constraint in his role. He says what he thinks; gives it straight, calls a spade a spade. Or on one occasion, much worse. And now, buoyed by the rough, raucous, up-market-thuggish persona he has so long cultivated, he punched his tv producer in what the BBC (bless them) called ‘a fracas’. Pretentious tossers. Because the producer failed to provide food on the set for after filming. And Jeremy looks like he’s starving, doesn’t he? But maybe the producer guy is obnoxious, and deserved of a bitch-slap from Le Clarkson, but who knows. Jeremy was already ‘on a warning’ and thus went 3-and-out. Though only suspended as you don’t really want to bite the hand that feeds you, and Top Gear does generate more income than Gardener’s Week or Songs of Praise. Even combined!!!

I actually like the ‘Jeremy Clarkson’ that I read and watch. He’s anti-PC and for that alone he is refreshing. But he also is an outspoken justifier of selfish bastards who drive gas guzzling petrol monsters. And there are far too few of those around. In fact he is the living embodiment of the right of free speech. Though possibly he takes that freedom a touch too far.

This will only make him stronger.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I might as well get in the queue now for the i-watch. Where should I stand? Which sleeping bag should I take? How many weeks do I need to take off work so I’m first in line?

I don’t need one. I don’t want one. But on the basis that I didn’t want or need an ipad and now can’t live without it and if a burglar wanted to take it I’d give him one of my children instead; ANYTHING but the ipad, then at some time I’ll ‘need’ an i-watch.

Don’t know why. It doesn’t do anything my current stuff does rather well. I can already tell the time on many devices we have, one of them which already occupies that very space on my wrist. I can already pick up texts and emails on computers, phones and ipad.

Ahhh, but this watch tells you your heart-rate and how many calories you’re burning. Oh, great, so as I watch Sunday afternoon football, slobbed out on the couch with a few beers, six packets of cheesy wotsits and a bumper pack of Waitrose jam doughnuts, I can watch the screen accelerate up the minus scale causing even greater depression than the football alone normally does. Apparently, after 800 calories taken in the watch displays: STOP FUCKING EATING YOU FAT BASTARD!!!!! ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!

I don’t need that.

The watch can tell you how far you’ve travelled (to the kitchen and back), it has a GPS tracker to tell you ‘HERE YOU ARE; JUST WHERE YOU’RE STANDING’, and it has i-pay. That canny device that allows you to pay people. From your sodding watch. Only works in America for now, the land where they still don’t even have chip’n’pin. Though they don’t need it. To counteract fraud over there they have guns. But we’ll have i-pay here soon. So every time you walk past a bus or a tube station, you’ll be throwing a few quid at all the machines without either knowing it or needing it. You’ll be paying for other people’s lunches as you stroll past Pret and buying all manner of things for the good of others just because you forgot to close the app. Its a very altruistic watch with a great range.

It also ‘taps’ you on the wrist when you get a message. So every time you’re offered a PPI claim or penis extension, you get a 450 volts through your arm. Feels a bit like a minor heart attack but you’ll get used to it. Or have a heart attack.

So bring it on. Where do I sign. Get me 2 because the claimed ’18-hour’ battery life will realistically mean ’20 minutes’ and even if its true, how can I go 6 hours every day without it?

Happy Friday. Sorry, must set the watch properly.

A xxxx

There’s a new programme on tv. Another competition. Songs ain’t enough. Voices ain’t enough. X-factor karaoke shit-heads is insufficient. Bakers. Chefs. Dancers. Britain’s got (very little) Talent. Maggot-eaters in Australia. Apprentices. Never enough.

So they’re doing one on artists. Painters. The next Chagall. A future Constable. Rembrandt for the Facebook generation.

I know this to be so because it came on after the news yesterday and I caught the title as I made a mad dash for the remote in case I happened to see even 4 seconds of such shite. Because that’s all it takes to get addicted. And I don’t need no more addictions. Having finally kicked the crack habit, ditched the crystal meth and watched the finale of last season’s Bake Off, I’ve been clean for 5 months, 2 weeks, 4 days.

What is so obsessive about competitions? Who really gives a shit that Ben’s pastry is a bit flat at the edges whereas J’Mal’s cover of Ain’t no mountain high enough was right out there and he gave it everything? Made it his own? I don’t care.

I’d rather they did away with all these talent competitions and just better spent the tv space by showing re-runs of Top Gun, Terminator I and II, The Graduate, Transformers (or absolutely anything else with Megan Fox), Kill Bill and the 1981 Cup Final Replay. Proper tv.

But competitions are the formula that tv companies see as easy and cheap ways to get viewers. Give them a cheap hit, an easy ‘high’ and they’ll come back begging for more, again and again. Like smoking skunk. And just like that, tv competitions can make you psychotic. Can lead to serious mental health issues.

