Andy's Glasses

It was always going to be a battle. There were always destined to be winners and losers. The victors and the vanquished. And the making of history. Though everything makes history; a trip to Sainsburys, having the car washed, taking a piss. We just need to be selective about what gets consigned to the history books and what is unworthy. And of course, how that history then unfolds.

And thus Wayne Rooney and Nigel Farage didst battle it out. Both engaged in foregone conclusions, it was always going to be a matter of ‘how big a victory’ and how it would be accepted. A battle for headlines.

Farage is today celebrating the first UKIP member of parliament, elected yesterday in Clacton-upon-Sea. A win that was never really in doubt. When the shit hits the fan, Essex man turns to the right. Even Essex woman, so it would appear, though many didn’t realise that they were actually allowed to vote. Being as they’re not like normal women who won the vote in nineteen-twenty-whatever. But in repsonse to David Cameron’s namby-pamby, wishy-washy form of government, trampled on by European legislation, failure to address immigration issues and generally being a bit of an upper class twit, the Tory ‘faithful’ (phah!!) abandoned their party in droves to hook up with UKIP. Whether this is yet another ‘protest’ vote, as it counts for pretty much nothing other than a statement of discontent, and those same good voters will change back to their customary blue rosettes next year, remains to be seen.

More significant in many ways was the result of the other by-election in Heywood & Middleton. No idea either, but way ‘up north’, in the Labour heartland. UKIP didn’t win there, but they came very very close, losing by just 617 votes. Yet really, this victory for Farage’s purple team is way more impressive than Clacton. Because to turn the tories of Clacton 10 degrees to the right is easy. Many conservatives see UKIP as ‘how the conservatives should really be’, the ‘old style’ conservatives, you know, white, English, racist, misogynist, xenophobic men. Whereas traditional labour voters have a long way to travel to hook up with Farage. They have common interests though. Beer, fags and McFlurries. And UKIP are less elitist than the Tories, and try to appeal to the common man. In most cases, the very common man. So their ‘very close second’ in that election is highly significant because it shows the massive discontent Labour have with their party and specifically with Ed Milliband, its hapless leader. The forgetful one.

Ironically, if this voting trend is representative of the next general election, Ed Milliband could actually end up as the beneficiary of so many new UKIPpers. Why that is really is too boring to bother explaining, especially as you’re not that bright, so just trust me on that.

But all is not bad news. England thrashed San Marino 5-0 at Wembley last night. FIVE NIL!!!! Wow. But that, oddly, is not very impressive. Sounds like it should be but San Marino are, officially, FIFA ranked, the worst team in the world. So there is massive disappointment that we didn’t score more, impress more, against a team of bricklayers, chemists and accountants. Our massively over-paid superstar representatives of the finest league in the universe, apparently underperformed. And none more so that Wayne Rooney. Our captain. Our leader. Our main scumbag.

So I make that Farage 1, Rooney 0.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I hate shopping. I used to enjoy a troll round the high streets, back in the day, the boutiques round Carnaby Street, the novelty shops in Covent Garden, obviously any of the shops in Soho that had curtains on the window and an inflatable doll as the doorman. Then someone standardised the high street. Starbucks. Next. Boots the effin chemists. Phones For Us, Fones for You, AnyPhone, More Fuckin’ Fones. McDonalds, All Bar One, Pret. All the same. Every shopping centre, every road. Boring, boring, boring. No-one realised that you can’t actually standardise humans in the same way. Some of us want different things. Like inflatable dolls.

Then came the internet and the game was changed once more. In fact the game is almost up for video/dvd rental shops that were the dominating feature of every shopping parade for so long. No longer needed. Superfluous to requirements. Travel agents are a dying breed too. We book holidays online. No more ‘brochures’, no more having some smiling saleslady extolling the virtues of the Parador del Mar with its fine dining (congealed buffet), luxury health spa (broken cycle machine) and the artists impression of the magnificent infinity pool (due for completion some time in 2027 as long as the funding comes along). We now take virtual tours round resorts and by licking the app on the screen, you can actually taste the food to make sure its fresh.

The only stores to not merely survive but thrive in the post-internet world are those involved in computer-free activities. Gyms have increased in number by 114% since 2003. Why? They’re horrible places of pain and suffering. Whereas, ironically, fish’n’chip shops have also increased by a whopping, batter-coated 84%. Presumably they’re buying a take-away on the way home from the gym next door. So fitness and fatness are still worthy of the Great British High Street.

And up by a staggering 173% comes tattoo parlours. Once exclusively for drunk sailors and builders, now even the Queen has a tattoo. On her face. A great big ‘SPURS’ banner, just under her crown. If only. Though apparently she does have a ‘tramp stamp’. Well why not? She can afford it. And tattoos now cross the class divide. Samantha Cameron has one, and she’s posh. Wayne Rooney has loads and he’s a hairball.

This is a gap in the market. An opportunity not equaled since the Sinclair C5 (what?). Not since Betamax has something this big come along. Ya ready:

www.tattoo-yourself.com

You download the software and special, super 3-d ‘inkjet’ printer with needle attachment (patent pending), choose your design from the massive selection, or even create your own using our special programme guaranteed to misspell at least one word out of 7, for authenticity, and just insert the relevant body-part into the printer (which come in 5 sizes: Victoria Beckham, Cheryl Cole’s Arse, Small, Normal and Fat Bastard) and just 4 hours of sheer agony later, 3 hospital visits and a possible amputation for gangrene, you have your very own, personally designed and created, tattoo. Probably upside down. But there ya go.

Press 1 to go to the payment page and checkout

Press 2 for a lovely thursday,

A xxxx

Do you remember the Lib-Dems? Liberal Democrat Party of England, Britain and Cleggland? They used to be a soggy, minor force in politics before they vanished up their own trouser-legs in a rage of indignation and boredom. They died in 2015 when Nick Clegg’s mum decided to vote UKIP and Vince Cable was murdered by his vicar who deemed the act ‘a humanitarian mission’. Can’t fault that logic.

In a feeble attempt to try and gain some support from somewhere, from anywhere, bloody ISIS would do, except they can’t vote here and have issues with democracy anyway, Clegg said he was prepared to allow the building of a new airport runway somewhere in the South East. Maybe knock down the Houses of Parliament and have one there. Certainly not at Heathrow. Heaven forbid that the most logical place to put another runway should be the place to have one. Just because its everyone’s airport of choice, its accessible for London and it generally works is no reason to make it the international hub it cries out to be. No. Put the runway in Gatwick, a mere 7 hours of misery, train delays or gridlock from anywhere approximating ‘London’. Or Stanstead. Loads of land round there. Because no-one wants to fucking be in Stanstead; its too far away. Maybe in the middle of Croatia, loads of space there. We could have ‘London-Zagreb’ airport. Makes as much sense as ‘London-Gatwick’. But its all to no avail because the rest of the Lib-Dems said emphatically that they will have nothing to do with any more runways and vetoed the idea altogether. Although as they have nothing much to do with the management of our country, it makes no difference either way really.

Their reasons for deciding against another runway (assuming they get into power, yes, very funny, or are sufficiently represented in the next parliament to even have some minor influence over events) is for Green reasons. Too much carbon. They won’t sanction more runways until planes become more energy efficient. Using dilethium crystals, presumably, like they did on the Starship Enterprise. “I cannae get mooore pooower, Captain”. Bloody lib-dems, they want everyone to drive a Prius and business leaders to row over the Atlantic on canoes. Tossers.

The London Wasps rugby team are moving. Again. Ok, they’ve moved quite a bit in the last 20 years, but always near enough to London to retain their status as a Capital club. But now they’ve agreed a move to a new ground. In Coventry. Coventry. Horrible East Midlands town of no redeeming qualities, famous for people not speaking to each other. The last person of any interest to come from that city was Lady Godiva. Ahhh but its good for the club, good for the financial stability, good for everyone. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FANS???? What about those who love Wasps and watch them play every match and wear their replica shirts and revere Lawrence Delaglio and don’t want to shlep a hundred sodding miles every weekend up the motorway? Never mind they’ll get new fans. Who ride naked to the ground on horseback then ignore each other for the entire game.

What a mess.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Galliano is back. Hooray. The disgraced former head of Dior fashion designer with the stick-on dreadlocks and a distinct dislike of Jews is now chief dressmaker for the label Maison Martin Margiela. You know, that fabulous company who made a dress with, errr, like, hmmm, sleeves and straps and stuff. Anyway, Galliano’s their man. He’s ‘cured’. He’s controlled his alcoholism. On the wagon. I’m not sure if you can ‘cure’ anti-semitism, but the alcohol, thing of the past, mate. Because he was blind, rip-roaring drunk when, in a Paris cafe, he called a woman a ‘jewish bitch’ followed by ‘jewish c**t’. In case the ‘bitch’ comment wasn’t sufficiently offensive. Ahhhh, it was the booze talking. Love jews. Never had an anti-semitic thought in me life, your honour, honest.

Alcohol does many things. But mainly it removes (in sufficient quantity) inhibitions. It is not a drug reknowned for enhancing thought processes or helping create a political or social standpoint. It just makes the drinker more likely to voice an existing view, quite loudly, somewhat aggressively and a bit more extremely. The thought was already there, the booze simply liberated it to the outside world.

I hope his titty-tape loses all its sticky. Well, I generally hope that anyway.

And here we are, just weeks after the courts of South Africa showed the world how stupid they can be with legless sportspeople, back there for yet another man-shoots-woman case at trial. But this time its a British man, Shrien Dewani, on trial for paying someone else to shoot his lovely wife on their honeymoon. Allegedly.

Dewani probably looked into the old ‘shoot her through the bathroom door’ method of ‘assisted suicide’ now legal in South Africa, but found to his dismay that the honeymoon suite had glass internal doors, which would make the ‘suspected intruder’ plea a bit thin. Plus, unlike Pistorious, he didn’t have his own gun shop to hand. So they drove in pre-arranged taxi to a slum (sadly still very easy to find in Cape Town, much harder to avoid in fact) where they were ‘held up’ by robbers, blah, blah, blah, she ends up shot dead, he left playing the distraught and devastated widow. But the killers were caught (“can’t miss him, big black guy with a gun, officer”) and it transpired that they had been paid to put on the little show. Hmmmm. And we all thought ‘why???’ Well, I thought ‘why?’. Why would you marry someone and have them murdered a week later? Made no sense. Takes months to hate a wife that much. Well, at least 6 weeks. And it was all dull and drab and another protracted, boring trial and then one word appeared in the press yesterday which was a serious game-changer. ‘Bisexual’. Shrien Dewani was ‘bisexual’. And suddenly, the whole feel of the case has instantly changed. Its interesting, exciting. Male prostitutes, German ones at that, fetish sex, sleazy clubs, on-line shirt-lifting, its simply wonderful. If we could get Galliano into the picture it would be ‘the perfect crime’. For spectators anyway.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx

There are many ways to skin a cat.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean, other than for the sadistic felinaphobes among us? Have you ever skinned a cat? Ever thought about it?? No, can’t say its uppermost in my thoughts most days, but that’s the expression we’re stuck with so, like all good students, we must stick with it until something better comes along. Many ways to eat an aardvark. Many ways to hate Nick Clegg. Many ways to skin Nick Clegg. Many ways to start the universe.

And, of course, there are many ways to play football.

