Andy's Glasses

On Sunday night, I’m not going to bed. I can’t. It’s when the polling booths close in Russia and I’m not sleeping until I know who has won. I want to know that there’s a swing in some desolate, isolated Siberian town, I want Jon Snow with his graphs and ‘swingometers’ and a panel of talking heads discussing the implications this result has on the whole election probability. I want to be there as the winner(s) are announced in ‘the most democratic country in the world’. Because it is a completely ‘free vote’. You’re allowed to vote for any candidate whomsoever. As long as his name is Putin. The main issue is the lack of alternatives. Because in Russia, a ‘true democracy’, anyone can stand to be President. It’s a bit like here, except we need to up our game a bit.

Kier Starmer is pretty well guaranteed to win the next election, if he can get over his refusal to ‘demand a ceasefire’ in Gaza to appease the moronic masses who think one-way ceasefires are standard procedure in a war.

But that aside, the Starm-meister needs to really guarantee his place in history. Firstly he needs to murder Rishi Sunak. The man could slip in on a technicality and win, so feed him some nuclear waste with his tea. The leaders of the Scottish Nationalists and Lib Dem’s should be in prison. For… spying. Or… treason. Doesn’t really matter, just lock ‘em up. And anyone else even vaguely in with any chance of winning a seat will simply move to France, ‘in exile’, in fear for their lives. That’s how you win a fucking election. The man’s way!!!

The Church of England wants to give a billion quid in reparations for ‘their part in the slave trade’. And that’s a great idea. My deep-distant ancestors were slaves in Egypt, it says so in the Passover guidebook. So where’s my cash?

The Church’s problem was that it invested in the South Sea company, back in… back in the day. And that company ran slaves in their businesses. So the fucking Pope might as well have had a whip in his hand! Even though he’s not quite ‘England’.

When colonising kings rode into countries, they did so under their national flag and under the Cross. And they ‘converted’ indigenous populations to Christianity. They didn’t have to convert, they could hang from trees instead, but many chose Jesus as their path. And captured populations were always ‘enslaved’. Ok, the ‘slave trade’ kind of ‘industrialised’ the practice, but they certainly didn’t invent it.

And it was unquestionable the worst act of inhumanity until Hitler came along.

But it was in the past, and it was OF ITS TIME. However atrocious, and it was, that is what they did, back then. And ‘back then’ there was no ‘equality’, there was no ‘discrimination’ and ‘oppression’ was what people did to each other. I simply cannot see the point of applying contemporary standards of post-woke morality to acts which occurred hundreds of years ago at a time of a different morality.

Otherwise how long before America is given back to the ‘indigenous Americans’, India goes back to warring as one nation including Pakistan, and Norway goes back to the Vikings!!!

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

On Sunday night police moved into the Legacy funeral home in Hull. Oh, that’s odd. They weren’t dead, why would they go there? They weren’t discussing funerals either. They just went in and arrested 2 people. And found some dead bodies. Which, of all the places to find corpses in the world, could actually be expected in that particular one. So it all felt a bit ‘odd’.

But then, as more ‘news’ was drip-fed to the nation, rather than the clarity this might normally bring, it just made it odder still.

They found 35 bodies in the Legacy homes (there are a few; death is big business). We learn then that really, those bodies shouldn’t be there. They should be buried. And should HAVE been buried long ago. The funerals and cremations of these deceased people happened months ago. So who, if anyone, was buried at those events? Who was cremated and had ‘their ashes’ given to the family? When poor Uncle Ken is still in a fridge in Hull? Whose ashes did I sprinkle over Billy Bremner’s statue at Elland Road???

More to the point; why didn’t they bury the bodies they were paid to? Most importantly, what the fuck did they want to keep them for? Did they intend to save them to later ‘flood the market’? I think we should be told. Well, I think I should be told because I can’t for the life of me think of any reason why they would do such a thing.

Meanwhile, not in Hull but much closer to home, Rishi Sunak is busy in Parliament defending Frank Hester. He’s the Conservative Party donor who has given them 10 million quid in the last year. Frank said (in 2019, but its still as funny now as it was then, so Labour can still drag it out before the election) that Diane Abbot is enough to make him hate all black women. He then said that he has no problem with black women but Diane Abbot should be shot.

And I have to agree with him on both counts. That woman is a horror. Much as I might say ‘that rabbi is enough to make you hate Jews’. As you know, I’m a firm advocate of people ‘being shot’, but I don’t own a gun and use it purely as a metaphor. As hyperbole. Except Jeremy Corbyn, obvs.

