Andy's Glasses

Italy has a new Prime Minister today. And this is what she looks like. Not necessarily on the outside, but her inner depths are as dark and rotten as were those of El Duce himself. Who will be looking up, from Hell, with a big smile on his face. Even though his testicles are in a vice which squeezes more for all eternity, and his head is being pounded with a hammer all day, every day, since 1945, and will do forevermore.

Because Georgia Meloni is a chip off the old fascist. Yet in fact, she’s a lot worse. Because he was a tyrant and dictator who allied himself to Hitler and she, firstly, should know better, and secondly, now has a vast immigrant population to ‘work with’ which Mussolini didn’t possess.

She is the leader of the Brothers of Italy, bit ironic as she’s obviously a ‘sister’, which she has taken from being a neo-nazi, paki-bashing bunch of racist, xenophobic, ultra-nationalist thugs, to a degree of ‘acceptability’ by lowering the tone of her usual rhetoric and using a very diluted line on a more general population. And in the hard times (and Italy only ever has hard times) blaming it on immigrants is such a cheap and easy way forward. ‘Blame the Darkie’ has an enduring history in right wing history, although Hitler modified it for those not so dark. Any minority will do the job. Then direct everyone’s hate in that direction. Which sadly always has a mass appeal for those who consider themselves ‘hard done by’.

And sadly, although this may seem a horribly ‘right wing’ attitude, so you’d think, there was an interesting call on the radio yesterday from Colin from Essex or Mervin from Rochdale, saying how Liz Truss’s proposal to increase immigration for workers in healthcare, farming, the usual, were awful because, basically ‘WOT ABART GOOD INGLISH PEOPLE ‘AVIN JOBS AND ‘OUSES???’ And Colin/Mervin was hard Labour. So hard you could almost hear the shadow of Corbyn as he spoke. Even though it was just what you’d expect from the far right.

Georgia Meloni is apparently very bright. But not so bright as to think that having Sylvio Berlusconi on her team is actually going to give her some kind of credibility.

Ciao bene

A xxxx

Anyone can win a tennis tournament. Anyone can win loads of grand slams. Well, when I say ‘anyone’, I mean those who play the game even more betterer than wot I do. And possibly speak better English too. And here’s two guys who have won way more than ‘their fair share’ of tournaments. Possibly more than anyone, if you don’t count: miseries, Serbs and Covid-risks. Because for more than a decade all the major tournaments have been won by those three, and a couple by Andy Murray (see: ‘miseries’, above). So they all played in a tennis tournament at the O2 in Greenwich last week and there were many photos of the Fab Four. With Andy Murray definitely ‘Ringo’.

And then I saw this photo in today’s paper. And I cried. Quite literally, I had tears in my eyes which fortunately precluded me from reading all the bad news which surrounded it.

Because not everyone can be a big enough man to cry in public and hold another man’s hand for comfort. They lost a doubles match. But they weren’t crying about that. Only real tossers, wooses, the feeble-minded and losers do that. These two monsters of their sport were crying about The End. The end of the era. Roger’s last match and who knows whether Rafa will play more, having magnificently limped his way to winning Wimbledon this summer after endless injuries. Djokovic and Murray simply don’t count. The first no one likes and the second was just not quite big enough to be an equal. A true ‘great’. Only a British great because we calibrate greatness differently. Properly. But maybe, quite soon, Novak and Andy can share a man-crush moment of their own.

Meanwhile, I shall just enjoy this shared moment. It’s not like footballers hugging and kissing after a goal. Firstly, this is raw and that is just following the guidelines, plus the fact that they’ll all probably be trousering another 50 grand for that goal.

This is what true greatness looks like.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Liz Truss was blessed. She had an unprecedented 10 day period of ‘grace’ after becoming PM, due to a dead queen. She took the reins and before anyone could attack her for anything, she was given 10 days to work on her plan as we were all mourning, queuing and crying. So she has no excuses. For possibly instigating nation-saving radical policies, or possibly ruining the nation’s economy forever and longer. The jury’s out and will stay that way until one or the other happens.

Her policy is basically ‘spend, spend, spend’. She must have learnt that from Mel. For whom that is generally the answer to every problem. But we do it on a relatively ‘micro’ level. Liz is a macro-babe. It’s her job. Even though she looked a lot like Kwasi Kwarteng when she said it. And this is what she/they said:

You can have all the money we can throw at you. As long as you earn more than 100k a year. Everyone else can whistle. But it better be a cheap whistle. Because you’ll get NOTHING from me or my government. Income tax is coming down. We all love that. Except the people who don’t pay any, not much difference for them. Corporation tax is coming down, great for businesses, not much relevance to a foundry worker. National insurance is reverting to its former lower rate, which is fine because its not like the health service needs much in the way of funding as we’re all healthier and younger than ever. And bankers’ bonuses are no longer capped. Fine if you’re a banker, absolutely shitty if you’re a trade unionist to whom bankers represent all the evil in the world that doesn’t speak Russian.

These measures are to encourage economic growth and overseas investment. By making Britain a great place to come and set up business. Tax is low, corporation tax is low, your bankers can earn billions and as half of London is currently empty, rent is probably cheap too. And in the slipstream of these businesses comes employment, spending, tax dollars and all sorts of benefits to our economy. That’s the plan.

But man (woman, even) plans, God laughs.

Because big earners pay big taxes, they are the biggest beneficiaries of all the tax cuts. Which pisses off lots of people, even though those top 10% of earners will still be contributing 90% of all tax paid. Yet for Mick Lynch, the leader of the RMT union, these budgetary moves quite literally shit on the heads of ‘workers’. And if its offensive enough for Mick Lynch, then its good enough for me.

Happy new world order

A xxxx

When I talk about ‘revolting’, I’m not just referring to Joey’s eating habits, there is another meaning. And it seems that good, honest, decent people are taking to the streets, in countries run by not-good, dishonest, indecent people and making a stand. Which, due to the very nature of those leaders, is a bit dangerous.

The Russians are up in arms or, more sensibly, just running away, in response to Mister Putin calling them all up to help kill Ukrainians. He wants to ‘mobilise’ 300,000 reservists, give them no option (though who, ever, would volunteer?), and send them to either die or to kill people who most consider their own flesh-and-blood. Probably the former because Russia doesn’t do ‘military tactics’. It never has. It uses ‘outnumbering’ as its sole form of warfare. Not that Ukraine is a ‘war’, no way Vlad. It may look like a war, it may feel like a war (to the people who live there), but its just a ‘special military action’, to protect Russia and Russians. Right. So as Putin’s fragile grip on sanity leads him down ever darkening pathways, he wants to send in another bunch of healthy young men to get killed. To protect his nation from a threat no-one else can see. Except that scumbag Sergey Labrov, his liar-in-chief. So Putin loses his young, the very future of the nation he’s allegedly doing it all for, as they flee its borders in search of safety and the opportunity to live a life.

Whilst in Iran, possibly the only nation less tolerant than Putin’s, they’re burning… well, lots of things but mainly hijabs. Which may be good for the manufacturers because being seeing without one is an offence in that lovely country, but its a statement that merely represents the total hatred most Persians (I’ll call them that to differentiate them from the horrible Ayatollah-wallahs) feel for the hard and brutal Islamic regime they find themselves living under.

So ostensibly, the riots are about the death of a 22 year-old girl. Who died, ‘of a heart attack’, according to the ‘morality police’, in whose care she was at the time. She was fit, healthy, no underlying medical anything. They arrested her for ‘not wearing her hijab properly’. A phrase that has no meaning whatsoever anywhere outside of Tehran. And she died in the police van. And although it’s about that tragic event, really that’s just a catalyst for the deep-lying resentment Persians have for being forced to live a sharia life when they want to be dancing in the streets of Paris and Berlin, but in their own country. Where, according to government spokesman, ‘wearing a hijab is voluntary’. Yet they have police to enforce it and the Prime Minister refused to be interviewed in America by a journalist until she wore one. Where’s a Shah when you need one?

Happy riotous Friday

A xxxx

Sometimes you need to just think outside the box. To assess a disaster as something other than. To re-wire the thought patterns of the ENTIRE FUCKING UNIVERSE!!!!

We have two problems: Energy and Russia. And they’re already related. Yeah, I know, we could just burn Russia and use it to heat our homes for 17 years, but is it ‘sustainable’? You’ve probably already thought of that one anyway. If, like me, you have psychopathic tendencies, feel the cold and hold all other nations to be worthless.

But those problems aren’t going away. In fact, they’re getting worse. Liz Truss is holding prices for energy in check here, by, basically, selling off the future by the excessive national borrowing we’re going to have to do. And now Putin (who definitely thinks along my lines, psychopathically speaking) is threatening the ‘nuclear option’, not specifically restricted to Ukraine, but for all of Europe, possibly the world. He’s an equal opportunity mass murderer. And he’s. ‘not bluffing’. Tosser.

All we have to do is make him go nuclear. Because each atomic warhead contains sufficient energy, once deployed, to run 5 Bitcoin ‘mines’ for 24 years. Or 37 small cities for 2,000 years. We just have to harness the energy from the explosion. How hard can that be? Just stand nearby with a few batteries from the Tesla and store it. Not only will we have almost endless power, but Russia will be paying for it.

A minor problem, just a matter of logistics really, is that maximum energy is provided during the first milliseconds of the explosion. The rest is just ‘fall out’, and no-one likes that whilst they’re eating their tea. Nor children that glow in the dark, but we’ll address all these things in time. But I happen to be very busy on the day of the explosion. So I’m going to send you to ‘ground zero’ with your batteries, a thermos of coffee and some wire, so you won’t miss a single kilawatt coming your way.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So its finally over. The Queen thing. She vanished into a hole in the ground at Windsor, but elegantly, electronically, after having the orb and sceptre whipped away for Charlie, and its all over. So the news can revert to being… news, once more and the papers are no longer obliged to keep running ‘royal specials’, ‘regal supplements’ and every photo ever taken of the late Her Maj and some Corgis.

At peak viewing time on Monday, 28 million people in Britain were watching the BBC. Even the Super Bowl would take that. Shame they weren’t selling advertising time but some felt it might be a little inappropriate. In the circumstances. To have a young babe dancing round a box of tampons whilst The Queen was on the Long Walk. Or possibly, “Carling don’t make Royalty, but if they did…”

Thus we can move on. To talk about ‘The Queue’. Because we haven’t heard enough stories about people’s experiences of shuffling along the South Bank for 14 hours and we need more. It reached the point where people were going to Southwark ‘to see the queue’. I mean, FFS. What next, another queue, to see THE queue??

Whilst David Beckham joined the back and did it properly, some celebs chose not to. They went in the ‘back door’ without queuing. Philip Schofield and the rent-a-blond he does breakfast tv with, could be Holly, Fearne, Kate, they’re all interchangeable, has been lambasted for the new crime of ‘NOT QUEUING!’ You don’t have to say which queue, there is only one. ‘But we were working!’, he lamely cried. ‘Reporting on… well, on the unmoving coffin draped in a flag’, so we slithered in the VIP entrance, like fucking snakes!!!

Now we can move back to the economy. Some say that Liz Truss took the opportunity to murder the Queen so she would have 10 days to work out what the fuck she could possibly do with the economy. Otherwise she would have been pressured into making important announcements with insufficient time to calculate her plans. Ok, I haven’t heard too many people make that accusation, just me.

And it sounds like that was 10 days well spent because I’m going to be much richer. She’s taking another 200 billion quid which we don’t have, and giving it to me.

The Queen is dead: long live Liz Truss!

Happy normal (ish) Wednesday

A xxxx

I was 7 years old when Winston Churchill died. I barely knew him. And his was the last state funeral of a similar magnitude to what is happening today. I can’t remember what happened when the Queen Mother died a few years ago, so it couldn’t have been that grand. What passes as ‘low key’ in royal circles. Just 35 horse-drawn carriages and 22,000 soldiers. But Churchill’s was the real deal. Even though he wasn’t a Queen. To our knowledge. And if I’m honest, I’ve never forgiven him.

Because in 1965 there were 2 tv channels. Which, pretty much operated in daylight hours only. So children only had limited options. There was about an hour every weekday at about 4.30 and then there was Saturday mornings. The day they buried Winnie.

So I came down for breakfast and, depending on the time, when the kids stuff was due to start, I would switch on. And instead of terrible puppets whose strings were clearly visible, overly dramatic ‘cliff-hanger’, black’n’white, b-movie type series and a few BBC buffoons dressed as clowns, there was a big black box being pulled down Constitution Hill by lots of horses. There were soldiers. And it was all in slow motion.

“WTF???”, I said to my mother. “Where’s Space Patrol, FFS???? The Woodentops are due on in 5 minutes, what’s all this shit?” Yes, tragically, I swore terribly even at 7. Well, not terribly as much as really proficiently.

And I learned that tv was suspended for the day because of the funeral of an old fat man who I never knew. “But will Pinky and Perky come on later then? Are they at the funeral?”

And thus state funerals represent days of personal tragedy for me. Deprived of the telly wot I wanted to watch. Lila and Joey are coming for lunch today and I shall just tell them its Peppa Pig’s funeral, then they’ll watch it.

Therefore, I chose to do my own, personal ‘reflecting’ on Her Maj whilst in the shower this morning, during my rinse cycle, saying my final farewells, offering her soul all the thanks for being… such a nice Queen and thus liberating myself from having to turn on the tv until 6 o’clock this evening to watch a rockumentary from 1996.

I do ‘get it’ totally. Lovely old woman, only monarch we’ve ever had, charming lady, always proper, devoted to the nation, I get all that. But I’ve ‘ad enough. If I hear one more person say, with teary eyes, that queuing up for 21 hours and being in the room with one dead body and 74 living but non-moving ones for 32 seconds, was ‘the best moment of their lives’ then I shall start a campaign of introducing recreational drugs to the masses.

Happy Burial Day

A xxxx

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to talk about football so near to the Queen’s funeral. They cancelled a couple of matches today for that very reason and I have no wish to be cancelled by anyone. Even the total morons who normally do the cancelling. The hard left diversity mavens so intent on ‘inclusivity’ that they exclude everyone who questions their often laughable dogma.

Anyway, if I can’t talk about football then I’ll talk about Koreans in general and work my way round to Son Heung-Min the long way. Because he needs to be spoken about. Loudly and with pride. If there were 8 hour queues to pay respects to that man, I’d join the end in a minute. Probably regret it 4 hours later, but it would be worth it. To show my appreciation. Of possibly the most undervalued player in the world.

Ok, so Koreans… hmmmm… there’s Kim Jong-Un, obviously, but he’s the wrong Korea, the Northern one. The south is better. Much better. They make Samsung, LG, Kia, Hyundai and Son. He is the captain of South Korea. Not just the football team, but all of it. He’s that good.

And yet, even the good have their ups and downs. Thus did our beloved Sonny find himself sitting on the substitutes bench yesterday when the match started against Leicester, darn the Laine. What????, people questioned, how can you leave out a player of such class, the winner of last year’s ‘golden boot’, no less, just because he hasn’t scored in the first 6 matches of the season??? Are you maaaadddd??

But this is the genius of Antonio Conte, our manager. Son has started every match for 2 years. He’s a constant. His link-up with Harry Kane is beyond the telepathic and enters some Steven King kind of supernatural world. But Conte, now blessed with a third striker, has more options than he had last year. We have Richarlison. The Brazilian who no Spurs fan particularly wanted but are now incredibly pleased he’s here.

But what good could possibly be achieved by leaving Son on the bench??? That’s not going to help him score, is it???

That’s what we all thought. Which is why Antonio earns 5 million quid a year, and we don’t.

Son came on yesterday with the score a rather precarious 3-2 up, as either Leicester showed themselves better than expected or our defence was shit. And then, in the space of just 13 minutes, the score had moved to 6-2, with Sonny scoring the hat trick.

And these were not ‘tap-ins’, this was no ugly Haaland moment of brutality and luck, no. This was pure class. The first a wonderstrike. The second possibly even better. Both scored with different feet, making it even more spectacular. The third was part saved on the way in, but don’t let that detract from the run and movement arriving at that moment.

Conte is a footballing genius, there is no doubt. But Sonny…

I just love him.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

There’s a lot of ‘reflection’ going on today. And yesterday. Will be tomorrow. Definitely Monday. Everyone’s favourite, go-to, pop-psychological word has, in just 10 days, gone from a term used infrequently on a therapist’s couch to being the guiding concept to help us through our trauma over the death of a very old lady. Charles had a day of ‘reflection’ with the body. Everyone is queuing up for their 5 seconds of allotted ‘reflection’ with the coffin. The news is full of it, the papers riddled with it. There is so much reflection occurring that I’m wearing sunglasses full time now. Polarised ones. Because no-one is ‘thinking’ any more. No-one is pondering, considering, remembering or deliberating. We’re all fucking ‘reflecting’.

So I want to take a moment here to do some reflecting of my own. Because it is terrible when things die. We are forced to consider what those things meant to us, directly or indirectly, the effect of their stopping and how we feel about it.

Thus with Roger Federer announcing the death of his professional career. He retired this week as he feels his 41 year-old body simply can’t compete any longer. Welcome to my world, Rog. Yet as I reflect…

He entered the public eye (this pair anyway) when he first won Wimbledon as a gawky Swiss nerdy dude with a pony tail and a Robin Williams smile. But there was something about him when he played which was just a bit ‘different’. He never looked athletic. Never powerful or butch or aggressive, but he played with a style which was amazingly pleasing on the eye. So the sponsors got involved, as they do, lopped off the pony tail, made him the ultimate gentleman, gave him a white blazer and a stupid ‘RF’ logo so they could sell more merchandise. And he went on winning. And winning. And winning. Just in a much more ‘corporate’ way. But what never changed was the elegance of his play. The beautiful style. The almost balletic way he moved to the ball. The absolute, text-book perfection of every shot made.

There’ll be players who win more slams. There’ll be players who annihilate opposition more convincingly. Tennis will undoubtedly continue. But there probably won’t ever be another who plays with such beauty. It’s now all about power and pace and 6 foot 7 East European serving machines.

And talking of style, David Beckham, in case there was any doubt, is an uber-mensch. A man among men. He queued for 11 hours yesterday to see the Queen. Just stood in line, spoke to people, I’m guessing there were a few selfies involved, and he paid his respects, 11 hours later.

This man sits at football matches with Princes. He joins royals on sporting committees. He knows everybody. Yet chose to just stand in line, rather than make what would have been a simple call to just get a ticket. Which was the path taken by the MPs, who all were happy to invoke their privilege rather than act like all the people they represent in parliament and just queue up.

Which is why we love David Beckham and all MPs are tossers who prove, time and again, how out of touch with ‘normal people’ they really are.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

… the tough get queuing.

Every nation has its main strategy for coping with tragedy. Some beat chests, others have public wailing session, the Russians do what they’re told to do, the Americans promise gun control, Eskimos put another log on the fire, the French surrender, East Europeans join neo-nazi organisations, and the British queue. And they do so in an orderly, polite, genteel, good-natured way.

Though queuing is not so much a ‘strategy’ as a ‘way of life’. A cultural hobby. Practised regularly so that when you really need it, like NOW!!, its easy. Most Brits will see a queue and just join the end. Why not? Must be queuing for something, I’ll give it a go.

But the queues now, to view the lying in state of our dear departed previous monarch, are quite frankly, the queues of dreams. You can queue for an hour to check out at Tescos. Two hours for a flight. Three hours at passport control. Four hours to get through to any big company on the phone, being told ‘your call is important to us… just not really important enough to take, right now’. You want tickets for a concert? Five hours.

The queues to ‘see the Queen’ have reached 24 hours. They were 9 hours by Thursday night, 14 by this afternoon and then they actually stopped the queue because they’d run out of bits of Southwark to hold the queuers. People got pissed off. Can you imagine coming down from Scotland on a coach for 19 hours, getting the tube over to Tower Bridge, finding Southwark Park, only to be told you can’t queue? Well, you can, but only to buy a ticket home. What would the Queen have thought? Appalling.

So they opened up the lines and its now a whole day.

I’m waiting til its at least 36 hours before I join it. For Her Maj, I wanna KNOW I’ve been queuing.

Happy viewing in State

A xxxx