Andy's Glasses

This is the table showing the standings as we prepare to play the final match of the league phase of the Champions League tonight. Which is so important to me that I’m going out for dinner. Not my idea, but faced with ‘free dinner vs despair’, it was a hard choice.

What’s interesting is that in the top 11 places there are 6 English teams. Once again showing, in glaringly unambiguous statistical certainty, that the other European leagues are shit. They’re a sham. Its all a bit ‘Scotland’. 2 amazing, fantastic and rich clubs, add in 1 or 2, but NO MORE, average ‘also-rans’ and fill the remainder with the hopeless and the dire.

The UEFA Cup final last year was contested by the two English teams who came immediately above the relegation zone. So you can be a crappy English team and still be better than 90% of the Europeans.

Ok, seeing Arsenal top of yet another table doesn’t do much for me. I should give them some credit for that. But simply can’t. Interestingly, during their most successful season, so far, in a decade, at the first sniff of a loss, last Sunday, their lovely fans immediately ‘turned’ and started booing their team.

You need your team to play much more consistent dross and lose far more games really badly before you have the right to boo. You have to be like Spurs. Then you have the right to hit the ‘sacked in the morning’ tape. Don’t those miserable, entitled gooners realise that booing your own team is not really the encouragement they’re going to need to win matches?

With Spurs, I just despair. To say that this league table flatters my team is such a vast understatement that I would question its validity in normal circumstances. But it is what it is. We’re flying high in Europe but can’t win a league match however flawed the opposition. We can out-flaw anyone in the Premiership.

So good luck to all those English teams tonight. Except Arsenal, obviously. Except Chelsea, certainly. Manchester City, on principle. Liverpool, because we must. And Newcastle, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I was an abused child. No-one knew. It looked like the perfect, happy, loving household and yet… and yet…
There was fucking sugar, everywhere!!! The worst, most harmful, addictive, nasty… DRUG!!!! on the planet. And my parents simply couldn’t get enough of it, and virtually ‘forced’ it on me and my brother. As you generally have to ‘force’ sugar on, or into, children.

Rationing in England finally ended, from the war, in 1952. Rich was born in ’53 and I bowled along (because I’d have strutted out, with serious attitude, right from birth) in ’56. And when rationing finished, the thing most people had really been craving, sugar, suddenly exploded back into virtually unlimited availability. Yeah, petrol for the car was good, but my parents didn’t have a car until 1962 when my dad bought a Ford Consul. I wish I still had it. Massive thing, column, 3-speed gear shift, class. Milk is nice, eggs being back in the shops was wonderful. But sugar just…

We always had bowls of sweets in the house. Toffees, chewy sweets, sucky sweets, chocolate things, always. Even 40 years later, my kids loved going round to my parents because there was always sweets around.

Yet times change. I was talking to Lila on Friday night and she told me how many ‘teaspoons of sugar’ are in a can of Coke, in breakfast cereals, crisps, McDonalds… they had the talk. The ‘sugar talk’. The evils of the world’s most wonderful product. And Lila held forth (as she does) about its health issues and obesity and diabetes and tooth decay, and all very intellectual and very Lila. But then offer her a lemon flavoured Mento and she’ll bite your hand off for it. Joey would too, but he actually likes eating hands as well as sweets.

Then in Saturday’s Times magazine was a long article about a woman who ‘cut out all the sugar in her life’. Wow. She must be glowing with health and vitality. Or possibly suicidal with the lack of enjoyment in everything she eats and drinks.

On a medico-scientific level, we all know sugar is really bad for us. But that doesn’t apply when you’re eating it. We all ‘need’ sugar, from a strictly dietary viewpoint. Because… because its very nice.

So not eating sugar, which is so wonderfully available and almost universally deployed by all food manufacturers to keep us addicted, would be as stupid as having wonderful, high-powered cars available and filling the capital with speed-bumps. Or 20mph roads.

God help us all.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Oh. My. God.

2 days has passed since I last… passed judgment on the world? Spouted a load of unwanted opinion? Had a rant? Whatever you call it. But in those 2 days the whole world has fundamentally changed. DON’T I GET A MOMENT’S PEACE??? FFS???

Donald Trump, on Thursday, basically called every English soldier who fought in Afghanistan a coward, a wimp and virtually worthless. Ok, he actually said that ‘NATO troops from Europe weren’t on the front line, but just behind it’. Same difference. Kier Starmer went mad about that. I mean, how bad does any statement have to be before Starmer is even prepared to take an impartial, non-legal view about it?? But to have him screaming (almost) accusations against Trump!! And best of all; the great President actually heeded Starmer’s point that 457 of our ‘cowards’ died on the fucking front line. Thousands were horrendously injured. Prince Harry, who was there, in his helicopter, watching, stated his disgust with Trump’s words. So Trump did what for him is ‘the right thing’. And rather than apologise, which he is functionally incapable of ever doing, he issued another statement, gushing with praise for the British military, filled with all the normal Trumpian hyperbole and unlimited praise for our gallant troops.

Then, over here, and seemingly unrelated to anyone other than the most dedicated conspiracy-theorist, Andy Burnham, the virtual GOD of the entire north of England, the man who made Manchester… even more ‘Manchester’ than it was before, decided to give it all up and stand as a lowly MP. Well, some cynics would say, ‘for the expressed purpose of deposing Kier Starmer as leader of the Labour Party and PM of all of England!!! Plus bits of those other countries nearby.’ But before he was allowed to stand for the election in… some northern place of no interest, his application had to be approved by the executive of the Labour Party because he’d have to resign as mayor of Manchester first.

And that would be a bit of a problem for Labour. Because despite our Andy thinking himself ‘the northerner’s northerner’ and ‘the most Manc person since Liam Gallagher or Gary Neville’, the present government’s massive unpopularity would probably result in some neo-nazi Reformist getting in on a ‘kill all immigrants’ ticket. So they turned him down for the by-election. Which those same cynics might say was really to protect Starmer from invasion.

And if all that wasn’t enough, those fuckers from ICE shot dead another seemingly innocent civilian in Minneapolis yesterday. I watched it. As about 9 of the ‘officers’ beat up some guy, then shot him several times. ICE answer to no higher authority. They act with the President’s blessing and enjoy complete impunity and unaccountability, other than public opinion. ICE showed a photo of a gun. Allegedly possessed by their latest victim. It may have been his gun, could’a been anyone’s. Was he holding it? Threatening with it? Ah, that’s not really clear. ICE are effectively what Hitler’s ‘brown shirts’ were in 1936. A law unto themselves with the unrestricted blessing of the highest power to beat up and/or murder whoever they see fit.

And then we nearly lost at Burnley.

I’m not saying that’s in the same league of ‘importance’ as what’s written above, but as the equalising goal for us went in at the 90th minute, it was, momentarily, the only thing happening in the entire world.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So the original ‘Board of Peace’ was going to be me, Donald Trump, Rubio, Tony Blair and one or two ‘make weights’, just because we over-ordered chairs. Then Donald invited Vladimir Putin to join. They don’t do irony in America, obviously and famously, otherwise we’d all be in hysterics over having the greatest war-monger on the planet joining a board of ‘peace’. Whilst he’s still directing the missiles over Ukraine.

And our brief was simple: sort out Gaza. Easy peasy. Just disarm Hamas, rebuild an entire little territory in which 2 million people are currently homeless, lose the jihadi mentality of the whole population and educate them about anti-semitism, eliminating all traces of the evils of Iranian-backed terrorism and the toxic education by the UN, of all fucking people.

That’s all.

But now, Don called me because he wants to expand it. In his truly rousing speech yesterday (I never knew he invented the wheel! Stopped 14 wars in 3 weeks! Removed the threats on Greenland and the tariffs in 7 days!!! Even though they were his ideas originally. He made the first ever push-up bra! Cured cancer!! Built Israel’s Iron Dome with his own hands!!!) he intents to increase both the remit of the ‘Board’ and also its constituent members. To include a whole host of ‘lovelies’ including Argentinians, Saudis, Qataris, Viktor Orban of Hungary (a man of similar views to DJT but less devotion to normal ideas of ‘democracy’), Israel’s in, as it has to be and then he even scraped the international barrel by inviting Kier Starmer.

But Kier is now torn. He’s always fucking ‘torn’. Which is why all the time he’s not actually sitting on a fence, he’s performing u-turns. And now he has to decide whether to sit on this ‘board’ with Vlad-the-Bad. So here’s our Prime Minister, a man obsessed with ‘diplomacy’ (rather than ‘action’), who always wants to ‘talk’. And here is the golden opportunity to actually speak to Putin, to have ‘talks’ with the man and possibly try to either dissuade him or at least understand him better. But no. Kier has his pride and his values (and a fair dose of stupidity) so doesn’t wish to ‘share the platform’ with Pute. What a tosser.

Basically, world peace comes down to Don (who’s name MUST always come first or he throws a wobbly and soils his nappy), Tony, Vlad and me.

I’ll keep you posted.

Happy Thursday. Or ‘World Peace Day’ as it will soon be known.

A xxxx

Every time Spurs win a football match I like to let people know. Most aren’t interested. Understandable. But the boys in my morning cafe are big football fans. Even though they’re Spanish and that’s a nation that thinks to run a first class football league you only really need 2 teams. They’ve been here long enough to understand the massive superiority of the Premiere League over all others in the entire world. Because I tell them repeatedly. I tell them how good our league is and that the only difference between LaLiga and the Scottish Premiere League is the accents. They appreciate that.

So this morning, I went in with my arms raised above my head in celebration of last night’s wonderful win over Dortmund in the Champions League. And ‘big brother’ (there are 2 brothers there; one small, whip thin, fit as a fiddle and yet just had 2 heart attacks, and one really big, massively overweight and is in peak health; go figure) sneered at me. As if to say ‘really?’ Like it was no big deal. Even though Champions League is ‘proper’ and Dortmund are good. Well, they were, when Klopp was there. And he should understand that, being a European, and a ‘forriner’ an’ all.

And I thought: when did I last strut into my cafe with my arms aloft? The last match Spurs won (in all fucking competitions), was Crystal Palace. I was in Tenerife and the cafe was closed for xmas break. The previous time we claimed victory was against Brentford on December 6th. A long time ago. If 24 hours is a ‘long time in politics’, how long is it in football years? We could get through 3 managers in that time.

On Monday I crept into the cafe in case Kevin the West Ham fan barrister’s clerk was in there. He’s a totally lovely guy, but I would have run away rather than have to encounter him on that day.

So much in life is just difficult when you’re a Spurs fan. Because we win so infrequently that when it happens I have to gloat. I have to mock. I have to be… possibly a caricature of the most annoying football fan in the world. And the rest of the time I pay the price for being so horrible. Or creep around avoiding people.

Do I think we need a new manager? No. I don’t. Keep him. He has ‘something’. Ok, that something isn’t working too well currently, but I feel positive. Today. After our win.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Well look, we knew war was coming, right? The world has been boiling over for years now. Putin’s little intimidations, Trump’s invasions and attacking other nations, ‘for peace’, Ukraine, Gaza, obviously Iran; its all reached boiling point this weekend. We’ve reached our ‘Sarajevo moment’. Not by shooting anyone; that’s soooo 20th century. This time its tariffs.

We’re going to war against America. Over Greenland. There’s nothing subtle about the US President. He wants Greenland. Allegedly for the strategic purposes which he pretty much already has; given carte blanche by Greenland and Denmark to ‘knock yourself out building as many military bases as ya like’. But he’s not so interested in countries, however ‘strategic’, which aren’t bursting at the seams with untapped resources. So he wants to ‘own’ Greenland. Buy it, steal it, makes no difference to him.

Europe (including Britain, for historical reasons) said that he can’t just ‘take’ an independent country. Well, not perfectly independent because its owned by Denmark, but the people living there, in igloos, fishing in ice holes, fighting polar bears, kind’a people, should at least get some kind of vote? Or at least be given some beads and fire-water. The Yanks have a history of such ‘negotiations’ with indigenous peoples. Europe got really ‘strong’. And the master of strong words is Le trumped-up (no relation) little shit, Macron. Even Kier Starmer wrenched himself off his perpetual fence to offer his ‘slight difficulty’ with the idea of America invading an allied nation. Germany, Italy, they all shouted out in indignation. But shouted ‘quietly’ as you have to do when dealing with a 79 year-old baby.

But the baby got upset, threw his toys out of the pram and put Europe’s tariffs up by 15%. Oh no, another tariff war. Just when we all getting best-pally again.

Iran’s in a state. Iran is state. An Islamic one. Too Islamic for most of the people living there. The ones getting murdered in their thousands, presumably in the name of Islam, if you look at it logically. And accept the illogicality of that. But they Ayatollah is awaiting attack, any day now, from either Trump, or from Israel.

To be honest, either would do for me. Iran has had the biggest destabilising effect on the entire middle east for too long. Funding its horrible terrorist proxies.

And here’s the great thing. You’ll never meet a horrible Iranian. Over here, in London. They’re all fabulous. Which is why they’re here. These are the normal people. The ones who just want to have the freedom to listen to pop music if they please. Who want to wear something other than a headscarf when they go down the pub. These are the greatest anti-Ayatollahs in the world. And we support them. Even when they block half the Finchley Road for 2 hours with their protest yesterday. I just waved and smiled and wished them luck.

My bags are packed, gas mask ready, my Lee-Enfield rifle oiled up, I’ve filled up the Sopwith Camel and I’m ready for the fight. Just tell me where.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

“Sacked in the morning, you’re getting sacked in the morning…”, so sang the Spurs fans to their manager yesterday in a what transpired was an attack of wishful thinking. As ‘this morning’ arrived and Thomas Frank was still gainfully employed by Tottenham Hotspur plc. Had he been sacked, it’s not like the geezer in the chip shop getting sacked, when he loses his income and has to go scurrying around to find alternative employment. No. When football managers get sacked, they get paid the same as when they weren’t sacked. But only for the… 3 years? maybe 5, left on their contract. Work for 6 months, get paid for 3 years. That’s the way we do it at Spurs. And to be fair, at all other clubs. We just do it more often.

But really, as much as I truly, madly, deeply HATE the culture of a manager turnstile rotating with horrible frequency, THIS CAN’T FUCKING GO ON. We’ve won 1 out of our last 8 matches. Won 4 home games in 24 months. It’s simply abysmal. Something must be done.

We need to get Kemi Badenoch in charge down the Lane. She knows how to get someone ‘sacked in the morning’.

On Thursday we awoke, confident in the knowledge that the great Robert Jenrick was making our lives better and protected in his role as Shadow Justice Minister. A role carrying as much political power as Joey’s as ‘schoolboy/hooligan’. 10 minutes later we learned Kemi had sacked the lying, cheating, duplicitous bastard, after learning of his intention to abandon his Conservative Party to join the Fascist Farages. Ok, to join ‘Reform’, if you must. The little snake had been a’plotting and a’planning to leave his party, his ‘life’s mission’ and pretty much every value he’s been spouting his entire political career, for, basically, his own personal and professional expediency. Because the Tories are unlikely to win the next election and he does. And wants to be ‘leader’. Of something. Anything. And thus became the leader of the turncoats.

Which last week was Jenrick and Nadhim Zahawi. So you can see the quality of candidates that Reform are focussing on. You basically need the letters ‘MP’ after your name and Nige will welcome you with open arms and rotten teeth. (He needs some cosmetic dentistry if he’s ever to stand next to Donald Trump again). Nige can’t be fussy. Needs ‘boots on the ground’ in Westminster. And so ‘welcomed’ Zahawi. The most ironic person ever to set foot in Parliament. He was a chancellor of the Exchequer, the man in charge of the nation’s finances. Ok, briefly. Because for ‘finances’ on that scale, read ‘taxes’. And he didn’t pay his own. Which ‘compromised’ his position somewhat. He ‘begged’ Kemi for a peerage, because you need more scumbags in the Lords, but she refused.

So I’d like to welcome to the Reform Party, where morals have always been questionable, Jenrick the Snake and Zahawi the tax-dodger. Another whose personal aggrandisement outweighs any kind of political affiliation or sense of loyalty.

Perhaps Thomas Frank could join Nigel??? Please? Like, today??

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Here’s how stupid I am. Well, one (of oh so many) example. And also an insight into the human mind (there’s an assumption, possibly 2: that I’m human and have a mind, as we know it).

We all know Timothee Chalemet. The pretentiously named darling of Hollywood. Following his foray as Bob Dylan, which I must say was pretty darned good, he’s now winning awards for Marty Supreme, which I’ve yet to see but read nothing but ‘glowing’ about it.

And I thought: scrawny little creep. Then I saw him on Graham Norton and thought he was funny, and nice. But still scrawny with a residual creepiness, despite his Golden Globe this week. Obviously punching well above his weight being with Kylie Jenner.

Then I learned that he’s Jewish.

And my entire view of him changed. With just one headline in the Jewish Chronicle which ‘claimed him’. We don’t claim big-time frausters of the faith, certainly want less than nothing to do with the Jeffrey Epsteins and Harvey Weinsteins. But you win a Golden Globe and we all want to wallow in that reflected glory. HE’S OURS!!!! (I learned this attitude from my grandmother, who lived with us through most of my childhood. Born in a Polish ‘shtetl’ in 1900, moved here in 1901 but never changed her views, or learned what ‘offside’ meant, even after watching every football match on tv).

And immediately, Timothee grew. In stature. Became much bigger, less scrawny, lost the ‘creepy’ altogether. He became… a Mensch!!!

Otherwise, I’ve spent an entire fucking morning speaking to morons. Ok, officially they’re called ‘customer services of any significantly sized company’, but ‘morons’ is much more succinct. And accurate.

I won’t go into my aggro with Santander but basically, when trying to transfer just one bank account to a different company (don’t ask), filling in the forms, sending ID, fingerprinting, exhuming my mother for DNA, full rectal examinations, usual ‘security’ shit, and the same from the intended recipient, after 3 months we’ve reached the situation where no-one can access the account at all. Blocked for both sides. Money comes into the account but no-one can access it. I screamed at them. That should make it better. Yeah. Right.

Then the phones. Yes, we still have a ‘landline’. No idea why, probably just because we’re old. We certainly don’t use it much. So we signed a new contract for ‘full digital’ because it’s all you can get. But we only received one phone. Oh. So I had to speak to their moron. Who told me firstly that we were paying 16 quid a month too much, we had in fact ordered the second phone, but… errrr… Ok, so we’ll get a second phone, start paying the lower rate than we had on one phone and get a credit on the account for overpayments. Fab. Can you send me an email confirming all that, please. ‘Oh, we can’t send emails’. Really? But REALLY???? FFS.

Now I’m in a really happy place, having pissed away about 4 hours banging my head against any hard corner I could find. Who can I punch? “MEL????” “WHERE ARE YOU???”…

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I’m reading a book. Nothing unusual in that. Except it’s non-fiction!!! And, NOT a sporting biography!!! I’m breaking all the rules. It’s called ‘Forty Autumns’ and, to be honest, Mel thought it was a novel when we downloaded it. But it ain’t. It’s the story of a woman in 1945 in Germany who ‘fled to the West’ as the Russians took over the east of her country. Left her big family (9 siblings) and, at 19, she ‘escaped’. At the time of reading (about 1979, the book follows all the unfolding events in her former home and compares them to her life in, eventually, America), East Germany was simply fucking hell. Never mind the lack of absolutely everything, from food to cars to, in many homes, running water, the worst of all was the state’s total domination of thought. Because no totalitarian state wants ‘free thinking’. It doesn’t want ‘opposition’, be it political or even philosophical. You simply don’t ‘question’. It’s Marxism or die. And it was the non-Marxists who died. In vast numbers. Because such places are great at ‘disappearing’ people who they don’t like. Rewards in such an horrendous society come from adherence to ‘the Party’, nothing else. Total repression. Encouraging kids to report their own parents for saying something against the rule. There’s no trust, no debating allowed, there is absolutely no freedom whatsoever. And for that reason, Jeremy Corbyn would fucking love it there.

Pretty much like Iran under the Ayatollahs. Another fave of Corbyn’s. Ok, there was also Russia after their revolution and China during their ‘cultural revolution’, possibly the greatest misnomer of all time.

But Iran is not a proclaimed ‘communist state’. It’s an Islamic Republic. But it runs in exactly the same manner. Repression. Compliance or death. Removal of all freedoms; travel, political opposition, listening to music, (The Clash classic 1982 song was their protest about that), even saying ‘bad things’ about the rulers. You wear a headscarf (compulsory) the wrong way and you’re dead. No trial. No jury. The ‘cultural police’ just end you; BOOM! Because totalitarian rule means no accountability whatsoever. The rulers, and their ‘dedicated followers’, do precisely what they please. And answer to no-one. The irony of a ‘religious state’ condoning murder and torture is just lost in Ayatollah-land.

Obviously life under the Shah, pre-1979, was no bed of roses. He was a dictator too. But one who wanted progress for his country. Not saying that in the building his nation into a quasi-USA there wasn’t corruption and problems for the masses, but free speech was allowed. Women had rights. Yet the majority of Iranians backed the revolution. A serious case of ‘careful what you wish for’.

Totalitarianism is a closed society. They prevent any external influence. Particularly from… ‘The West’!!! Mainly because such societies are always economic failures and they don’t want you to see how well others outside live by comparison. But it also allows better ‘control’ of the people. Religion, according to Marx, is the opiate of the masses. Presumably in 1979 Iranians became addicts.

So from the totally repressive Soviet-era East Germany to modern day Tehran; all the same shit. But what amazes me is that people here, like Corbyn and many others, in their toxic anti-American, anti-capitalism bubble, see both of those as aspirational. Whereas normal people simply shudder in horror.

We need to sort out that fucking Ayatollah. For the sake of his people.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

When ‘we’ got the electric vehicle, in 2023, it was amazing. (For reference, ‘we’ have an EV and ‘I’ have a racing car; that’s the official ownership schedule). A computer with wheels. Did everything. Not that we ever got to use approximately 92% of its potential because its just too many ‘menus’, too many options, who fucking needs it? Voice control, FFS? Gimme a break. Its just a brilliant vehicle, fast as f-… anything and brilliant at everything else. Until you’re at Gatwick airport at midnight with 95 miles on the charge which you know will never get you the 60 actual miles to home. Then you’re fucked.

The first winter we had the car we discovered what is technically known as ‘the best thing ever’. Although they call it ‘pre-entry climate control’. Where you lie in bed, all warm and snuggly, and its -5 outside and Mel’s going swimming at 6.45 in the morning and there’s 3 inches of frost on your freezing car. So (for a bribe), you press that ‘pre-entry’ button on the app and 10 minutes later your wife enters a warm, de-frosted, seat-heated, cleared-windscreened vehicle and whizzes round to the David Lloyd, in lovely comfort. (We’re not here to discuss her sanity; this is about cars).

In March the car’s going back to the leasing company wot spawned it. The government very kindly paid for it completely, for which we’re grateful, but now we’re going to buy another car. And one thing’s for sure; it ain’t gonna be fully electric. The world is just not ready for that yet. I’m not ready for that yet. So Mel wants a hybrid. Saving half the polar bears.

And, having spent a couple of weekends in car showrooms in Colindale (car central. If it ain’t in Colindale; it ain’t a car), we’ve worked out one little thing. A ‘primary criteria’, if you like. It MUST have pre-entry climate control.

I thought such a thing was exclusive to EVs. My mate has Mel’s car, same in every detail, other than its the petrol version. Same year, same model, but no pre-entry thing. Oh. Its just electrics then.

Then we went to Canada. Where its sub-zero for most of the year. And me mate Dave, who has a fabulous and excessive collection of cars, told me they’ve had pre-entry climate control on ALL vehicles for years. Button on the key-fob. Starts the car, puts the heat on. But not available here. Third world mentality.

We found a lovely car on Saturday, perfect in every way, it was even bright yellow (she loves a bit’a colour). But NO climate control. Therefore; no test-drive, no deal.

Well, it reduces the choice and that’s no bad thing. But I love ‘car shopping’.

Happy Monday
A xxxx