Arsene Wenger, stroppy, aggressive, violent, don’t-fuck-with-me, tough guy manager of Arsenal, has for years condemned teams for ‘not playing properly’, or saying Frenchisms like, ‘ahh, but that’s not football’, normally after a Stoke match. And true, those events can be a touch more orthopedic than regular sport, but that’s not the point. Wenger has always had faith, belief and total commitment to ‘the beautiful game’, to one-touch perfectionism and walking the ball into the net. He’s obsessed with never ever having any kind of ‘plan B’. That beauty will conquer all. That is his philisophie (note the foreign spelling) and it has not been without its successes. In terms of possession, Arsenal lead the league, always. Its what they do. Ok, sometimes its not best productive, like in the Spurs match, which begs the question of what’s the point of all that possession if you don’t do nuffink with it? Its chewing gum. Just goes on and on, is vaguely pleasant for the first half hour, but then just becomes something you do that leads to no satisfaction, no end point, no nuffink.

Chelsea are different. Morinho is different. He’s what we call a ‘pragmatist’. Which is like a ‘pugilist’ but much more so. You simply can’t beat teams like Arsenal (and there’s only really one or two others in the world who play in such a precise, definite and limited way) on their own terms. Which is what Wenger believes should always be the case. You have to find other ways to beat them. Namely; you have to break their rhythmn. You have to stop them passing the ball around so tidily. BUT, you’re not allowed to kill any of them. Which makes it more tricky. And Chelsea walked that fine line yesterday. The line between stopping them and killing them. Cahill almost crossed it, but there again so did Danny Welbeck for the Arse. And on Match of the Day last night, they spent 45 seconds drooling over the sublime skills of Eden Hazard and 7 minutes looking at really really horrible fouls that Chelsea used to ‘break up the play’. And you know what: its football. Every much as when Barcelona pass the ball 7,436 times without intervention.

Then there was Fabregas. Who applied the coup de gras to his old club with a(nother) sublime pass over the top for his new best mate Diego Costa to run on to and (obviously) score. We’ll never know whether (as Arsenal say) Fabregas didn’t want to return to the team wot spawned him and had signed the deal with Chelsea by January. Or as Cesc maintains, that Arsenal didn’t want him back. Either way, I wish he’d come to Spurs.

Talking of which. We won yesterday. Hooray. First for a long time. Deserved, undeserved? Who gives a shit. Not I, that’s for sure. And in highlights we looked great, breaking with speed and movement. The other 86 minutes apparently we weren’t very good. Never mind. One step at a time.

Oh very happy Monday

A xxxx

Yesterday was Yom Kippur. The Jewish day of ‘atonement’. Judgment Day, in Terminator speak. The day when all good jews, and numerous pretty bad ones, don’t eat for 25 hours. Our ‘days’ are different. Better. Longer. More jewish. Hungrier.

And the standard understanding of both the day and the fast is that you starve (like we in the West cannot afford a few lost calories in the course of an average McDonalds/Michelin-starred week?) for a day as a ‘punishment for those sins committed in the preceding year. Sort of a ‘short sharp pain’ leaving the page blank to act like a total scumbag next year, and still hold your season ticket for heaven when its all done and dusted. Yet that’s completely wrong. That’s a particularly Christian type interpretation. No disrespect to Christians. They’ll know when I’m disrespecting them.

But their world is one of ‘forgive me, Father, for I have sinned’, and three Hail Marys later (not in the American Football sense, unless the sinner happens to be a quarterback) abolution is granted, you’re back on track for that heavenly highway. Even if you stole a car, raped a dog and murdered your mother. The Chrisitian God is very fogiving. You sin, you confess, you’re forgiven.

Our God is well hard. And ‘atoning’ is more subtle.

Yom Kippur is not the ‘most important day of the jewish year’, despite the fact that its the only day when most of us are actually prepared to take the day off work. The sabbath is ‘protected’ by its own personal commandment. Observe the seventh day to keep it holy. And although that was officially removed by secular society after a petition to the Pope by Ikea, The Sabbath day is well holy. But Yom Kippur is different. The idea is not to ‘suffer’ a day’s starvation to repent, to be punished for sins. No. Its about taking yourself onto such a spiritual plane that you’re almost detatched from your own body, which thus needs not to eat, drink, wash or involve in animalistic acts, however much you want to. You enter such a spiritual place that you simply don’t require feeding. And whilst there, you think how you’re going to improve as a person for the next year. And it can be subtle. We, as a religion, never deal in the concept of ‘perfection’, in a truly ‘Barcelona in their day’ or Brazil 1970 kind of way. We know that ‘man is flawed’, woman too, though she can use Botox. And so sinning is allowed. Thank God. Because we’re humans and we fuck up. Some of us much much more than others. You know who you are.

So you pray on Yom Kippur. And you reach a plane akin to that of angels, almost heavenly, and from there, you find your better person. Or, for me and the Legend, you find out what is exactly wrong with Spurs back four, until the rabbi tells you to stop talking whilst others are busy on a self-improvement mission.

So today, having fasted, having cleansed, having discussed at great length the failings of our football team; I feel better. Lighter. Holier. And a bit sick from the traditional ‘break-fast’ or speed-eating competition that marks that day’s end.

Happy sabbath day for those of that persuasion.

A xxxx

The last of the famous Mitford Sisters was buried yesterday. Deborah. Who turned Chatsworth House into the first proper, tourist-friendly stately home where peasants, plebs and other assorted poor people could wander round and see a dining room the size of their own village, kitchens like those out of the Bake Off, even though tv wasn’t invented back then, and all manner of stuff that the aristocracy of our fine land could display just to show these sad and sorry underlings how sad, impoverished and worthless their own pathetic little lives really were. And still are. We are blessed with a monarchy and thousands of titled, ennobled folks whose shit really stinketh not.

But Deborah was ok compared to most of her siblings. There were 5 sisters, now tragically all taken from us. One sister was a communist, which may strike some as rather odd, considering her upbringing as a ‘minor aristocrat’. The definition of which is that they only had up to 14 permanent servants and slaves plus a gardener who came to mow the lawn every third tuesday. Shame. But Deborah was apolitical. In fact she was generally regarded as ‘the clueless one’ by those who knew her. The other sisters were more outspoken, one (let’s call her ‘Nancy’ because there’s so many I forget who was who, and care even less) was an author. All married ‘well’. If you call remaining in the inbred world of upper-class-adulterous-twittiness ‘well’.

Then there was Diana. Who was obsessed with Nazis in general and Adolph Hitler in very particular. She married ‘well’. She married Oswald Moseley, head of the British nazis and between them they beget Max Moseley, former CEO of Formula 1 racing. Until he was caught being a very naughty boy with 5 ladies of not very aristocratic origin who were dressed in Nazi regalia whilst Max did whatever odd people do in such a situation. Get slapped with fish? Indulge in a few hands of bridge (though you only need 4 in total for that; unless he needed a referee and linesman)? But I’m gonna suggest that bodily fluids were bound to be involved with so much payment at stake. And quite what Freud would make of such antics I hate to imagine.

So anyway, poor Deborah. Last of the Mitfords. Gone but for the memories and a few doilies left lying round Chatsworth that the oiks haven’t nicked.

An assistant to home secretary, Teresa May, is in deep doo-doo for uttering, according the newspapers, that ‘Nick Clegg is a w****r’. How awful. To have to resort to asterisks. Nick Clegg is a WANKER, its a proven fact. Even he wouldn’t argue with that.

Happy very late Friday.

Fast well

A xxxxx

I’m not Tory. I never have been. Yet like so many of our voting nation I feel it comes down to the lesser of evils rather than one, stand-out party. You vote for who you hate least. Or you don’t bother at all. And then you’re forsaking your democratic right to vote in a free election. Something three quarters of the world are not allowed to do. They don’t have them in Hong Kong, they don’t have them in the Middle East, nor Russia, China or any of the other uncivilised nations like Singapore.

Cameron’s speech yesterday was good. Much as I don’t much like the man, his words were powerful. And they spoke to me. Which really, is what its all about. Making my life better. Fuck everybody else, this is MY democracy. I don’t think Cameron forgot anything, he just glossed over lots of details which are too unsavoury to consider this side of the election. Like how (and who) the tax relief will be paid for. Like how his beloved NHS (lots of passion there) will never be neglected by him, yet didn’t mention its financial structure. And we all know that if the NHS was a financial patient in an NHS hospital, it would die. Or be left sitting on a gurney in a hallway for 6 months.

The Lib Dems have their conference next week and we’re all eagerly awaiting a good rest. Let them confer. No-one cares what they say, they’re a spent force. I don’t think tv crews will bother attending. No more than they attend the Carshulton pavement widening scheme meetings.

Farage and his merry UKIPpers are ridiculous and for some reason, punching above their weight. Their ‘keep Britain for the British’ sloganising has a great retro, 1960s, Oswald Moseley type appeal. But is ill-conceived, divisive and shallow. However many Tories join them.

So that leaves the ‘big 2’. Who could vote for Ed Milliband? His mother? Certainly not his brother. And if not Ed, who could put the Labour Party in a better light? The other Ed? Harriet Harman? They have no credibility to lead anything.

And we need to sort out European immigration. Which I don’t have issues with in principle, but we simply have run out of room. And run out of money. So it no longer makes any sense at all.

But now there’s a new threat. Robots. Just when you thought the trouble started with Human Rights, as defined by Brussels, the Eurocrats have now commissioned a RoboLaw consortium to investigate robot rights. Ahhhh, that’s how they spend all our money. Because robots aren’t just C3PO kind of mechanical humanoids, no they come in all shapes and sizes. Driverless cars are classed as robots. Whereas most car drivers are classed (by me) as dickheads. Prosthetic hands are robots. Real hands get no classification other than ‘hands’.

So now we’re going to be inundated with hundreds of thousands of East European robots, taking our jobs, eating our food (???) living in our houses…

Happy thursday

A xxxxx

People from Yorkshire don’t laugh at jokes about sex. Nor about education nor death. The Scots, who probably wouldn’t have even been included in this survey by Ticketmaster if they’d voted ‘yes’ as they should have, don’t laugh at anything. Whereas the Welsh laugh at absolutely everything. Alcohol will do that to a person. Or to a sheep. And Londoners were the most tolerant of all. Even to jokes about race. The average London score for race jokes (voted from -100 to +100) was -21, whereas in the northeast it was -48. Bloody miserable regionals. I wonder how regional jokes scored?

None of this is surprising. It all hooks up nicely with our stereotypes of our brother (and sista) Brits, on the Andy scale of: the stronger the accent the more dim, daft, moronic and witless people generally are. William Hague as a good example. Big accent, total dickhead. Stevie Gerrard, unintelligibly Liverpudlian, not very funny. Except when Liverpool lose, then he’s very funny but just doesn’t realise it. Londoners don’ got no faaarkin’ accints, do dey? an’ they’re all faaarkin’ ‘ilarious. Though do tend to swear excessively. Especially the women.

As I’ve said before, I view surveys with a liberal sprinkling of salt. Like an ocean’s worth. For scientific reasons. Firstly; they’re all bollocks. Secondly, they all depend on who is doing the survey, who is paying for the survey and what they set out to show. No survey just kind of spontaneously happens. And when people are surveyed, unless you water board them during the process, you don’t get true responses. People will not say what they truly believe, they will feel pressurised into giving a ‘correct’ answer. Hence Londoners averaging -28 for racial jokes when in fact they’re all funny and made more so by their chronically inappropriate lack of political correctness. But we’re programmed and conditioned that once we’ve stopped laughing we must act according to social niceties and condemn anything vaguely in the category ‘taking the piss’. And doing so for foreigners, gays, women, Conservatives, Arsenal fans; all underprivileged, should always be heartily encouraged. “I agree!!!” I hear you say. Unless you’re taking part in a survey in which case you say “STRONGLY DISAGREE!!!!”

People from the blue half of Manchester were very funny last night, downright hilarity as they took an early lead through an undeserved (they all are) penalty at home to Roma in the Champions League. And we waited for the inevitable bombardment and corresponding basketball score that the Mancs so often produce. Ahhh, but they only produce it in league matches. So they didn’t find it quite so amusing when the oldest man in the world, the great Francesco Totti, scored an equaliser for the ‘talians. He limped onto a superb through ball, hobbled round a defender, discarded his zimmer frame just in time to lob Joe Hart for a wonderful strike. Now THAT was funny. Call me an old bastard but I do enjoy the richest club on the planet suffering in any way. And by a man so ancient he’s almost as old as Ryan Giggs. Good thing for Roma that class is ageless.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I’ve been to Hong Kong. It always looks like this. Streets filled with zillions of people, all day, every day. No-one is taller than 5 foot 7, not a blond head in sight. If the people are smaller then they can be crammed into smaller living spaces. So they’ve been genetically modified by chemicals in the water. I was only in Hong Kong for 36 hours on my last visit, but by the time I left my trousers were all half an inch too long. It could happen. Anything could happen in that part of the Far East.

China is a contradiction. A silly place that remains, nominally, ‘a communist, single-party state’. What happened was, in 1949, on October 1st (that’s tomorrow, so don’t forget to send a birthday card) the communists overthrew the horrible old warlords and evil, oppressive Emporers and nasty old totalitarian dictators. And replaced them with ‘the people’. Who oddly very soon became horrible old nasty, evil, oppressively totalitarian dictators. “So this is what communism feels like” thought the people, as they just became beaten and subjugated by a slightly different uniform. For little Johnny Chang life changed dramatically. He was till starving, impoverished, uneducated and hopeless, but now he got beaten up regularly by communists instead of fascists.

And that is to whom we, the British people, ‘gave’ Honk Kong in 1997. To China. To Beijing. To the ‘communists’. But all went well, nothing changed, HK remained a little piece of pseudo-democratic capitalism adjoined to the most populus nation on the planet. It is the ingroing toe-nail on the athletes foot of the mainland. But such a rich, prosperous and fruitful toe-nail that China just kind’a let it be. They didn’t want to scare off the banks and businesses. So they put in a ‘governer’ (a lackey from Beijing) and let the sleeping year of the dog lie.

And now its time for ‘elections’ for a new governor. The word ‘rigged’ really doesn’t go quite far enough for electioneering in China. Democracy, the very basis, the cornerstone of communism, has long been forgotten out there. Instead of candidates you get a parade of faceless, worthless puppets loyal to The Party. And if their loyalty should falter, their families will never be seen again.

So the youth of Hong Kong are protesting, as we see on the news every night. Though the people of China don’t see this at all. Its censored. Along with everything else that happens in the world. Their internet doesn’t work like ours does. So the young people want a Governor of their choice. Someone free from Beijing constraints, someone open-minded, international and independent.

Yeah, that’s gonna happen.

Tomorrow David Cameron will make his speech to the Conservative Party conference. He probably won’t talk about Hong Kong. Though he may mention UKIP. In not very flattering terms. But whatever he says or doesn’t say, he’ll probably read it from notes. Ed Milliband’s 75 minute unscripted rant last week went down very well. As did the Titanic. And Milliband’s aspirations drowned with it. The labour tosser was blind to the elephant in the room, which was our nation’s monumental debt. He ‘forgot it’ in his flow of meaningless soundbytes and endless repetition of the word ‘together’. If he’d forgotten that word the speech would have only lasted 27 minutes and we could have all had an early lunch. Milliband is the Alan Pardew of the political world.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx