Andy's Glasses

If you stuck an electric heater in your bathtub, plugged in (both heater and bath), you’d die the death of 1000 volts. So how can it be safe to drive a Toyota Prius in the rain? Same thing surely? Water and electricity do in fact mix, but the results are nasty. If ever I have the misfortune of travelling in a Prius I always wear rubber gloves and shoes in case it rains. And I suggest you do too. I also wear a paper bag over my head in case anyone sees me. Not because I feel stupid, hypocritical and laughably pathetic in a ‘hybrid’ vehicle, but because the car is just so ugly. Where’s the rule that hybrid cars have to be ugly? Ok, its written in Japanese, which I don’t read, other than ‘maki roll’. But when Honda brought out their own hybrid, they read that rule and stuck to its every word, so the car is just a Prius with an ‘H’ on the back. And the Japanese word for ‘plonker’ does begin with an ‘h’.

This week BMW entered the eco-friendly world of the hybrid with their quite stunning I-8. Its gorgeous, fast, fabulous, costs a hundred grand, has gull-wing doors, all sorts of wonder stuff, and does 135 miles per gallon. Or thereabouts. Because its ‘mainly’ electric. Ok, electric. But its battery range is quoted as 22 miles. That’s from here to not very far away. About 22 miles away, in fact. Then you get out and push until you die, which, for the average human is probably 113 miles. The car will in fact go like a fucking rocket, but then you have to use petrol, which is burning old carbon, and no-one wants that, so no, its 22 miles then push. And those 22 miles of quiet, smug, ecologically viable, almost replenishable holier-than-thou-ism must feel wonderful. Then you plug it in and wait, whilst lesser cars fly past.

The second (maybe third, I lost count) law of thermodynamics states that energy can’t be created (unless you’re God, he can do what the fuck he wants) it can only be transferred from one form to another. Solar radiation can be converted into electricity, movement can be converted into heat, blah, blah, physics physics physics. So the electricity used to power a Prius, or even a BMW, comes out of a plug. And has been generated by burning coal. More old carbon, planet destroying shit.

So someone just came out with a brilliant idea. Cut out the middle man. Why burn old carbon stuff to produce electricity to power a car, when you can just pour other carbon stuff straight in and the car will just go? Like magic! And for hundreds of miles before you ‘recharge’ with more fossilised remnants.

What happens to the 22 miles if you turn on the lights? Or play the radio? Does it mean the added consumption reduces the range?? So you can travel 22 miles in pitch black silence, or 4 miles of booming stereo and dancing to your own light show. Or ‘headlights’ as they’re known.

Electric power is fine if its for enhancing the petrol engine’s output, driving extra wheels, improving performance. But as an end in itself; total waste of energy. Literally so.

Happy friday

A xxxx

If you’re obsessed with alcohol you’re an alcoholic. If its drugs, you’re an addict. Obsession with France is called Francophilia and if you’re obsessed with staring at the screen of a mobile phone you’re known as a Tosser. A total fucking tosser. Whereas someone who walks down a crowded London street in rush hour staring at a phone is known as an Absolute Dipshit. I have yet to learn what to call someone who is obsessed with other people staring constantly at phones and generally wishing them harm, though I’m toying with ‘Gorgeous’, ‘Saintly’ or ‘Me’. Staring at phones is an evil and incites violent tendencies in normally level, calm individuals and should be done seated or in private. Like while driving.

What about people obsessed with pets? They’re called Fish Fanciers, or Dog Lovers or Sheep Shaggers. And now there’s a ‘cure’ for when poor Rover, or Tibbles or Fido leaves his mortal messing in the park to chew the eternal slippers in doggy heaven. Not a ‘cure’ in that ‘Pet Semetary’ way (if you’ve never read it, do so only with great care and if your heart is strong), but in a new, hi-tech, super-scientific, cloney kind of way.