Such as total fucking stupidity. Or perhaps you need that to watch them the first time. Which came first: the idiot or Celebrity Come Dancing on Ice?

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Every day I count my blessings. And then I count the good reasons for not going to Birmingham.

There’s never exactly a good reason for going to the ‘2nd City’ (phah! Chicago it ain’t) but I just like to make long lists of great reasons not to go there. Just in case I get the urge. And yesterday was Cruft’s dog show at the NEC. The 97th good reason of the day for not going to Birmingham. Great. I’ll stay here then. Where I belong.

And see what football might be on tv, as it was FA Cup quarter final day. Oooh, there we are, 5.30, Aston Villa playing West Brom. Local derby. All Brum affair. They’d played each other at Villa Park on Wednesday night in the league, Villa won (their first game in about 4 years) and then faced the Baggies again a few days later under the FA Cup banner.

So the West Brom fans walked to Villa Park; they aren’t allowed to drive, especially as most are drunk most of the time, and it wasn’t worth ‘splashing out’ the £1.20 for bus fare when, if you left early enough, there were 26 pubs to visit on the way.

Villa were 2 nil up. And when they scored their second goal some bunch of morons invaded the pitch in celebration. Then, at the end of the match, in injury time, an even bigger crowd of even bigger morons invaded once more. And this being Birmingham, the stewards couldn’t do much, the controls were pathetic and it all harked back to 1976 when such stupidity was rife. And why are they morons?? Because if people do pitch invasions, there’s a good chance the match will be abandoned by the ref, if there’s danger to players. And if you happen to be the winning team at the time, that’ll cost you a win and you’ll start again, another time, probably behind closed doors. So intelligent morons only invade pitches when their team are losing. Not winning.

Anyway, that was all quite by the by as the main event of the day happened 100 miles to the south at Loftus Road. Where once again, King Harry showed why he is unquestionably the best player in the country at the moment. As he beat QPR 2-1. Rangers feel they were unjustly denied two stone-wall penalties. But that’s only if you consider handballs preventing goals and flooring strikers with the ball no-where near to be penalty offences. I’m not convinced.

And it doesn’t matter. 3 points is what matters and so it was job done.

Just a mention of the top of the Championship where, with 10 matches left to play, there are 4 teams on 66 points and one on 65. Amazing. If I cared about the Championship I might even be excited about that. But all I care about is Spurs, and Harry Kane. Now he is a blessing.

Happy Blessed Sunday

A xxxx

That is the headline in Today’s Times magazine. Are men the new women? And what the fuck is that supposed to mean? That we lactate? Forget how to park the car? Say ‘no more naan bread for me, six is more than enough, and I’ll pass on another beer too’?? But they don’t exactly explain where the question comes from. Although the magazine edition is filled with how men can, dress ‘stylishly’, how they can diet like a motherfucker and how to ‘detox’, get fit, grow a six-pack and paint their sodding toe-nails. Its an instruction manual in metrosexuality. Otherwise known as ‘what to do if you haven’t come out of the closet yet’. They even have the great Zinedine Zidane modelling clothes. The man whose last act of note was head-butting Marco Materrazzi. He’s obviously not thick enough to become a football pundit. Or speaks too clearly.

Coincidentally, and just to stress how nothing is ever new, last night’s BBC4, Mel’s asleep on the sofa, offering was The New Romantics. And it was brilliant. Not the music, that was pretty much total shite, all synthesisers and drum machines with a couple of nobs wearing plumage and too much make-up lolling around mumbling in the background. But the concept. New Romantic. Wow. Though in fact it was more New Androgyny. Take a man, some yob, like Boy George perhaps, dress him as a woman, give him high heels, a stupid hairstyle, a bucketful of eye-liner and call him a ‘New Romantic’. Rather than ‘a tosser’ which you’d rather call him other than his boxing prowess. And it all started at Blitz in Covent Garden. The place where you could go and act like a transvestite.

Men like ‘Marylin’ and Steve Strange (in name, nature and dress), and George, ran the place and it was odd. A fancy dress party every night. For people who didn’t change back into regular clothes in the daytime. Spandau Ballet started there, Tears for Fears and a whole host of electro-synth rubbish un-musicians who craved stardom like an addict craves heroin or like I crave Cadburys. Even Midge Ure came all the way from Scotland, a rare bit of talent in a sea of preening, posing tone-deaf imbeciles.

So men acting as women is nothing new. Dressing as women. Been around years. But becoming the new women? Not for ‘this’ man. As I have to go and change my stockings due to a snag.

