Andy's Glasses

One in 9 children has a disability. Holy shit! That was the headline in yesterday’s Times. My heart broke as I was imagining schools overrun with wheelchairs, sports day mixing blade runners with the two-legged minority for the sake of inclusion. Poor little kids painting pretty pictures holding the pens with their toes. It was all very upsetting, in my knee-jerk mind.

Then I read on. These are not so much ‘disabilities’ as, more… ‘disabilities’.

You can’t spell the word ‘dog’? You’re fucking disabled. Get a certificate from the school nurse and take it to the Department of Social Security and start claiming your benefits. (The school takes a 10% introduction fee which is ongoing and contractually binding).

Why don’t you want to go to school, today, Billy (he, her, she, woof), are you feeling poorly? Oh, you’re feeling depressed! Well, let’s get some nice happy pills and the doctor will certify you and we can use the benefits to start saving for Barbados.

Can’t you sit still and just watch YouTube for an hour, eating chocolate biscuits? Why do you always want to run around kicking a football, riding your bike, or playing innovative and creative games with your pals? I think you must have PTSD!! Or is it ADHD? One or the other, I’ll get a referral.

It’s not that ‘disabilities’ have increased by about 80%, more that they’ve just included about 80% more ‘things’ into the general category of ‘disability’. Behavioural traits, mental attitudes, shit spelling, crap at sums, ginger hair, crooked teeth, everything now is ‘a disability’ whereas before kids were either normal or odd. Clever or stupid. Nice or extremely violent. Able or moronic. So now we have a thousand pigeon holes, all with wonderful, technical, psychobable names in which to place the most normal child into a ‘category’ which is not only labelling them with a disability but then allowing parents to claim certain benefits as a consequence. Cynics might say that certain types of parents would possibly exploit this system by making little Jimmy (she, theirs, baaaaah) claim unusual discomforts or anxiety, just to capitalise on the world’s most gullible benefit system driven by a society so forced into political correctness so that even the most innocuous and insignificant little moan must be labelled, categorised, pigeon-holed and worn as a badge for life. With pride. A ‘get me out of life’ card.

Ok. Enough considered and balanced debate.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxxx

When the going gets tough, the weaklings start squeaking. Isn’t that the expression? The Americans have a different version, but they would. They’ve always been about tough-talk, John Wayne, lead from the front, stand by your man, I’ll be back, shoot-em-up, the Alamo and all that macho rubbish. But we don’t really, according to everyone interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg, (a lot of people covering all regions, political affiliations, economic groups). Here we have a choice between the weak and the wet. The indecisive and the u-turner. The limp and the lacklustre. The Tosser or the Plonker. Who’d’ya fancy for the next PM?

Yet, unlike the Americans, we don’t, in theory, elect a ‘president’. We elect a party, whose values we align with, and who will govern in a manner we’d like to approve, but obviously with a leader of that party who we trust, or like, or believe will run that party in government as we hope. Or we simply vote for ‘our’ own, local candidate because we believe and trust him or her, regardless of party, government, whatever. We feel ‘they’ will represent our needs in parliament all by themselves. And good luck with that. You might as well just vote LibDem.

But in reality we get a president. We choose to do it that way. “I’m not voting for Rishi, he’s stinking rich!!”, even though ‘you’ are actually voting for Evgeniya Frobisher-Singh, she’s your candidate. So I’ll ‘vote for Starmer’. The media drives this rather un-British approach to elections, even to the point of the televised debates between leaders which goes completely against our electoral system.

So it all comes down to one man (or woman, yeah, I get that, but as neither Rishi nor Kier identify, at this moment, as a woman, I should be safe). And what do you do if they’re both seemingly way below who you’d want in the job?

The Americans have it worse. They have Trump. Who, in my last mention of his list of crimes, completely forgot those against women. Which are many and have, since Friday, have cost him a further 80 million dollars. He’s good for the economy (though not his own), and has a great stance on Israel. Even though, as my dear friend The Judge pointed out: only to appease all the Midwestern and Southern hardcore Christians who love Israel for biblical reasons. And when they’re not going to church, they can be found at gun clubs, gun shops, anti-abortion rallies, shooting ranges and KKK meetings.

Or Biden. Who those deeply religious simply refer to as ‘God help us’.

Happy choices

A xxxx

So just imagine, for a moment, that you’re an orthodox Jewish person living in a small village in 1872, somewhere in Poland. Somewhere cold. Near the Arctic. Even though Poland is nowhere near the Arctic, it fucking feels like it is for about 8 months of the year. Hence the big, fur hats, long black coats which they now still wear in Marbella in August.

And every Friday night, at sunset, the sabbath comes in. So from then, til sunset on Saturday night, you have a list of rules, or ‘can’t do’s’, that would stretch from Omsk to Zielona Gora. And back. You, basically, can’t do anything. Praying is ok, everything else is verboten. Like driving. Wasn’t a problem back then, especially as you were too poor to buy the paper to write the word ‘car’ upon. Lighting fires is out of the question, much as today switching on lights is not something any Orthodox Jew would do on the sabbath. So how ya gonna cook a meal? You go to synagogue on Saturday morning, the whole village is there, kvetching and arguing and doing business deals (“I’ll swap you one egg for 17 ears of corn, but Moshe gets one ear of corn for putting the deal together…) and trying to arrange marriages for their children. Of which there were many. It was all very ‘Fiddler on the Roof’. But that won’t feed ya.

Somebody, we’ll call him Shlomo, came up with a brilliant idea for getting a hot, cooked meal for lunch of Saturday, without breaking any of the 17,346 rules against ‘doing things’. You put the food into a big pot on Friday night, and then just leave it on all night and the next morning until you return from synagogue and whole family can enjoy a hot meal in the frozen winter days. But what do you cook? What can survive being, essentially, cooked to death?

Shlomo prayed for an answer, having tried a chicken (the cremation was a success, the family starved), bread (later used for building an extension on the hut) and vegetables (ended life as a vile pulp of de-vitiminised sludge which stuck to the pan and took a week to scrub off). And the Lord said to him “invent cholent, ya schmuck, Jesus, do I have to think of everything!!!!?”

So Schlomo put in a big pot the cheapest meat he could find, which was ‘shin’, (because everyone was piss poor), potatoes, barley, beans and threw in a few beef bones too, onions, whatever, and left it there for 18 hours. And what came out was the food of God. Albeit a rather insulting and non-empathetic God. It tasted wonderful. Was rich, wholesome and hot.

And here, just 150 years later, we still eat it. Ok, not every Saturday, because, as with most European Jewish food, it can ruin a heart in 2 years, but it has that comforting and timeless fabulousness which comes from the days before serving one sliced radish on a plate, drizzled with balsamic vinegar was considered anything but a joke.

Someone made me a cholent last night. And it was wonderful. And I’m still alive.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

The situation in Gaza isn’t getting much better. I think that’s safe to say. So David Cameron is now calling for a ceasefire. Even though he’s only asked Israel, whilst Hamas are still firing rockets every single day. But you can’t ask Hamas to ceasefire because they are hidden, mostly in Qatar, some in Tehran with just a few left in the tunnels. And as there was officially a ceasefire on October 7th, it would be meaningless. So, effectively, he’s asking Israel for a unilateral ceasefire.

Donald Trump hasn’t asked for a ceasefire. Donald Trump doesn’t know the meaning of the word ceasefire, either literally or metaphorically. It is superfluous to his needs. Like the word ‘compromise’. He don’t do it. He don’t do lots of things. Like respect women, you might think. Possibly respect the law. Eat carefully. Calm down inflammatory situations.

And yet, I might find myself voting for him. Even though I don’t get a real vote, I vote all over the world. They’re fake votes. Not like the ones that had Biden elected in 2020, these are imaginary, theoretical, hypothetical votes. The ones I would use, if I was eligible.

So why would I vote for a man who appals me in words, deeds and actions? Who I find as revolting in personality as he is to observe. Who is the worst loser in the entire history of bad losers, and threw his toys out of the pram by promoting a riot in the Capitol building. And worst of all, a man who repeats everything he fucking says. Everything he fucking says. Why would I vote for him?

Because of his stance on Israel.

I’ve never thought of Donald Trump as an ‘intellectual heavyweight’. Nor, really, an intellectual lightweight. He’s a physical heavyweight with light featherweight intellect. Yet when it comes to Israel, he gets it. When so many, the massively vast majority, in fact, either don’t get it, or worse still, do get it but cower from expressing it for fear of accusations of ‘Islamophobia’. Not Trump. He calls it and if you don’t like it, then fuck you!

He’s appalled by the events on October 7th. He’s disgusted by the fact that Israel is seemingly not allowed to defend itself against terrorists sworn to its destruction plus anyone in it. He’s really pissed off about the response to events by the universities and students. And he hates immigrants anyway so anyone who’s ever said the word ‘Hamas’ without spitting will be deported, whether students or other ‘guests’ of his nation. If you look like you might support Hamas, you’re gone. And why not? Who wants the risk of harbouring terrorists in your cities?

And of all the presidents the world has to offer, the one in the USA is by far the most important to Israel. And, in fact to Britain too. Because if ‘the shit does hit the fan’, we’ll need our allies big-time too, having depleted ourselves of about 90% of our armed forces and war toys.

Joe Biden has shown himself to be, over the course of his 4 year tenure at the White House, the nob’s nob. A nob so total, senile, staggering, reeling, falling, demented and stupid that he too is now screaming ‘ceasefire’ too. So change is needed.

Donald Trump. God help us all, I want him to win. Because he sees the light from the dark.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

There’s war in Ukraine, there’s war in Gaza, the world’s in turmoil, Manchester United can’t win, Owen Farrell can’t wear an England shirt now he’s gone to the ‘dark side’ (France) to play his rugby and we’ve nearly finished ‘Fool Me Once’ on Netflix and don’t know what to watch next!!!!

These are big problems, right? Crises. Disasters. But there are other problems. Not so ‘grand’, not so ‘global’, but once you’ve compartmentalised the big shit as ‘stuff out there’ it doesn’t mitigate the broken dishwasher, nor the parking space you can’t find, the rattle coming from the loft, Waitrose are out of eggs. These are minor problems compared to the big stuff, but they are still problems, and we’re still allowed to get upset about them, moan about them, want to punch someone about them.

Hence my own ‘first world problem in a third world country’. With, of all people, Cadburys. My (former) favourite company in the entire world. Now part of Kraft, the US giant and its umbrella, Mondelez. Or, ‘the bastards’, as they are known. In my house.

I went into a supermarket in India and saw there a bar of Cadburys chocolate. Some people see red, I see purple. And I did, so I bought it. For £3.50. About a month’s wages for a Kerelan crop picker probably, but I am a fat-cat western materialist, so I splashed out. For the joy, the comfort, the sheer pleasure that Cadburys gives me. Usually.

We opened the bar, with some ceremony (because I’m stupid), made a cup of tea, put the chocolate in my mouth and… nothing happened. It sat there. Solid lump. I waited. Swilled some hot tea round it. It remained. Like a plastic Lego brick in my mouth. Doing nothing. Basically, it didn’t melt. At all. I waited (10 minutes) for my mouth to be bathed in creamy melted chocolate, but it didn’t happen. I bit it. And again. And ended up with a mouthful of little, hard bits of unmelting stuff in my mouth. I waited half an hour (I’m dedicated) before spitting it out.

I was crushed. Devastated. I’d never before eaten a bar of Cadburys chocolate that didn’t work. So I wrote to them. Sent them pics of the packet, receipt, all the stuff they asked for. And I waited. In my mind (never a good place, nor one even close to reality) a box was going to arrive. About 6 foot by 9. Filled with all my favourites.

Instead I received an email from some dozy robot at Mondelez spewing generic rubbish about quality control, blah, blah, blah, and please find attached ‘gift’. Holy shit!!!! Here it is. “Please go to your nearest chocolate shop with a wheelbarrow and fill it with purple!!!’ In my (fucking) dreams.

What the ‘gift’ was, when opened, was…

2 pounds. By PayPal or BACS. 2 quid. Less than the price paid for the bar I threw away. And there are people in the world, I realise, for whom 2 quid is a veritable fortune. I’m not one of them. I’m a spoilt, indulgent, horrible Western person for whom 2 quid won’t pay for my morning coffee. Or even touch my ongoing chocolate addiction (this pic was just a few bits I found rummaging round at home; I took it to send the CEO of Cadburys. My desk at work is way more incriminating).

Let’s just say I told Ms Mondelez precsicely what to do with her 2 quid, how Cadburys should never have left its Quaker values, how God himself thinks she’s an insulting ratbag, and I’ve taken the matter higher.

I WILL NOT REST UNTIL JUSTICE IS DONE!!!!

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

The funny thing is; when I read rubbish about the benefits of eating less, or consuming more green shit, or taking meat out of a diet and replacing it with kale and beansprouts, or the benefits of yoga, or that supporting Arsenal makes you alluring to women, I immediately become a cynic-of-convenience. I don’t want that to be true and even if it is I don’t care because it doesn’t suit what I do. Its a protective mechanism designed to protect my theoretically suicidal (if you believe the theory) lifestyle involving Cadburys and kebabs.

But when I read something that agrees perfectly with my life, then I believe it, don’t question the statistics, nor the maths, nor the logic, I’m just ‘on board’ with it totally. And you can’t get a better headline than this one. If you happen to be a total devotee, practitioner and evangelist of the practice of Tai Chi.

It explains so much. To save you buying a copy of yesterday’s Times, I’ll give you the salient details. Do tai chi and you’ll live forever. Its guaranteed when you join. Not only that but you’ll retain youth, vitality and good health forever. And your penis will grow. No question about that. You’ll become more beautiful. More clever. More… wonderful, than all those losers and tossers who do yoga, pilates, play golf, go fishing or waste hours of their life at Chelsea football club. I mean; just look at me!!! I’m 67, look… 65.5, possibly even 61!!!!, I’m fit, gorgeous and brilliant. And still act, in my wife’s words, ‘like a fucking juvenile’. Well they’re young, ain’t they??? Ever see any dead Chinese lying around? Exactly.

Its a bit of a puzzle why all the people in my club are so old, fat, ugly and stupid, but we’re all affected in different ways. This isn’t about them, its about MEEEEEE!!!

The article said that tai chi is more beneficial than any and everything else. But what people don’t get is that to ‘do’ the tai chi; that lovely flowing sequence of moves which are almost like a dance, you really need to understand what all the component moves actually mean. You can’t do ‘the form’, as we call it, without breaking it down into its constituents. Most of which are violent, brutal and possibly life-threatening. Yet once you understand that move, you then do it properly whilst doing your tai chi. Which is when it becomes more beneficial because you’ll strive to move your body more, stretching it more, flexing, twisting, bending, lining up arms and legs, to the point where its slightly uncomfortable. No strain, no gain.

So join a tai chi class now! You’ll live forever, whilst learning how to kill others so they don’t. And it’s supposed to improve your mind too. Heaven knows, that would hurt you either.

Happy qui gong Sunday,

A xxxx

We need to talk about the Michaela Community School in Brent. Wembley. Scene of numerous glory days for Spurs, just not very recently. It’s a wonderful school. Set up by a quite amazing woman, dubbed ‘the strictest headteacher in the country’, Katherine Barbalsingh. It’s a standard community comprehensive, standard demographic of about 25% of kids receiving free meals. About 50% of the kids are Muslim, a reflection of the area.

What’s not ‘standard’ is what this amazing woman has produced. A school of truly outstanding quality and results. From nothing to one of the top state schools in the country in a very short time. But her goals are as much driven by the ‘community’ aspect of the school’s name as for the educational excellence she’s achieved. She strives to de-factionalise the kids. Not let them split into ‘the Muslims’, ‘the Christians’, ‘the Jehovah’s Witnesses’, but tries to keep them fully integrated. There are no ‘prayer rooms’, no chapels, no meeting rooms or doors to knock on for the Jehova’s Witnesses.

Then a girl decided she wanted to pray in her lunch hour. So, as prayer mats aren’t allowed at school, she used her blazer and prayed. The next day 2 others joined her and within a week there were over 30 falling to their knees on their blazers every lunchtime. Peer pressure. Which then had the effect of ‘inspiring’ others to start wearing headscarves when previously they hadn’t.

Then came the demand for prayer mats, which were denied. The Islamofascists predictably cried ‘Islamophobia!!!’, sent death threats, made bomb scares, attacked teachers. And then, the student, named ‘TTT’ decided to take legal action against the school for… yes, Islamophobia and various other issues, discrimination, blah, blah, blah. And for this, she managed to get legal aid. We’re paying.

I think the court’s decision is a veritably simple one. This is what the judge should say:

“JUST FUCK OFF!
That’s the school, with all its good and its rules, the school you joined, implicitly agreeing to abide by their rules. Therefore to demand changes to those rules, to wish to remodel the entire school because of your burning need to pray is beyond unreasonable. This is not a Madrasa. It’s a comprehensive in Wembley. If it doesn’t suit your needs, go to another school which can accommodate you happily within ITS rules. There are plenty. Though most, unlike your present school, would be less accommodating to the educational and sporting needs of ‘mere’ girls.”

Simple.

This whole thing even makes the Jehovah’s Witnesses seem normal.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

There are some expressions I really hate. ‘At da end’a’da day’ being top of the list. Followed by ‘24/7’; ‘oh yeah, hundred percent’, and ‘less is more’. Because less isn’t more. It’s… errrr… less.

My current hobbies are: tennis, tai chi, reading, terrorising my grandchildren, being really annoying and gluttony. Gluttony, the defining reason why less is not more, it’s FUCKING LESSSSSSSS!

In a study in 21 pubs and restaurants, they found, unsurprisingly really, that if they reduce the size of wine glasses, people drank 7.6 percent less wine. How that helps, I’m not sure. Certainly doesn’t help the pubs much, who are 7.6% down on wine sales. Wouldn’t make much difference to me either as I tend to drink wine out of the bottle to save time and washing up. But it keeps statisticians employed and provides subjects for PhD theses in Nutrition. Its value to society? I would estimate at… nil. Nothing. Nada. Its basically saying: if you drink less its better for you. Similar to: if you eat less you’ll probably lose weight.