But when you apply the 100%-literal, super-woke, insanely-PC microscope to any sentence using the word ‘black’, and/or ‘woman’, possibly with ‘shot’, and you are a racist, misogynist, probably a privileged, white, middle-class rapist murderer!! The context of the sentence is ignored. The nuance simply doesn’t exist in woke-world. And if you couple that, in pre-election times, to the remote possibility that the government might lose a hefty part of its ‘war chest’, then Starmer might as well get once again onto his high fucking horse of ‘equality’ and fish it out of the archive.

He’s enough to make me hate all white men.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

A seemingly innocent photograph, just a family shot, Lila, Aunty and mummy, just everything ‘normal’. OR IS IT??? I had this picture assessed by three different verifying companies who found 71 instances of ‘evidence’ of ‘editing’. Lila has been made 0.35 inches taller than in real life. Where her arm crosses over to Rachie, you can distinctly see where this has been taken from another shot, probably of Lila holding a gun!! And Natalie wasn’t actually on the sofa at the time but in a drug rehab unit in Cheshire!!! The painting, a Martin Fuller, actually sits in a pub in Potters Bar.

So you see; all is not what it seems. And if every picture used to ‘tell a story’, in the ‘old world’, in the post-digital world, every picture tells about 5. All conflicting. So if Kate chooses to upset the royal-lovers by ‘deceiving’ them, you do have to question why she’d do that. Why create an ambiguity which needn’t have arisen. And then you’re at liberty to ‘not give a shit’.

Whereas Jonathan Glazer chose a different path to ostracism. He won an Oscar on Sunday night for ‘best foreign film’. Because he knew he’d never beat Oppenheimer, nor out-pink Barbie, the Londoner made ‘The Zone of Interest’ in German. Its a bit like realising you’ll never be good enough to get into the England football team, but if you find a Maltese relative, you can become captain of Malta, easy.

His acceptance speech was a dialogue about Gaza. And Israel. Probably both. And peace for all mankind, and comparisons with? justifications of? or using ill-fitting metaphors including: the Holocaust. A speech so riddled with ambiguity that no-one really had any idea what the f*** he was talking about. And he managed, in one, short burst of outpouring, to upset Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Seventh Day Adventists, Israelis, Palestinians, Zoroastrians, Australians and Serbo-Croats. A feat of such widespread insult of all parties that he was immediately offered a job at the BBC. It was a totally biased speech. But no-one knows towards whom. We didn’t know whether to hug him and make him dinner, or cut off his head.

We can all learn a lot from a man who can offend virtually everyone in the world with a 3-minute speech. Takes me pages.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I’ve had the busiest weekend ever. Ok, not ever. Just… barely a chance to nap. THAT busy. There was just more sport to see than ever in the history of my tv. And soooo exiting.

First the Scots played the Italians at rugby and… lost. To the Italians??? Yes, the Italians. One of the greatest rugby-playing nations in all of the British Isles losing to a bunch of cowardly, bum-pinching Romeos. Although a lot of their names sound way more… Kiwi/Fiji/Samoa than Rome/Sicily/Florence. And the son of Michael Lynagh, the former captain of Australia, plays for Italy too. It’s almost as easy to get Italian citizenship these days as it is to beat Scotland at rugby. They won the match in the dying minutes.

Then the Irish came to Twickenham and it was the most exiting match ever. And Ireland were winning (and thus probably the Grand Slam) until the 82nd minute, and then they lost. Amazing drop goal by Marcus Smith and it was World Cup 2003 all over again. With me running round the lounge screaming at Mel. Who, quite frankly, couldn’t have been less interested if we were discussing the comparative colours of modern urinals.

On Sunday it was football. Two matches played. Big ones. The ‘fixture of all fixtures’, as it was billed. The mouth-watering clash between Spurs and Aston villa who battle for 4th place. Oh, then another less important game with Liverpool and Manchester City conspiring to draw in order to keep Arsenal at the top of the table, but the whole ‘super Sunday’ shtick was about the Spurs match. And, as a ‘neutral’ (almost) and impartial football lover, there was so much football to love. ALL of it played by Spurs. In attack, with Madison back, Kulusevski on fire, Sonny imperious and young Brennan Johnson outstanding. The defence were sublime. All of them. Even Destiny Ugoge managed to survive the brutal assault of John McGinn, the Villa captain, with both legs just about in tact. “He’s full of ‘passion’, that John McGinnis, in’he”, they all say. Well, he committed a crime of passion. And if you see him on Valentine’s Day, run!

Yes, Spurs were magnificent. 4 nil, away from home. Three points, clean sheet, I was made very happy. In my… errrr… impartiality.

Very happy Monday

A xxxx

We went out for dinner last night to a sweet little place in Crouch End. Crouch End boasts 432 ‘sweet little places’ for dining, at the current count. And there’s only 274 retail units in the whole ‘town’(?) so I really don’t know how they do that.

For a starter, with our friends, we shared… bread and cheese. Oh. That’s… errrr… exiting. Hmmm.

But you see ‘bread and cheese’ is probably the world’s favourite food. Ever eaten a pizza? Well what do think that is? It’s a cheese sandwich that the lazy fucking Italians forgot to put a lid on. And now accounts for the sale of over 90% of extra-extra-extra large clothes sold in America.

How about Welsh rarebit? The ultimate comfort food. Or a ‘ploughman’s lunch’. Or even, if we move a little east, pitta bread dipped in labneh. Naan bread with paneer? Just bread and cheese, even though they’ll charge you 30 quid for it at Dishoom.

But last night’s was closer to home. The ultimate ‘bread and cheese experience’. A baked Camembert. Sprinkled with honey (possibly ‘drizzled’) and some other stuff but quite frankly I was in such a hurry to get ‘inside’ I didn’t notice. I’d entered ‘Labrador mode’ and was hoovering. Pouring dripping cheese into my mouth with toasted sourdough. And if you touch it I WILL KILL YOU! I’m good at sharing.

Baked Camembert is just the absolutely best way of eating cheese. It’s rich, wonderful and totally decadent. I’m guessing that when the French invented it, it was before the revolution. It is just too bourgeoisie for those rampaging, beheading masses, savages that they were, and still are in the most part. It is the French nation’s single contribution the world. Ok, the wine’s not bad. The women are fabulously… French. But their cars are shit, pop music worse and their films all made in subtitle.

We were eating to celebrate ‘international women’s day’ on Friday. Which is the most prejudicial, non-inclusive, un-diverse ‘celebration’ ever. I’m discriminated from enjoying it by virtue of my testicles. And I resent that. I’ve been waiting for ‘international man’s day’ to come along but apparently we don’t have one. So I had no choice by to ‘identify’ as an ‘international woman’ for the day, dress up as Margo Robbie (because if there has ever been a finer example of an ‘international woman’, I’ve never objectified her) and pretend to enjoy women’s football.

Great day it was too. Though the baked Camembert was better.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I hate it when staff go on holiday. Its cruel, heartless and, to be honest, fucking selfish of them. And, they expect to get paid, for swanning around in the Indian Ocean sunshine, whilst I’m here left to actually… well… work.

I have to get in early. Theoretically that’s no problem, just means I can’t write to you whilst I’m eating my breakfast banana. Don’t be impressed, the rest of the day is full of Cadburys, carbs and cardiovascular abuse. And then I need to get on the tube, BUT, I have to pay!!! At my age!!! Because before 9 the old person’s travel card doesn’t work. Yes, I have my replacement card, yaaaaay, but it still won’t work before 9. And that is racist, ageist, anti-semitic and affects my mental health, as I intend to tell Sadiq Kahn, our little shit of a mayor.

Meanwhile, The Brother languishes in the Intensive Care unit, which I’m also paying for. As are you, for which I thank you, and everyone else in the country who pays tax. And he is improving. No question. Sedation lighter, bit of colour in his cheeks and when he saw Rachie on Monday, his face positively lit up with as much of a smile as you can muster with a face full of ‘stuff’. Tubes, pipes, wires. And that’s great. Because no-one is ever that pleased to see Rachie. Normally they run. Though running’s out of the question for Rich at the moment really, but that smile hit the spot. And he responded, in a brotherly sort of way (amazing how much sarcasm you can read into a raised eyebrow or shake of the head.) Cos he’s still ‘non-verbal’ and will be until they give him a little speech thing in his tracheostomy or sew him back up again. But we ‘communicated’ for a good 15 minutes. Until he fell asleep again. Probably due to me telling him in minute-by-minute detail how Spurs beat Palace on Saturday, knowing how much he hates football.

And I hate to get too exited because every time I do he takes a mini-dive. And we don’t want that. Again.

So that’s the progress report. Not much. But as its in the right direction, we’ll take it.

Happy Working Wednesday

A xxxx

The headline from the weekend’s sport is undoubtedly: Spurs won. The rest is irrelevant. Like how they won. Like the pain and suffering of the Spurs fans, condemned by their own commitment, frustrated by their teams irregularity of form which caused them immense pain and agony until Brennan Johnson came on and sorted things out. So that the right result would eventually come. Three points for Tottenham Hotspur, yippee.