As a dog-indifferent myself who would no more want to own a dog than own an Arsenal shirt, I can’t see what all the fuss is about. Dog dies, get a new one. Literally: same shit, different day. But I know others who get attached to not just pets, generally, or dogs, generally, or even ‘Staffies’ generally, but with their own, personal, man’s best friend who’s been with them since puppyhood. The dogs, not theirs, though these are not necessarily mutually exclusive. And when Bonzo finally goes walkies skywards, they don’t want just any replacement, they want Bonzo back. The same. Not just in appearance, but the whole slobbering, dry-humping, sunday-roast-eating, ‘smiling’ (yeah, right) package.

So they can now clone your dog. Take some dna from old Patch, insert it into an egg, surrogate it to… well, probably another dog, or bitch really and however many months later, out pops new Patch. Think of the smile on your children’s faces as they view exactly the same beloved creature, but all puppified and delicious and ‘the same’. Ahhhhhhh.

But its not ‘the same’. My wife is a clone. She has an identical twin, thus they are genetically identical. But they’re not ‘the same’ at all. They’re very different people. Always have been. And they were ‘naturally produced’ and ‘reared in the same environment’. Whereas these little doggies, genetically identical that they unquestionably are, will not be ‘the same’. You can’t insert a gene for ‘personality’; it don’t work like dat. And tests on mice have shown that although they look the same at birth (a fucking mouse; they ALL look the same, just before you tread on them, then they become a Rorschach inkblot) they’ve tended to become very obese. Hmmm. Maybe someone’s been cloning Americans… hmmmmm…

So clone at your peril. Or just don’t bother replacing Jorge the Tibetan, just take your phone for a walk every day. Its much more interesting and doesn’t shit on the floor.

Happy wednesday

A xxxx

Everyone’s favourite billionaire, Mike Ashley (do we have ‘favourite billionaires’? or just hate them all on principle and out of jealousy?), has upset everyone, once agian, because he’s invoking the infamous ‘zero hours’ contracts for his Sports Direct part-time workers which basically prevents them from taking second jobs. Even if they only get a few hours a week from Mikey-boy. The incredible thing about this will occur instantly to anyone who’s ever visited a Sports Direct. Which is that for those staff even have the one job is a miracle and goes against any logic or business sense. But two jobs?? Who the hell else would employ them? To qualify you need to: ‘have the ability to stand around wearing sports gear whilst being unhelpful’. A kind of multi-tasking for the decidedly unfriendly. And who’d have thought that someone of Mike Ashley’s standing would use exploitative methods for his (barely) human resource? You can’t help but think its somehow his revenge on the lowly shop assistants for the aggro he gets from his Newcastle players. They’re moaning about wanting a pay-hike on their ‘measly’ £65,000 a week, so he takes it out on his shop workers by paying them £4.37 an hour. Then cutting their hours. And now telling them not get another job as well.

And now Robin Williams is dead. Nothing specifically to do with Mike Ashley, I hope, though perhaps the actor’s suicide may be linked if it is shown he shopped (or tried to) at Sports Direct within 48 hours before his demise. Those stores certainly have that potential. But Robin was depressed and is now yet another tragic loss to the world.

Robin Williams was a comedian who became an actor. Nothing unusual about that. Except he was probably the best stand-up comedian I’ve ever seen (though never, sadly, live… no pun intended) when he was massive in the early 80s. He was fast, manic, mainly unscripted and fast. Did I mention fast? He was like the living embodiment of a cocaine habit. Which in fact was pretty much what he was. Though even when he cleaned up he was still the quickest funny man of them all. And all through his Hollywood years, all through the Mrs Doutbfires and Dead Poets Societies, he never lost his essential Robin Williamsness. In Good Morning Vietnam he simply reverted to what he was and his largely unscripted role was the perfect combination of the comedian he naturally was and the serious actor he became. I love that movie. And Robin Williams never sold his soul to the movie business in the way so many comedians did. Like Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Eddy Murphy, who all became caricatures of themselves. Whereas Robin Williams was always Robin Williams, in the same way that John Belushi was always John Belushi, though sadly, not for very long, and Bill Murray is always Bill Murray.

Rest in peace Funny funny man. At least I know what I’m going to be watching on tv for the next 3 months.

Happy but slightly sad Tuesday

A xxxx

If you look at a map of the Middle East you can barely see Israel, being so small. Egypt next door is immense. Syria to the north is massive, Lebanon just big in a normal way. Jordan has some expanse and Saudi Arabia is vast. Move across to Iraq and Iran and even Turkey and Israel is literally dwarfed by the sheer volume of the Arab nations and their hundreds of millions of combined population, none of whom are, historically nor currently, in any way ‘pally’ with Israel. All of whom would really love to see that nation simply vanish.

So why are they all keeping so quiet about the current situation in Gaza?

Whereas here in the UK the entire population has been whipped up into a frenzy of Isreal-hatred by a biased and distorting press. Reports from Canada or Australia, they paint a very different picture. Of the very same events. Ok, they don’t have John Prescott over there (how sad they must all be) nor George Galloway, the poisonous one, nor Diane Abbot, Ed Milliband, Nick Clegg or Vince Sodding Cable. Any nation would be blessed not to have such luminaries of lunacy.

George Galloway has declared his constituency of Bradford ‘an Israel-free zone’. Because he’s taken Dead Sea face masks off the shelves in Boots and only buys hummus made in Wakefield and dates grown in Turkey. But has he banned i-phones and i-pads? The technology for which is all Israeli. How about every computer running a dual-core intel processor? Because every one of those sold (which is every computer built since 2 years ago) pays Isreal royalties. Has he banned pacemakers? Those clever little gadgets keeping the weak-hearted folk of Bradford alive; they’re Isreali created too. As are half the cancer drugs on the market as well as a whole host of other life-saving medications. Better not have any MRI scans either up there in Yorkshire, nor an ultrasound on your unborn child. All developed in Israel.

Even rabidly anti-semitic Lib Dem MP David Ward critisised Galloway and, in not so many words, called him a wanker. That was my interpretation of it anyway.

So why the silence, both verbal and in terms of possible military assistance, from all those powerful Arab nations, who you’d have thought would be rushing to their brothers’ side? All those nations who loathe democracy, who forbid free speech, who repress women, execute gays and therefore are the natural bedfellows of the British left-wing press. Hmmm… Is it just fear of American reprisal? Or is it that these nations actually see the bigger picture in a way that we in ‘the civlised west’ aren’t allowed to by that very same press? These nations fear America, as much for potential trade losses as military might, but what they really fear is the uprising of Islamic Extremism. As represented so beautifully by ISIS or whatever they’ve now decided to be called, who have invoked the wrath of even sleepy old Obama by mass-murders, evictions, beheadings and crucifictions across Iraq. And yes, innocent civilians may die due to American bombs but such things are inevitable and not (yet) just another example of American Imperialism from 6000 miles away.

Hamas are exactly the same as ISIS. They are internationally recognised as a terrorist organisation. They cynically arrange human shields because the results are so wonderfully media-friendly for them, particularly in England and France. But rather than being a safe, comfortable 6000 miles away, they live on Israel’s doorstep. And attack constantly. All day, and night, every day and night. With rockets made in Iran. Millions and millions of dollars worth of artillery, constantly. Not fireworks, not some home-made, mis-firing lame effort from Physics 101, but a rocket filled with explosives aimed not at military targets but at schools, hospitals, residential areas.

So Israel, as the only democratic, free, liberal country in the region, where women have rights, where gays can live (full stop) are hated by the press, and seemingly by everyone, for trying to rid itself of the evil that is Hamas. It would be like al Quaeda setting up camp in Cardiff.

What the BBC produce in terms of ‘news’ is one-sided and is predeterminedly ‘slanted’ with the assumption that Isreal is out to kill Gazan children. If you read or see reports from decent organisations its so much more even-handed, realistic and, dare I say, fair.

Never forget that Hamas were the ones cheering in the streets after 9-11.

No I’m getting off my milk crate; my legs are getting weary.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

There’s a new movie coming out called ‘What if…’ and it stars Daniel Radcliffe and its a rom-com. They’re calling it ‘when Harry Potter met Sally’. Which is rather clever. As poor Daniel, billionaire by the time he was 7, is now paying the true price of that precocious fame and stardom as he can never, ever cast off fully the robes and wand he used to kill Lord Voldemort. You have to think twice when you hear the name ‘Daniel Radcliffe’ but at the merest mention of ‘Harry Potter’ his little face, zig-zag scar and all, springs to mind.

And much as I love rom-com books (that’s the most tragic admission of this lifetime; almost pathetic really), I’ll walk twelve miles to avoid the genre in the movies. The films are rubbish. The books are wonderful and if I’m not crying by page 7 I can abandon it and download another. They’re all free cos they’re all shite. So any film with Matthew McGonaghey before Dallas Buyers Club, is off limits. Anything with Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock, any limp pretty boy with a quiff instead of a personality, Richard Gere, Meg Ryan or Kate Hudson is not so much a guilty pleasure as guilty-as-charged.

And the young wizard from Hogwarts has apparently ‘re-ignited the rom-com flame’, and made it respectable once more. Yeah. Right. Pass the fire extinguisher. And rom-coms have a simple ‘plan’. Without being homophobic; Boy meets Girl and they fall madly in love. BUT; and this is what makes it a rom-com and not just slushy chic-flick bollocks, there needs to be ‘an obstacle overcome’. Typically they hate each other at first sight. They run competitive businesses. One of them’s married to someone else. One of them’s dead. Or, in the case of the original Harry/Sally and this new Potter flick, the ‘obstacle’ is that ‘your true love is your best friend’!!!! Oh my. We’ve been there and done that, and cried, and screamed, almost vomited and even had an orgasm in Katz’s Deli. And it was stupid then and it still is.

The only man that has a woman for a best friend is gay. No exceptions. Men are only friendly with women because they desire them. Single men that is, darling wife. Obviously. If men have no such cravings, there is no friendship. This is not me, this is how it is. Its historical. At times hysterical, (the rom-com bit), its evolutionary, its procreational. Except in Hollywood where anything can happen.

When Mel & I met she was engaged to another and I was living with yet another-nother (would have been odd if her fiancee was the woman I as living with; really odd. Though possibly fun). Real obstacles. And I suppose at times it was quite funny. Our own rom-com. But love conquers all. Except ISIS. For them you need bombs. Loads’a bombs.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Its all hotting up in the football transfer market as the window of opportunity closes in under 4 weeks time. So come and grab a last-minute bargain while you can. There’s a 2-for-1 deal going on at Southampton, as there has been for about 10 years really. Great bargains to be had. Though all that’s left on their shelves currently is trainee left back and an ice-cream seller. Their manager left to go to Mecca. Or perhaps Jerusalam, as he jumped on the rotating door that is the Spurs job. I’m confident that ‘he’ is ‘the one’. Not like I thought about the previous 15 incumbents over the last 5 years. Their best attacking players went to Liverpool, their best defenders came to Spurs and everyone else there from last season is scattered about the leagues like confetti. Like parmesan on your pasta.

Because Southampton has become the growing fields for ‘home grown’ talent. Theo Walcott, Gareth (the holy one) Bale, Alex Oxlaide-Chamberlain to Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana, all wonderful, all super-talented Southampton kids, all gone on to bigger and (in some cases) better. The only decent player Southampton ever managed to keep was Matthew Le Tissier. And only because he was too fat and lazy to move his arse, other than to score a shitload of wonderful goals. That was in 1937. Or seems like it. If I was a Saints fan I’d be very depressed.

I’m a Spurs fan and I am very depressed.

This is August. This is ‘our time’. When we buy players from all over the world. Superstars. Big names. Players with reputations big enough that they can crumble upon arrival at the Lane. We should be out there buying up the World Cup galacticos, sweeping up the ‘debris’ after Rio, and bringing back a sackful of talent. Yet all I read is how we’ve failed to sign another. Then another. Then 4 more don’t want to play at Spurs. Even Chelsea are losing players all over the place. And now possibly Petr Cech may leave for the Bernabau, under threat from the unpronouncable Belgium keeper who’s been on loan for 2 years and now returns to Stamford Bridge a World Cup hero and wants his Number One shirt off the big Czech. Goalies are like princes; you need an ‘heir and a spare’. But in goalie-world no-one wants to be the spare.

So the season starts in just over a week and Spurs look pretty much like we did last year. Unless… unless… unless Mauricio Pocettino has weaved his magic upon the unquestionable talent that so miserably failed last year. Like a fairy godmother waving his magic want, turning Soldado back into a striker, Lamella back into a (fucking expensive) footballer, Chadli back into… whatever it is he’s supposed to be doing, because, like the rest of us, he never seemed to know either.

The football season. The thing that gives meaning to our frail and pathetic lives. A cause for celebration? Or misery??

9 days to go.

Happy thursday

A xxxx

17 to 2 is a good bet. Decent odds. Not so ridiculously high that there’s no chance of a payout, but not so low that its not even worth the stake. So you wanna take a punt? Do ya? Are you feeling lucky; Punk? Well, if its a fiver each way on a nag running at Ascot it makes not much difference either way. If it was the odds on Spurs winning the league I’d want at least 150 to 1 before digging out my wallet.

But its not. Its the odds on living versus dying if you take a daily hit of aspirin every day of your post-50 life. So doctors are playing the lottery every time they give such advice. As well as turning us into a nation of drug addicts. Which I don’t object to if those drugs are purely recreational, but this is really chancey. For every 17 people who will live longer due to the addition of aspririn, 2 will die younger from a stroke or internal bleeding that it can cause. And the best bit is, of course, you don’t know who. Can’t predict the winners and losers, just like any gamble.

I’ll take my weekly doses of Tai Chi instead, I think. It may be violent at times but you need to live to 120 just to learn it all.

Baroness Warsi has resigned from the government in protest because David Cameron won’t unambiguously critisize Israel’s actions in Gaza. Good for her. She was useless anyway. She got the job in the first place because she was a rare and exotic beast. Not only a staunch Conservative from a working class background, who is fluent in Northern, but a woman (allegedly) and a Muslim to boot. Not ‘to boot’ in a bullying, Eton, nasty kind of way; it means ‘as well’. So Sayeeda crossed lots of minorities off the government quota list of ‘people not like us who really should be represented’. Women, Muslims, working class scum. Fantastic, she ticks all the boxes, let’s get her on board. We’ll have her on board and then everyone else can be an upper class male twit. Fantastic. That’ll shock the Daily Mirror.

The interesting thing really though is that, whatever side of the argument you favour, here is a politician who resigned on a matter of personal principle. Not because of expenses scandals (she survived hers), not because of involvement with child abusers or corruption, but because of something she believed.

A politician with a deep value system and principles. It’ll never catch on.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Winston Churchill once described Russia as an enigma wrapped in riddle. I wonder what he thought of China. A mystery wrapped in a flour pancake with hoi sin sauce and guacamole, garnished with a Bentley Continental. Its a wierd place China. I’ve never been. The nearest I made it was Hong Kong. Which is a wonderful place that exists just to show westerners what the term ‘billions of chinamen’ really means. I’d never before realised how many oven-browned ducks there were in the world.

But China is an inconceivable place. Its still run by the Communist Party (and wow; what a party that is these days, more a rave really) the leaders of which are richer than Oligarchs. There is no Chinese character for ‘irony’. And China imports about half of the supercars the rest of the world produces. For their communists. From each, according to his ability; to each according to his needs. Yeah, well I ‘need’ a Lamborghini Aventura, don’t I?? A gold one.

So there’s lots of money in China, a quite a few people, so I’m led to believe. And the latest plan of that inscrutible but very clever nation is to go to the moon. As ya do. And not all of them, obviously, the moon’s not big enough. But this is China, so its not some vanity project to prove scientific ability nor engineering wonder. This is business. They want to ‘mine’ Helium. Those little Chinamen just love it when their voices go all squeaky. If only. But no. This is the very rare Helium3. Well, rare on Earth but abundant on the moon. And to describe it as ‘gold dust’ is to undervalue it massively. An ounce of gold is about 750 quid. An ounce of Helium 3 is around 20-50 thousand pounds. One space rocket full of it, about 40 tonnes, would power all of America for a year. They didn’t say what the rest of us would do, but America would be fine. So we should all really be packing our lunar gear and heading skywards to join this latest version of the goldrush.

If only life was that simple. Firstly you have to get there. My Transport for London Oyster Card stops at Barnet. I’d have to walk from there. Then there’s the problem of breathing. Can you hold your breath for about 4 months? I’m working my way up to it with 37 seconds the current limit. When you get to the moon you can’t just, kind’a, scoop up a sack of this Helium and take it to the nearest WE BUY YOUR HELIUM!!!! store. No, you have to get moondust and heat it to 600 degrees to get the helium out. I thought a little pick axe would do but that’s not the case. Then you have to get it all back to Earth and build a nuclear fusion reactor. And that’s the easy bit. Amazon probably sell them.

But the main problem was pointed out in Schwartzenegger’s movie Total Recall many years ago when they had a mine on Mars. Space is filled with really ugly, evil people, with five eyes and one leg and odd-shaped, intergalactic heads and I just hate to even think further south than arm level. So its dangerous with lazar guns and plasma bombs and shit like that. Plus, the phone signal is just awful on the moon and there’s no wifi.

Clever though, them Chinese.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Cheryl Cole has come up with some sage advice for X-factor wannabes. ‘Get your GCSEs first’, before seeking fame and fortune. Which is impressive. I didn’t know Cheryl could spell ‘GCSE’. Though she herself has one GCSE in her own right. She got a B in ‘gorgeous’ and quite frankly its the only qualification she’s ever needed. A talentless ex-singer, serial footballer-shagger, WAG in extremis, shopper extraordinaire, ultra-tattoed Geordie tart and now X-fucked regular, she’s had neither need nor desire for academic nor any other achievement that couldn’t be acquired by a winning smile (and oh my it is winning indeed) or a flash of inked up buttock. When she ‘racially abused’ a cleaner in some restaurant, we forgave her, when she brought out awful songs that made our ears bleed we forgave her, when she got drunk and killed 16 people with a mortar, we forgave her, but when she married reviled hate-figure and difinitive scum-bag Ashley Cole we thought we would never forgive her. Then she smiled and we loved her once more. Proof that a pretty face can get you a long long way in a world dominated by celebs and other worthless aspirations.

In another Sunday mag today is another class act. Abbey Clancey. Must be WAG Sunday or somefink. Another pretty face. This time married to half-man/half-giraffe, Peter Crouch. Ex- of so many football clubs I have neither the time nor patience to even start the list. Though I’ll mention Spurs just because I want to. Abbey has now reinvented herself yet again (first Scouse bimbo, then Scouse supermodel, then Scouse WAG, then Come Dancer), this time as a ‘clothes designer’. Oh; are Dior getting rid of Stella McCartney then? Are Prada starting a new range of shell suits? Have Burberry decided to ‘go common’??? No, she’s ‘designing for Matalan’, the supercheap clothing warehouses. Being a ‘designer for Matalan’ is a bit like being a racing driver for Team Skoda. Like being a ‘chef’ in McDonalds. But with more abused workers in Sri Lankan hothouses getting paid $2 a year for 80-hour working weeks (though wages are deducted for any time away due to the factory burning down or hospitalisation in the burns clinic).

So good luck to Abbey, and well done Cheryl in her new role as careers advisor. Who said you can’t be a peroxide blonde, relentlessly self-promoting superstar speaking in an unintelligible accent, and do good work at the same time?

Let’s hear it for the girls.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I invented a new recipe last night. And its brilliant. So I’ll share it with you. But don’t tell it to Gordon Ramsey or Jamie Oliver or Nigella, or they’ll nick it and call it their own. Its rather tricky to ‘make’ and requires a skill and delicacy that those so-called ‘celeb-chefs’ simply lack, being too busy at self-promotion and tv ratings to actually think about food.

I felt the need for ‘something’. At 11 o’clock last night. Felt an ice cream moment coming on. So I opened the tub of Caramel, vanilla whatever, that was in the freezer and started. I don’t believe in bowls where ice cream is concerned. Its just unnecessary washing up. And its restrictive. You put a dollop in the bowl, then you eat it. Whereas if you eat it straight from the container you get much more. Without the guilt of ‘seconds’. But it was lacking… something. So I went a’rummaging and found a packet of roasted, salted pistachio nuts. Wrestled a few of those fuckers out of their shells (without resorting to my hammer) and threw them in. And wow. Caramel, nut, sweet, salt, wow! I force-fed Mel and Rachie some and they agreed; best thing ‘everrrrrr’. But I went away before they could have more.

Pistachio ice cream is tasteless and always bright green. Not the best colour for ice cream. Even though I keep seeing ‘broccoli ice cream’ and ‘kale ice cream’ around, and they’re all green but they’re for people like Gwynnie who care what they consume, not pigs like me who go for taste only. And all the ‘salted caramel’ currently on offer (and it seems to be the ubiquitous flavour for bleedin’ everything) is not particularly salty. Whereas my creation is the perfect combination. Try some and think of me (as you’re sick from overdoing it, you glutton).

Tonight I’m going to mix some more favourites and see how they turn out. Rocky Road and Chicken Tikka Massala sounds good. Watermelon and pepperoni. Yummmm…

There’s a debate brewing after a Sunni imam in England said that women and men don’t need to be segregated in public and held a meeting in which they all sat together. So the ‘debate’ immediately deteriorated into several fatwas coming his way. Yeah, well why not, miss out the ‘discussion’ and move straight to ‘death threat’; do not pass ‘GO’, do not collect £200. Its all about interpretation. The whole fucking world is at war because of ‘interpretation’ of one thing or another. But in religion that’s always been the case. Though I’m a firm believer in segregated public toilets. Mainly because I don’t want to queue for half an hour to take a pee at a football match when any corner of any room will do just fine. Long as its not in my house.

Yet the move from women ‘staying in their houses and not displaying themselves’, as is written, to being a repressed and subjugated underclass who can be shot for not covering her entire face (as happened in Sudan the other day) is an interpretation of profound consequences.

In my synagogue men and women are separated for praying, but mainly because the women talk too much and it disturbs the men’s conversations.

So in the secular world everyone’s striving for equality and equal pay and a fair share for all. Yet step into the world of God, (any version of God) and it all turns to shit. Women bishops just about being allowed, segregation, different rules for the sexes. Because they’re all based on 5,000, 3,000 or 2,000 year-old rules. Which don’t really apply any longer. Or really shouldn’t.

Ban all religion, its the only way to equality and peace. And eat more ice cream.

Amen

Happy Sabbath day

A xxxx