Not interested in either. ‘Enough is as good as a feast’ is rubbish. A feast is as good as a feast, with enough coming in at a poor third after ‘is that all???’

We’ve tried reducing food portion size but there were sooooooo many complaints (all from a ‘Mr A Conway’) that (ab)normal sizes were returned by popular demand. Same as booze. No point stopping at ‘enough’. No point stopping at all. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

If they really wanted people to lose weight they’d ban ‘buffets’ altogether. Especially in India, and breakfasts anywhere.

Next week; the healthy approach to ‘snacks’. (spoiler: there isn’t one. Not that I know of or am even prepared to listen to.)

Happy Friday

Your health guru
xxxx

This is the greatest catastrophe since William of Orange got stuck in France for 14 years. Whilst Bonny Prince Ethelred was dying from terminal sword wounds in Buckinghamshire after a Millwall match. Possibly since Henry 2nd was struck by an HGV on a mud path near Luton on what would, just a few hundred years later, become the M1.

We are short of royals. There’s only a few to go round at the best of times, but now, Charles is off for ‘prostate issues’ (more than enough information on that subject) and Kate is banged up in the Edward VIIth following an ‘abdominal operation’ of non-specific, eyes-only, top secret, need-to-know variety, leaving us to speculate wildly as to what it might be? Having a gastric band fitted? Possibly. Maybe the ‘abdominal’ is just a decoy and she’ll come out in 3 weeks looking just like Kim Kardashian, or Brad Pitt, maybe Ellis Genge, and then we’ll know.

But meanwhile, what the fuck do we do if need a royal in a hurry?? There’s only Camilla, and she’s not that royal really, or Wills, but he’ll be doing the dutiful husband bit and looking after the kids. Even though they’re all at boarding school, he has 17 nannies and a staff of 622. Harry’s gone… FOREVER!!!, Anne’s a bit old. Andrew… well, that ain’t gonna happen unless you’re looking for someone to perform the opening of a new brothel in Esher. Specialising in imported disabled children, illegally trafficked from the Far East. Suppose there’s Edward? Ok, maybe not.

Great Britain could be at risk of attack!!! We have no King to lead us in battle if the Houthis come here for an away match. We have no Kate to remind us that not everyone with the surname ‘Windsor’ looks like a failed experiment in genetic inbreeding manipulation. Who will shake lots of hands in crowds? Wave from very slow moving vehicles? Jesus, we are a nation exposed!!!!, without our royals.

The nearest available are Mike Tindall or me!!! I’m sitting by the phone.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

How was your Tuesday? Probably better than Rishi Sunak’s. Unless you’re a West Ham fan, obviously. Because yesterday they took the pre-vote vote on the Rwanda bill. Again??? Yes, again. We’ve got loads of horrible forriners fresh of their highly sinkable boats, just waiting for a one-way ticket to… well, kind of ‘oblivion’. There’s a queue half way round Heathrow as we speak, ok, that’s nothing unusual in itself, but this is people under guard. Chained to the Duty Free. Shackled to the Oyster Bar. Because they can’t be deported until we sort out the whole Rwanda thing. And this is the third time its come before ‘the House’. The proper vote is today. Yesterday’s was just to approve the wording of the plan. And for others to seek an amendment to it before it passes parliament.

60 people from the government voted against Rishi’s plan and 3 of them resigned in protest.

Not because they’re lovely people who think a few poor asylum seekers who’ve been tortured and persecuted in their own countries then crossed half the world on foot and by very precarious boats to arrive here, should be given a break of some kind. But because they think the wording of the policy is not strong enough. It gives refugees the right of appeal. Keeps them here when we want them gone. Make the wording tight and infallible so the courts won’t rule it illegal or unworkable, like the previous 2 times.

From my perspective, its all just a bit ‘random’, a bit ‘desperate’. You can’t send refugees ‘home’ if they’ve been victimised in some way so send them to (close eyes, spin a globe of the world, stick a finger on it to stop it…) to Rwanda!!! Lets just bung that semi-trustworthy, possibly human-rights-abusing, questionably corrupt, previously torturing nation a few hundred million and see if we pass a law to dump our unwanteds there. Oh, sorry, see if we can ‘stop this horrible trade in human trafficking’, what was I thinking?

They vote today. And if they don’t amend the bill, we’ll probably be voting again next month, possibly the one after as well, depending on when the general election is called.

This is precisely why we NEED football.

Happy wednesday

A xxxx