Manchester City won the ‘Manchester derby’, which is poor, second-rate, northern version of Arsenal-Spurs, the only ‘true’ rivalry in the country. Especially the south of the country. The important bit. Where HS2 will still run. But there was never any doubt about the outcome of the match, despite United scoring first. It was ‘men against boys’ but ironically, the ‘boy’ in question (because he looks about 14), Phil Foden, was City’s hero. And to stand out as such in that line-up is quite something.

Liverpool did it the hard way. With a little help from the totally impartial ref, Paul Shankley Paisley Rushey Dalgleish Tierney they squeezed a winner in the last… well, well into Fergie-time. If that’s not mixing metaphors. The ref firstly extended ‘added time’ by adding just a bit more. Then he gave the ball to Liverpool after a re-start when it should have gone to Forest. Then he just hung around til Liverpool scored before calling it a day, ripping of his black referee’s shirt to reveal a full-body Liver-bird tattoo and running round the stadium punching the air.

You’d have to feel sorry for poor Tod Boehly over at Chelsea in other circumstances. Those circumstances being firstly that he wasn’t Tod Boehly. Secondly that it wasn’t Chelsea. And thirdly because… I can’t remember. Unimportant. What is important that you get what you deserve (sometimes) and Chelsea are just awful. After spending a billion quid on ‘talent’, they remain the Tiny Tim of the footballing charts.

Arsenal play tonight. At Sheffield United. Who will put up a (kind’a) struggle and then lose 5-nil. Arteta will say how difficult the fixture was because United are ‘always dangerous’, in that same way that a rice pudding can be dangerous (if the tin falls on your head?) or little kittens can be dangerous (if you swallow one). But no-one cares because the title fight is between Liverpool and City. Will Klopp go our on a high note? Or will Guardiola’s steamroller keep on rolling??

Though there are some (in my house) who really believe Spurs can still do it and win the league this year. I’m not saying they are ‘sane’, just believers.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I’m going to lodge a claim against Transport for London for PTSD. I am scarred and officially traumatised. Not to mention the victim of ageism and probably anti-Semitism!!! It could take me years of therapy. Here’s what happened. It’s SHOCKING.

Last weekend my ‘old git’s free-travel, all-you-can-eat, anywhere in London pass’ stopped working. A Catastrophe of massive proportions. Anyone who has this fantastic gift from the Mayor of London will know how wonderful it is, every single time you use it. And it had cracked and no longer opened the gate. So I showed it to the TfL person who smiled nicely (bit patronising really, that smile, when they realised I was THAT old) and beeped me through, telling me to get a replacement. As I commute every day, this was repeated many, many times. Sometimes with a ‘oooh, you can’t use that, we’re not supposed to let you through’. What, is there a fucking prison for over-60s with broken cards, a holding cell at Liverpool Street until their new cards arrive??? But basically, I’m entitled to free travel and they all get that. Until last night.

Oddly the ‘your new travel card is on the way’ came on Thursday, but the card itself is yet to arrive. So last night we went to Kings Cross for a ‘discussion’ at Jewish Book Week, though its been renamed to something more pretentious now involving literary this and literacy that or some such bollocks to let us know how intellectual we all are. Anyway, I pitched up the big fat TfL butch thing (no judgments, obviously) who didn’t smile. She said ‘you’re not allowed to travel with this!’, and took it off me. “DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING OLD I AM???” I shouted, and tried to look old and feeble. Which, obviously, was impossible with these levels of gorgeousness. So she applied ‘the letter of the law’ and told me to pay up. Bitch. And as I ‘tapped’ my Amex card, working out the gain in air miles, I felt my mental health slipping away, my (almost) 68 years bearing down on me as she persecuted me. Mercilessly!!!!

So I went out immediately, whilst in traumatised and unstable state, and bought a ridiculous new car!!! One that bears the esteemed bonnet badge: MID-LIFE CRISIS!!! Because it’s impractically small, unbelievably fast, exceptionally pretty and impossible to use on a ‘bad back’ day.

And I think TfL should pay for it. Because ‘she’ made me do it. Even though I paid my deposit 6 hours before I had the trauma. So that’s not really the point.

I’ll show you when I pick it up next weekend.

Very happy Sunday, other than the tube travel.

A xxxx

I’m having serious trouble awarding this week’s ‘tosser of the week award’ due to a positive glut of worthies for the title.

George Galloway is always a candidate, just for wearing that stupid fucking hat. But the ‘antisemite’s antisemite’ managed to win the bye-election in Raffah, sorry, in Rochdale, on a single matter, completely unrelated to the town of Rochdale or even the nation in which he’ll now sit in parliament for. He campaigned on a ‘Palestine’ ticket. He briefly alluded to doing some local things in his victory speech, but only long after stating his motivation, his reasoning and his sole ambition. Which is to try and get Kier Starmer, who won’t listen to him, to call for a ‘ceasefire now!!!’, which Israel won’t listen to, and that’s it. An exercise in total futility.

Nigel Farage chose a different line of anti-semitism in his chat with Donald Trump. When speaking of ‘the Russian threat’ in America due to the upcoming election there and Putin’s previous putative participation in the last one, The Brexit-meister offered that the Ruskis are not as big a threat as ‘the Jewish Lobby’. Yeah, because Jews are famous for invading Ukraine, murdering their opponents in gruesome ways and parading round Red Square, right? In fact, what is a Jewish (fucking) Lobby? Is it the foyer of a kosher hotel? Jews generally argue with each other… ok, with anybody. So the presumption that a number of influential people from disparate spheres of influence would join together and agree on the destruction of American democracy is almost as stupidly funny as presuming that Britain would be better of without Europe.

Yet even with this most amazing of competition, I really think the Tosser of the Week simply MUST go to Kyle Ratcliffe. Who? Good question. He has the honour of being the father of the boy-partner who murdered Brianna Ghey, now in prison for life. But Daddy Ratcliffe will join his son, not for so long, after being possibly the first person ever to be convicted by a court of law for being ‘a total wanker’. He was caught masturbating in public in front of young girls. Twice. Same girls. And others too. Sometimes in his car. Sometimes on the pavement. What a vile man.

And thus, for sheer literal perfection, Kyle becomes my ‘tosser of the week’.

(If you wish to be considered for this coveted position all you have to do is: act like a tosser. You can be a hypocritical MP, a serial flasher, a total moron, almost any footballer will qualify, all Chelsea fans are eligible, most Arsenal fans too, a bus conductor with ‘attitude’, a virtue-signaller, a woke literalist, a mayor of London or Gary Linneker).

Happy Friday.

A xxxx

There was a fashion, back in the 1930s for ‘reductionism’ in all sciences. Breaking things down to the smallest possible parts in order to understand them. We found atoms, then broke them down into protons and neutrons, ever searching for further understanding and way to destroy Japanese cities totally and very efficiently. We researched bodies to find blood cells and nerve ganglia and all kinds of really tiny, microscopic things. Like certain penises. (Sorry, can’t ever resist a ‘nob-joke’.) But when they applied this reductionist paradigm to ‘the mind’, as opposed to ‘the brain’, it all failed. Because you can only observe behaviour, not thought, nor intention. And writing your name on a postcard is behaviourally identical to signing a cheque for 23 million pounds. It’s all about context and the fact that the world is a complicated place.

And this is what Artificial Intelligence has to cope with. Reducing every behaviour into a binary code for a computer to use. Not just behaviour, but facts, contexts, rules, regulations and social norms. Everything coded so computers can act like humans. Ok, the spouting of facts is easy; writing essays, within a given context and format; piece’a piss! And then they have to ruin it all by obsessing about ‘diversity and inclusivity’. So, now famously, if you ask Google Gemini to show you ‘a Nazi’, he (or sometimes she) will be black. Not just because ‘irony’ is virtually impossible to code, but because AI defaults to ridiculous woke concepts of minority representation. To the point where it won’t show you ‘a white man’ because that is prejudicial. Though, again with lost irony, this is actually prejudicial against white people. Though they deserve it, fucking privileged, white bastards! I’m also going to complain that Jews should be represented as Nazis too or we’ll feel discriminated against as well.

And that all might affect my ‘mental health’. Which, according to another article today, has made a school change its policy on allowing pupils to wear false eyelashes. (Note: I said ‘pupils’ not ‘gels’ because I’d be no better than an AI ‘bot’ if I were to be so stupidly straight and hetero-normal as to presume anything so offensive). Because removal of these lashes leads to… yup, ‘mental health issues’.

And I was happy when I read that. Because it has resolved for me the basis of this total fucking epidemic of ‘mental health issues’. When what they mean is: they’re pissed off. Any kid who doesn’t get his/her/its/their own way pulls the MHI card and everyone falls at their feet in supplication. “Yes, wear false eyelashes, and your Kim Kardashian body-suit; that’s fine for school and should improve your maths no end, and take this money, and… ANYTHING!!!”

‘Mental health issues’ are for the depressed, the clinically ‘not right’ and anyone chewing bricks. Except Joey, who chews them for fun.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx