Larry’s Diary – Week Two Hundred And Thirty-Five

Monday

Good morning my friends and welcome to another wet bank holiday. It’s lovely and quiet in No 10 this morning, there is only a skeleton staff in today and they didn’t seem to be very busy when I strolled through the office earlier.

I see the government has made another sensible decision this morning. They have decided to alter the regulations to say that all new public buildings, offices, shops and shopping centres must have single-sex toilets. They are not banning transgender toilets; they are still allowed but if you want to have them, you must also have single-sex ones as well. I personally think that mixed-sex toilets have caught on only because it is cheaper for developers to build one toilet block than two. Now they will be back to having to build two blocks instead of one. The alternative of the cost of building three blocks is just not going to happen.

I read that over the weekend the National Crime Agency ‘found’ 500 kg of cocaine in a van in a pub car park in a tiny village in East Yorkshire. Now how do the police simply ‘find’ half a ton of cocaine? I am sure that either someone has been keeping an eye on what has been going on or someone has ratted on the drug smugglers. The police also say they have ‘found’ a RIB on a nearby beach that had been used to land the drugs from a ship in the North Sea. Three men from Scottishland have been arrested.

I read that only days after the local election three Liebore councillors in Worthing have quit the party over Lego Head’s stance on Gaza. The local Liebore party are not very happy, firstly because the councillors waited until after the election to resign and secondly because it looks like they intend to sit as independents and not resign from the council. Apparently the three councillors are all members of the far-left faction of Liebore, Momentum. Did the people of Worthing know that they had elected far-left councillors? One of the councillors is co-chairman of Momentum and a Corbyn supporter who says she is now going to campaign for the Greens. Surely anyone decent would stand down from the council.

Earlier this year Heineken closed 60 pubs in its Star Inns operation. But this morning it has decided to reopen them and will be spending some £600 million refurbishing pubs in its chains. One of the odd things is that it says that they can’t make money on food sales anymore and intend to convert kitchens into dedicated karaoke rooms. It is all a little odd as I was always told the traditional ‘wet’ pub, where the only food available was a pack of crisps or a bag of peanuts, couldn’t make money because they didn’t sell food.

With the 12 o’clock noon deadline today for nominations for leader of the SNP past and only one candidate standing, it was no surprise that John Swinney was announced as the new SNP leader and First Minister. Sweeney has been FM before and for some time was Wee Krankie’s deputy. So it seems that Scottishland now has a proven loser for First Minister. But is his position going to be any more secure than Hamster Useless, he will be leading a minority party unless he does a new deal with Alba or the Greens.

I read that big things are planned for Millwall Football Club. Millwall currently play in a 20,000 stadium called the New Den which is quite modern. However, the land it is on is leased from the local council on a long lease. Lewisham Council have huge plans to redevelop the industrial estate surrounding the stadium with 2,500 houses. But to get the football club on side they are offering a 999-year lease. Millwall have plans to extend the stadium to a 32,000 capacity, which seems to be a lot more than the Championship
club’s average home attendance of a fraction over 15,000 this season just finished. The final vote by the council is due on Wednesday.

Tuesday

A warm and sunny morning, I’m looking forward to the windowsill when the duties are done and my patrols are over. The Rich Boy has launched a new scheme today aimed at trying to get some of the people on Britain’s sick list back to work. I suspect that if we managed to get some of the 6,000,000 on the sick back to work it might reduce tax a bit.

An interesting story reaches me from Bolton. I hear of a nude man riding a bicycle around the town. Apparently, he was causing a bit of an outrage, a crowd gathered, and the police were called. So, what did the police do? Absolutely nothing, they told the crowd the man was on his way home, so they let him go!

The US Airline JetBlue, is one of many suffering from the ongoing problems with the Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbo Fan (GTF) engines installed on their fleet of Airbus A320neo aircraft. JetBlue has said that it is expecting to have an average of 11 x A320neo aircraft out of action at any one time. So, what are they doing to be able to maintain a service? Well, they have 12 old A320ceo aircraft that the leases run out on at the end of this month and were to be returned to the leasing company. Instead, they have opted to buy them cheap at the end of their leases. Not an ideal solution, as people will be flying in the old planes and not nice shiny new ones, but at least they will be flying.

I see a prolific burglar has been jailed for stealing well over £500 worth of T-bone and fillet steak, together with 24 bottles of Prosecco from M&S after a private prosecution. The company had him on CCTV and called in the police, who viewed the HD-quality video and then declined to investigate despite knowing who the man was and his record of over 200 offences. So, M&S called in a private company to identify the man and prosecute him something the police could have done easily if they could have been bothered.

I can’t say I blame Israel for turning down yesterday’s offer of a ceasefire from Hamas. I hear that the Israelis had negotiated a ceasefire agreement in Cairo, but what Hamas offered was very different to that negotiated. I was intrigued to read that Hamas offered to return 33 hostages dead or alive out of the 133 they hold. Isn’t it a little bit of a coincidence that it is believed that 33 of the hostages have died, or have been killed, while being held captive?

Over in Northern Ireland a man has been found nailed to a wooden fence in an Antrim pub car park. The man is said to have suffered serious injuries and was taken to hospital. He also is reported to have had a nose injury. The police found two vans on fire nearby, one of which is said to have belonged to the victim. The incident is being linked to paramilitary activities.

A heart-warming story reaches me from Manchester where the central heating boiler of a 91-year-old lady with terminal cancer broke down. The lady’s daughter called out a plumber who sorted out the boiler and fixed two leaks. The daughter asked the plumber to send the invoice to her and when it arrived it was for £0.00p. The plumber said when he arrived the sick old lady was sat in the cold in her living room. In addition to fixing the plumbing and boiler free of charge he has also said he is available day and night if anything else goes wrong. Some people still know how to do the right thing.

Wednesday

It was a little grey when I first woke up this morning but by the time I had eaten my Felix the sky was clearing, and it looks like it is going to be fine again. I can’t say I was surprised to learn that a report published this morning says that the British economy has not benefited from the huge influx of immigrants we are suffering from. The left-wing politicians all love to claim that immigrants are a benefit to the U.K., but this report disproves that.

At 19:45 last night all the U.K. electronic passport gates suddenly stopped working, which was a disaster for anyone arriving at a U.K. airport and intending to use an e-gate which is about 75% of all arrivals. So far there is no word as to what actually went wrong, but it was nationwide and affected the e-gates at the Eurotunnel terminal at St Pancras. Queues quickly built up as 100% of people had to be handled by the few immigration officers who normally handle just 25%. The queues quickly built up until the arrivals hall became over-full and people were detained on arriving planes. The system was fixed just before midnight and queues started to subside. But there are reports of people waiting up to three hours to get through passport control and finding that public transport had all stopped.

An interesting announcement from the Government this morning. They say they are going to spend £200 million on a plant in Cheshire to produce high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU). This is the fuel used to run the modern high-capacity nuclear power stations and the proposed Small Modular Reactors. Currently the only source of HALEU made in Europe is Russia. The plan is apparently to build a plant large enough to supply the U.K. requirements and export the product.

The monthly numbers are out for Airbus and in April they delivered 61 aircraft, that was up by 13% on the same period last year. That takes their total delivered so far this year to 203 while they have taken orders for 227 which means their order book is growing bigger all the time. One thing the numbers have revealed is that in April Airbus received an order for 51 Airbus A321neo planes from an undisclosed customer, the existence of this order had not previously been revealed. I wonder who it is?

Another set of monthly numbers just out are those for April car sales. Once again, the numbers for EV sales are revealing, they went up for the month to 22,707 an increase of 10.7% on the same month last year. However, just like in March it was driven by business sales and private sales only accounted for only 15.6% of the total EV sales, down from 22.1% on the equivalent month a year earlier. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has said that with the now ‘diminishing market share of EVs’ it is likely that manufacturers will ‘significantly miss the targets for EV sales’ of 22% set by the government for this year. The SMMT said they expect only 19.8% of sales to be EVs. I think they are optimistic.

I see that the Office for Nuclear Regulation has issued a site licence for Sizewell C. This doesn’t mean that the construction can now start as I believe there are still at least two items that still have to be cleared and the total funding still needs to be secured. The project drags on exceedingly slowly and sometimes I wonder if work will ever start and whether an incoming Liebore government will support the project.

Workers at Taizhou Zoo in Jiangsu Province, China have caused outrage by dyeing several dogs to look like pandas and putting them on display to the public. The fur on the chouchou dogs was trimmed and dyed black and white. When the animals were put on show they drew huge crowds, who soon realised that these pandas were fakes. But it is the logic of workers that drew my attention to the story. When asked why they dyed the dogs the answer was, “Because we didn’t have any pandas.”

Thursday

Something seems to have gone wrong with the weather, it is a third warm day on the trot. It must be global warming or maybe it is just late spring.

I learn this morning about an 18-month-old girl whose parents were told that she was born with a genetic problem that rendered her profoundly deaf for life. However, time moves on, and new treatments emerge. This little girl has now been subject to gene treatment and can now hear and is beginning to talk. Much to her father’s delight her first word is reported to have been ‘Daddy’.

I see that as of 24th July we are introducing a new law to match a law being introduced in the EU. From that date all cars sold in the U.K. will have to be fitted with Intelligent Speed Assist (ISA) technology. This is a ‘mandatory’ speed limiter and will have an effect in the way every new car can be driven. The new rule is interesting in that it also affects cars that have been already manufactured but not sold, so they will have to be retrofitted with IPS before they can be sold. I wonder what it is going to cost to retrofit all those unsold Chinese EVs sitting at the docks? I can see this new device causing huge queues on motorways where everyone will be travelling at 70 mph, and nobody will be able to overtake.

I hear that National Lottery players who win prizes between £500.01p and £50,000.00p are complaining that Allwyn, the new operator of the Lottery, no longer pay out these winnings at Post Offices. Consequently, they now have to follow a new procedure when claiming and it is more complicated and slower. I understand that as of February this year it was the Post Office who choose to suddenly withdraw from the old scheme and Allwyn have been struggling to recruit and train new staff and to set up the new claims system. Apparently, they are getting on top of problems, but I’m with the winners, if I won £50,000, I wouldn’t want to have to wait for weeks to get my paws on the money.

I hear we are expelling a Russian defence attaché, named as Colonel Maxim Elovik, although the official reason(s) has not been disclosed. However, Colonel Elovik is claimed to be an undeclared military intelligence officer. This action comes after five people were arrested and charged with spying for Russia. I hope I am not putting two and two together and making five. I also understand that before his position in London, Colonel Elovik was an attaché in Washington. It makes me wonder if Elovik’s actions were known on both sides of the Atlantic and it was a case of watching him carefully as it was better to deal with someone they knew about rather than someone new that they didn’t.

I have just seen pictures on the internet of an £85 grey Hugo Boss polo shirt. The internet says that it makes wearers look like they work for McDonald’s, and I must say I agree with them. I have never been in a McDonald’s, but I have seen pictures. I wonder how many people who have been wearing one of these shirts have been asked for ‘a Big Mac please’?

As you probably know, the government has mandated the electricity and gas companies to switch over to smart meters to help in the pursuit of Net Zero. Today I have learnt that British Gas have asked the government to allow them to force the change onto reluctant customers. The owners of British Gas, Centrica, say they have contacted every single one of the British Gas customers, some several times, and have now got down to the 8% of customers who have said they have no intention of changing and another 36% who just ignored all BG attempts to get them to change. So that means that nearly half of their customers don’t want a smart meter and the government want to force one on them for ideological reasons.

Friday

Lovely and sunny and warm again this morning. I had a nice snooze on the windowsill yesterday afternoon and I expect to do so again today. The ONS growth numbers for the first quarter of the year were out this morning and they show we are back growth. I heard an ‘expert’ saying it is likely to be a one-off, but I have heard that the April numbers are even better. I wonder when they will be released.

I read that Transport for London has a bit of a problem with its electronic fare-paying system if someone doesn’t use the same device to check in and check out. Apparently, the person doing so gets charged two maximum fares as the system is incapable of matching the pair. This has been going on since the system was upgraded to allow people to pay with a phone or similar electronic device. Apparently, TfL are fairly good at issuing refunds when the problem is pointed out to them, and they can manually match the pairs. It seems that in one fortnight in June last year they refunded over £12,500, and the problem still has not been fixed.

Carnival subsidiary Princess Cruises has revealed its summer 2026 European cruise sailings programme. They will be basing five ships in European ports including Barcelona and Civitavecchia and for the first time they will be basing two ships in Southampton, reflecting on the growing number of sailings from that port. The two ships are two of Princess fleet’s larger ships, Sky Princess and Majestic Princess. Sky will mostly be sailing to the Med and Majestic to Northern Europe. So, it’s good news for anyone who fancies an American-style cruise.

Here’s a strange little story I just heard. Do you remember when we decided to ship StormShadow cruise missiles to Ukraine, the French did the same thing with their version of the same missile that they call SCALP. Well, I now hear that the French were starting to scrap their missiles, so sending them to Ukraine and letting them scrap them by firing them at Russian installations is working out about a quarter of the price of scraping them. I wonder if the same applies to our StormShadows?

Two Just Stop Oil protesters have been arrested this morning for smashing the glass case holding the Magna Carta at the British Museum. This pair were both unlike most of the JSO mob in that the protesters are both in their eighties. One an 85-year-old retired biology teacher and the other an 82-year-old reverend. The 82-year-old has been arrested several times and has got off lightly in the past because of her age. Isn’t it about time she had to go to prison for her actions despite her age?

This afternoon I have learnt that the Dutch entry to this weekend’s Eurovision Song Contest has been suspended from the competition following an ‘incident’ that is being investigated. There is no official word as to what the ‘incident’ was but given all the rows that have been occurring about the Israel entry, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to that. I wonder if we will find out before the show on Saturday?

There is a report out today that says that in the next few years the skyline of London is going to be hugely changed. Apparently if you add up all the buildings over 20 storeys high that have already got planning permission, or are currently going through the planning permission process, or have been announced by developers, you come to the grand total of 597. This is way over double the 270 that were counted at the same time last year. I wonder where all the construction workers are going to come from, is this part of the plan to find jobs for the Channel migrants?

Saturday

It’s even warmer this morning and a lovely sunny morning. I understand it could be warmer still tomorrow but not so sunny, I don’t mind just as long as it doesn’t rain. Did you see the Northern Lights last night? I hear that due to a very strong electric sun storm it was visible as far south as the south coast. Of course, it was only visible after dark and I was asleep by then so I missed it.

I hear the Army’s Scimitar FV has reached the end of its service days and has been replaced by the Ajax. That means there are 97 Scimitars up for disposal. I wonder if we will be scrapping them or sending them to Ukraine, which is essentially the same thing as the Russians will scrap them for us for nothing!

OFCOM have produced a report for the government about the future of Freeview and Freesat. Apparently one option is to scrap both and use the frequencies freed up for mobile phones etc. They say that the public is watching less and less linear TV and much more on-demand streamed services. The other two options are spending a lot of money upgrading the system or spending less money and producing a slimmed-down service. Of course, with the launch of the Freely streaming service I suspect the writing is on the wall for Freeview and we will soon be seeing more and more TVs with Freely built in.

The MoD reports that it has sold five surplus Airbus H135 helicopters to Australia. The light utility copters have been leased to Australia so they could train pilots to fly the UH60M Blackhawks they have on order. Now the lease has expired the MoD is selling them to Australia rather than having them back.

I have good news to report to all you Spoons fans. They have just announced that they are going to spend £5 million on what they are calling a ‘Super Spoons’. Work is due to start on Monday redeveloping The Mile Castle in Newcastle into a mega pub. The pub will double in size, to become one of the UK’s biggest pubs and with 30 bedrooms the chain’s first hotel in the city. It will also have a 3,000 sq. ft. beer garden. The remodelled pub will reopen in September.

The shoe shop chain, Shoezone, has issued a warning to drivers reminding them that the Highway Code says that when driving you must wear suitable shoes. This means in the current warm weather don’t wear flip-flops or sliders. The fine for driving in non-appropriate shoes can be up to £5,000. I don’t for a moment think Shoezone are being altruistic, I bet they just want to sell more shoes!

I hear that the immigration e-gate crash earlier this week was all down to the Home Office. What happened was that the Home Office national Wi-Fi network become overwhelmed and crashed. The cause seems to have been a systems upgrade implemented by the Home Office without telling the Wi-Fi system provider BT. The BT contract has a data limit, and this normally works perfectly. But when something like an upgrade happens it can use a lot more bandwidth consequently the Home Office should inform BT that this is what they are going to do, and BT will temporarily make more bandwidth available while the system is being upgraded. But the Home Office failed to tell BT and the system crashed when the Bandwidth limit was reached. Why is it always the Home Office that is in trouble, they are a law unto themselves.

That’s me done for another week and as the sun is out, even if there is a bit of thin high cloud and gosh it’s lovely and warm. Right, I’m off for my Saturday afternoon snooze on the windowsill and before you ask, I will not be watching the Eurovision song contest. It is all political and all the EU lot will vote for each other and not us. The forecast for tomorrow is not so much sun but still warm. I wonder if I can have another afternoon on the windowsill. Chat to you all again next week.
 

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