Happy gender confused Saturday

A xxxx

We’re having an election. In my country. To find a new government. In May. And we shall replace this current coalition with a proper government. Fit to rule over England. And possibly some of Scotland (for the time being), a bit of Wales and small pieces of Ireland. And as the general consensus is that all politicians are pants and that the only way to engage the massive number of young voters who really don’t give a shit about elections because they don’t happen on Facebook, is to hold a ‘televised debate’, in the hope that some people might watch it and become fascinated by our charismatic and powerful party leaders, (who????) that’s what we shall do.

Its an American concept. Its show-biz. Razzmatazz. You put a Republican candidate against a Democrat and you let them rip each other apart on live tv. Its good viewing, its gladiatorial and it works. Over there. In America.

Here we are ‘blessed’ with a more proper and pure form of democracy. Rather than the choice of two, coin-toss style of US politics. In the UK you don’t need to be a member of a mainstream political party to become prime minister. You can be represent the ‘Preserve the Hedgehogs’ party and if it has enough candidates in enough seats, in theory you can become prime minister and run the nation. We have Socialist Worker parties, clutching their little red Mao Tse Tung books. We have the BNP who can’t read but are great at making symbols that aren’t swastikas but kind’a look like they could be. We have the Monster Raving Loony party, who field hundreds of candidates every election. We have Wind Farm Alliance parties, we have Save the Whales parties, all kinds of poor, misguided nutters. We even have a Scottish Nationalist Party.

And thus David Cameron, so outspoken last election about how Gordon Brown ‘must’ engage in a televised pre-election debate, how it would be cowardly otherwise, what is Gordon afraid of, etc, etc, now this time seems to be wimping out. He doesn’t want a ‘main party leader debate’ like they had last time. Its arguable that the Lib-Dems are no longer a ‘main party’ despite being in co-government. So Dave’s solution is that rather than him and Milliband shouting it out limply before the entire nation, the debate should be ‘seven-cornered’, and have leaders from the Green Party and Plaid Cymru and all manner of everyone… except the Ulster Democrats. The Scots, the Welsh, even frikkin UKIP are in but the Northern Irish are out. And not on the most logical reason that no-one can understand a fucking word any of them say.

Because so many people live in a world in which nothing really exists unless its on tv, which is tragic but so true, televised debate would seem to be the way to go. Cameron reckons ‘there’s no time’. But actually, Dave, there’s plenty of time. Man up. Go on the telly with Ed. Show us what’cher made of.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

10 games to go.

Just 10. Or 11 if you’re Spurs. Chelsea too have 11 to play. As do Leicester. But if Leicester were given another 15 as well, they’d still end up bottom.

And now we have ‘predictions’. Ok, we’ve been having them all season. Chelsea ‘won the league’ back in November really. Then got hammered by Spurs on New Year’s Day but otherwise they’re pretty unstoppable. Yes, they could ‘slump’, they could ‘have a bad streak’, much like Jihadi John might become a nurse for a Christian charity. Unlikely.

In one prediction yesterday, based on loads of (meaningless) statistics, Chelsea indeed will end top, with Manchester City 2nd, Arsenal 3rd. And…

Liverpool 4th.

Its all about that hallowed ‘top 4 place’, entry to the Champions League, the path to glory, to riches, to Nirvana.

Aussie Johnno knows fuck all about football, but loads about statistics. So he produced a ‘prediction’ based not on feelings and emotions (as my predictions are) but on pure numbers, patterns, likelihoods. Because he’s like a Rain Man for the digital age. And he predicted the same top 3 but…

Manchester United 4th.

I made a prediction on what would be predicted. And that was wrong too. Because its all about assuming some kind of regularity, consistency, normality, and football just ain’t like that. Its very rare for results to run pretty much true to form, as happened last night. There were no surprises in 7 matches. All went with the odds. A good night for the bookies. And for the predictors.

I even predicted that Johnny Evans and Pappas Cisse would gob in each other’s faces. The grossest thing to happen in football since Suarez took his teeth to Spain.

So here is my very own prediction for the league. Based on many tests and methods of analysing variance, loaded for the sheer volume of unpredictability inherent in the nature of the game, taking into account possible injuries, people fainting on the pitch, attacks of diarrhoea and suspensions for under-age sex.

1. Spurs… 97 points (some may say impossible, I say: never limit your aspirations)
2. Liverpool… 84 points
3. Manchester City… 82 points
4. Southampton… just enough points to squeeze in
.
.
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18. Arsenal… 14 points (after deductions following a child abuse scandal in April)
19. Chelsea… 12 points (if only)
20. QPR… (sadly, nothing can save them)

(West Ham are banished to League 2 because of financial improprieties, never to return)

Happy Thursday

A xxxx