Larry’s Diary, Week Two Hundred And Forty-One

Monday

Good morning everyone from a wet Westminster, where it seems to have done nothing but rain since Legohead grabbed power. I must admit I am becoming concerned over my future here in Downing Street. Over the weekend I learnt from a Liebore spokesman that Legohead plans to move his cat JoJo into No 10. Well, I really know nothing about this cat, not even if it is male or female, but the name is probably female. Is it a house cat or an outdoor cat like me? I might be able to put up with a house cat that is confined to the No 10 or 11 flat all day long while I get on with my job. But if it is an outdoor cat I think there is going to be problems.

So Legohead has picked his first cabinet and what a bunch of lefty losers. Firstly, out of 412 MPs it seems he has been unable to find a full complement of ministers and has appointed three ministers who aren’t MPs and will have to be made Lords. What a slap in the face for Liebore MPs, Legohead has basically said that there is no one in the new intake capable of being a minister. One thing I have noticed is that every single one of the new ministers is a Remoaner.

The French general election has thrown up an interesting result, totally backfiring for President Macaroon. In keeping out Le Pen he has lost his government, and his prime minister, to the extreme left. The policies of the leftwing coalition include a wealth tax which will confiscate all income over a certain level (which is currently unknown), a national exit tax, banning the use of petrol and diesel cars completely after 2040, banning the use of all pesticides, and a referendum on the continued use of nuclear power. I wonder which will be worse, living in Legohead’s Britain or extreme leftwing France. Where will civil war break out first?

I understand that Liebore are claiming to be a party of action and are telling us they have already started to get things done. As far as I can see the only real decision has been to halt the Rwanda scheme and put nothing in its place. The word is that the immigration gangs have been telling their customers that the new government is going to welcome them in and as a consequence, we are likely to see even more in the next few weeks. Then they say they have started discussions with the French, but they got a new hard-left government at the weekend who are even less likely to help us. Then they are talking to the junior doctors and about to give in to them. They are talking to Tata Steel about jobs, intend to take the railways into public ownership and want to get closer to the EU. Well under EU law they cannot nationalise the railways or subsidise steelmaking so those EU talks are going to be interesting.

I see that the new defence secretary has already been to visit Ukraine for talks with President Zelenskyy and has promised them even more aid. This time round he has said we will give them a quarter of a million 50 calibre ammunition, 90 Brimstone missiles, 50 small boats to support river and coastal operations, 40 de-mining vehicles, 10 AS 90 artillery guns, and 61 bulldozers. This list has got me wondering, couldn’t we make use of those small boats to stop immigration? I see we have also found a way to get rid of our old AS 90 mobile artillery without having to pay to scrap them.

Over the weekend Tony B Liar floated the idea that Liebore should implement digital ID cards as a way of getting a grip on illegal immigration. The man, who many think is the power behind Legohead, was quickly slapped down with an announcement that Liebore had no intention of introducing ID cards and as it wasn’t in the manifesto it would not be happening. Mind you I will not be betting on it not happening.

A speech by the new Chancellor this morning said that Liebore will be reforming planning permission and not letting councils block planning applications. The bit that made me laugh was when she said that the deputy prime minister was going to be writing to all planning authorities in the country laying out the updated ideas. The idea of the deputy PM writing to anyone made me chuckle, I hope they have got a new supply of wax crayons in the office of the deputy PM.

Tuesday

A very good morning to you all, it’s another grey and grotty one. Well as you can see, I am still in residence and JoJo is yet to put in an appearance. Well, the big news out of Downing Street is that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Levelling Up is to be renamed the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. This is the department that comes under the deputy PM, so I expect she will be getting her crayons out and altering all the existing stationery and signage to save money.

My favourite story of late emerged last night when an ice cream van selling ‘Kelly Whip’ was filmed floating out to sea at Harlyn Bay, near Padstow. I understand the van was parked on the beach at low tide and was caught by the incoming tide. The video shows loads of people trying to rescue the van but failing miserably. It wasn’t until the tide turned that it was possible to get it ashore. There is no news as to what has become of the ice cream, ice lollies, and anything else the van was selling, but the driver was OK.

As usual, at the beginning of a month the numbers for the last month are starting to emerge and first out of the blocks is Airbus with its June numbers. They produced 67 aircraft that were delivered to 40 different companies. This means that so far this year they have delivered 323 aircraft. Interestingly this is slightly more than the official orders they have taken in the same month (310), however the bumper order from Cebu Pacific I told you about last week just missed being counted as it fell in July.

The members of the Shadow Cabinet were announced yesterday, and it looks like nearly every Tory MP has got a job, many of them moving straight over from their old position in the last government. The one big change is that Lord David Cameron, who was the Foreign Secretary, has said he doesn’t want to carry on in opposition. So, he has swanned off to take his daily fee for popping into the Lords and signing in. His place as Shadow Foreign Secretary has been given to Cameron’s old deputy Andrew Mitchell. As he will be shadowing the Tottenham Turnip he shouldn’t have a very hard job to do.

The newly appointed Secretary of State For Women has been announced and it is Annalise Dodds, which is very wrong as she is someone who doesn’t know what a woman is. When asked what the definition of a woman was she replied it depends on the circumstances. How anyone can say that is beyond my imagination, I go along with the adult female definition. But it gets worse, Dodds’ job doesn’t have Cabinet status so women will be represented at cabinet by Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, who says women with a Gender Recognition Certificate can use ladies’ toilets and changing rooms.

Tomorrow, Ford is launching the new Ford Capri. But don’t expect anything like the old hot car that was every boy racer’s dream. The new Capri is to be an electric SUV and the only thing in common with the old much-loved model is the name. It can’t be confirmed until tomorrow, but the new car seems to have been built on a Volkswagen platform and will be very similar to the Ford Explorer. It is being built in Germany so will probably go on sale there before a right-hand drive version is made available for the U.K. and Ireland.

An interesting piece of news reaches me from Legohead’s favourite football team, Arsenal. Last year they brought in a new rule for season ticket holders to try to ensure that their seats were used for most matches. If a season ticket was used less than 17 times in the 23/24 season, it could not be renewed for this season. However, if a season ticket holder couldn’t use their ticket for a match they could pass it on via the club’s ticket exchange and it would count towards the 17. Well, I hear 54 season tickets will not be renewed under this rule. In addition, 20,000 names have been removed from the list of members who can buy tickets when they go on sale to them. The word is that the membership list had been heavily infiltrated by ticket touts who used bots to purchase tickets the second they went on sale. These 20,000 names are said to be virtually all used by touts. If this works and more tickets get into the hands of genuine supporters without making the touts money I’m all for it and would love to see other clubs do the same thing.

Wednesday

Well, at least it is not raining this morning. It’s still very quiet here in No 10, perhaps it’s because Legohead has gone off to Washington for the annual NATO heads meeting. I hear he is going to have a bilateral meeting with ‘the leader of the free world’ who doesn’t know what year it is. So, Mrs Legohead has gone with him, this is the man who said he was keeping his wife and family out of politics. I wonder if she will declare the trip as a freebie on her tax return?

Another US fast food chain is to open in the U.K. The new one is Dave’s Hot Chicken which I read has 210 branches, mostly in the US, but with a few in Canada and the Middle East. The plan is to open 60 restaurants in the next few years with the first one opening in London in early 2025. In recent years we have had numerous US companies opening up in the U.K. Of course the likes of McDonald’s and KFC have been in the UK for a long time. Others like Burger King, Wendy’s, Chick-fil-A and Subway are more recent and some don’t have a huge number of branches. Some, like Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A, have tried to get established more than once. It will be interesting to see if Dave’s succeeds with its plans first time.

The word is that France and India are in discussions over the purchase by India of a further 26 Dassault Rafale aircraft. However, these aircraft are not an addition to the Indian Airforce fleet but will be the marine version (similar to those used by the French Navy) for use on the India Aircraft Carriers, INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant. The two Indian carriers carry 26 and 36 fast jets respectively, so a purchase of 26 Rafales M is only enough to replace the planes on Vikramaditya without a follow-on order. Another interesting point is that the Rafale, in French service, operates from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. It is a cat and trap carrier with an angled flight deck while the two Indian carriers are of through deck design with a ski jump. I wonder if the Rafale M has been tested with the ski jump?

Today’s question is, when is a Disney cruise ship not a Disney Cruise ship? The answer is when it is owned by Oriental Land. In Japan, the Disney theme parks are operated under licence from Disney by Oriental Land. The company has expressed the wish that it wants to enter the Japanese cruise market with a Disney styled ship. To this end, they have just placed an order with the German shipbuilder Meyer Werft. Meyer is in the middle of building 3 x 135,000-tonne ships for Disney. The first of these, Disney Wish, was delivered in 2022 and the next two, Disney Treasure and Disney Destiny, are under construction in Papenburg and will be delivered in 2024 and 2025. The new order will be a fourth ship in the same ‘Wish’ class and is a bit of a lifesaver for the Papenburg yard who have little work on their books following the Disney order.

In Didcot, there is a three-year-old tabby cat called Willow who likes to frequent the shops. But Boots have just announced that, much to many customers’ disgust, they have banned Willow from their store. Apparently, they claim that it is on health and safety grounds because they are a pharmacy. I wonder how exactly they have told Willow she is banned, if she understood and how they will enforce the ban? If they think removing the cat every time it enters the store will work, I think they are living in cloud cuckoo land. Cats do not answer to humans, they answer to us.

Now we have a Liebore government could we see a reinstatement of Phase 2 of HS2? It was, of course, originally a Liebore idea that was picked up first by the coalition government and then by various Tory governments, before Phase 2 to Manchester and Leeds was scrapped by the Rich Boy because of huge cost and time overruns. The cancellation was opposed at the time by Liebore who expressed the preference that HS2 should be completed in full. However, no mention of HS2 was made in the recent manifesto ‘Change’. Back in April the now Transport Secretary, Louis Haigh, said Liebore had no plans to revive Phase 2 “in its current form”, suggesting they want private involvement. She has also talked of the need to improve rail services to Manchester and Leeds and involving private enterprise. But on the other hand, Legohead has committed to taking the railways into state ownership as soon as possible. The two positions seem not to be comparable.

The best bit of news I heard today is that the nasty TV and radio presenter and cycling fanatic Jeremy Vine is being pursued by HMRC. It seems they are saying he has been a naughty boy and not paid the correct tax on his earnings at the BBC. It couldn’t be happening to a nastier person.

Thursday

Morning all, and for a change, it’s a lovely day in London, warm and sunny and Legohead is in Washington. I don’t know if the two are connected, but I like to think so! Anyway, it gave me the opportunity to join the guys in the office to watch the footie on their big screen TV. I thought they played really well in the first half, but after half time the Dutch swapped their formation to try to stop us and mostly succeeded, until the last moment. Now it’s the final in Berlin on Sunday and I hear that Legohead is going to attend. I know he is a football supporter, so it’s not quite as bad as it looks, but I do wonder how many of his family will get a freebie alongside him.

I read of yet another food scandal in China, this time reports say road tankers are being used to transport both chemicals and cooking oil without cleaning the tankers between jobs. There was a similar problem about 20 years ago and the Chinese Government said they were going to amend the rules. Apparently, they now say that tanks should be cleaned between being used for anything ‘toxic’ and food substances, but this seems to be being ignored to save money. In addition, the same trucks are often used to transport ‘wastewater’, which is not rated as toxic, between carrying loads of cooling oil which is not exactly hygienic.

The Royal Saudia Arabian Air Force has placed it’s third order with Airbus for the A330 MRTT, the military transport and tanker version of the Airbus A330. The RSAF already operate six of the aircraft and this order is for an additional four. Before this latest order, 78 of these aircraft had been ordered and 60 delivered in several versions to several airforces. The variants include those with two under-wing refuelling pods that are normally used for fast jets. Some tankers have a third midline refuelling boom which can be used for fast jets but it is normally used for bigger aircraft. Internally some aircraft are fitted with seats for troop transport, and some have a cargo hold. I understand the Saudi order is for three refuelling points.

With the government coffers particularly empty, Legohead has been desperately looking to see where they could find some money to aid their manifesto spending plans. One hope is that they could recover some of the money given by the last government to Rwanda. This is believed to be about £260 million under the agreement for Rwanda to take and process cross-channel asylum seekers. However, the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame has said, “Let this be clear, paying back the money was never part of the agreement.” Although this is not a direct no, it rather indicates that for Legohead to get any money back is not going to be very easy.

It was announced at the NATO meeting that the first F-16 fighters are actually on their way to Ukraine. I wonder how long it will take for Russia to claim they have destroyed all 72 of the first 16 delivered? But it was other announcements I found interesting, like Legohead telling everyone to increase their defence spending to 2.5% of their GDP and then saying we will be doing it (but not yet). Then Legohead and the Dutch PM slip off to watch the football on the TV.

Five of the six companies that were paid to tender to Great British Nuclear for design, manufacture and build of Britain’s Small Modular Reactors have met the deadline to get their bids in. The five who are still in the running are GE-Hitachi, Holtec Britain, NuScale Power, Rolls-Royce SMR and Westinghouse Electric Co. The one who decided not to bid is French company EdF. They say they wish to concentrate on large scale reactors like those it is building at Hinkley Point and Sizewell. We will now have to wait and see who wins this competition to supply the U.K. with factory-built nuclear reactors. The previous government said we would know the winner(s) this year, but there is no word as to whether Liebore are going to stick to this date.

I read that Lord ‘Two Jags’ Prescott has been thrown out of the House of Lords, along with several others, for ‘non-attendance.’ John Prescott was a waiter on Cunard ships in his early employment days and a rabid trade unionist and left-winger who subsequently served as one of Hull’s MPs for over 40 years. He rose to Deputy PM under Tony B Liar and acquired the name ‘Two Jags’ when it emerged he had two ministerial cars. Prescott is now 86 and is believed to have dementia, so it’s hardly surprising that he hasn’t been attending the Lords.

Friday

When I retired to my lovely cat basket last night, I expected to wake up to a rainy morning, but the forecast seems to have changed overnight and it’s dry but grey. It was also much warmer yesterday when the sun was out, but this morning is cooler again. I see sniffer Joe made another couple of excellent gaffs last night. First he called Zelenskyy, President Putin when introducing him. Then he went on later and made a major speech which was OK while he was reading the speech from autocue, but it was when he started answering questions without the teleprompter that he was shown up. Bumbling and stumbling, even referring to his Vice President as Vice President Trump. I wonder how long Sniffer Joe can last?

If you enjoyed ‘Clarkson’s Farm’ on the TV, you will probably be delighted to learn that he is to make a new series about his attempts to save a village pub/restaurant close to the farm. The country pub, The Windmill in Asthall, – a “village boozer” on five acres of countryside, is near Burford and the local council has apparently given him permission to turn the pub into a ‘fun’ spot. However, Clarkson may be in for a shock the area around the pub is a well-known dogging spot.

I hear that Ed Millipede has already started off with his ‘green’ ideas and has told his Ministry not to approve any more licences to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea. But it doesn’t end there, he says he is also going to revoke licences that have already been granted. This is intriguing, as I wouldn’t be surprised to see any revocation challenged in the courts. Is a change of government dogma a sufficient reason to revoke a licence from someone who has done nothing wrong?

The US Federal Aviation Administration has just given operators of Boeing 737 Max and the previous 737 model the NG (Next Generation) a new headache. They have ordered the inspection of the oxygen generators that supply oxygen to the drop-down face masks in an emergency. The problem relates to faulty restraining straps not holding the generators in place, allowing them to move in flight and to subsequently fail in an emergency. The problem is exacerbated by the sheer number of generator straps that need to be checked and possibly replaced. The action calls for an inspection on over 2,600 planes and each generator supplies just two masks with an average of over 150 passengers per plane. The problem seems to be related to a change of adhesive introduced in 2019 to save money. Boeing say they have gone back to the old adhesive on current production.

Back in 2022, conservationists at Bath and North East Somerset Council decided to ask visitors to the Roman Baths in the City of Bath to stop throwing coins into the small cold water plunge pool claiming it was causing pollution. Instead, they asked visitors to make donations using contactless methods, by phone or card. Unfortunately, this has rather backfired on them as the amount of money collected has fallen considerably since then. In the last year of throwing money in the pool they collected over £100,000. In the two years since the ban, they have collected just £2,504 in 2022/23 and £2,335 in 2023/24, meaning total donations have dropped tenfold. I wonder if the council will be reimbursing the Baths for the lost money?

I see Reform UK has had a change around of some of its top jobs. Farage remains party leader and Richard Tice moves from Chairman to Deputy Leader. The post of Party Chairman has gone to millionaire Zia Yusaf, who gave a large donation to Reform during the election campaign. Lee Anderson has been appointed Chief Whip, which should not be the most taxing of jobs considering there are only five Reform MPs and one Traditional Ulster Voice MP who is aligned with Reform and accepting the Reform whip.

It seems that most flights from the U.K. to Germany, and in particular Berlin, are sold out this weekend because of the football fixture. Those few seats that are available have jumped to five times the normal price under so-called ‘dynamic pricing’. But have BA mounted a rescue mission? They say that they have had a 1,000% jump in enquiries on their website since Wednesday’s England win. Consequently, they say they are going to put on extra flights and use bigger planes wherever it is possible. I wonder if the ticket prices will remain so high making them a huge profit?

Saturday

Good morning people, it is dry and a little bit warmer than yesterday so I might be able to get out later when I have finished with my tales for today. I am looking forward to another quiet weekend with Legohead off to Berlin for the footie. I bet he doesn’t pay over the odds for a plane ticket on BA, Lufthansa or one of the budget airlines. Instead, I expect he will just whistle up an RAF jet and fly for free.

Back at the start of the week I told you how we have just agreed to send 10 more AS90 artillery systems to Ukraine. But what have we done to replace them? The answer is very little. The long-term answer is that we have signed an agreement to develop and purchase the RCH155 jointly with the Germans. In the meantime, we have placed an order for 14 Archer 155mm mobile guns. The problem is we have now gifted Ukraine a total of 60 AS90 systems and three non-usable systems to use for spare parts. This would appear to be our complete inventory of AS90s. So, we are currently reliant on just 12 Archer guns (all that have been delivered so far) for our heavy artillery, until the RCH155 arrives at some unknown date in the future in numbers also unknown.

The Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast is in trouble. It has gone to the government with its begging bowl asking for a government guarantee for a £200 million commercial loan, having lost £66 million last year. This has put the government in a rather difficult spot. H&W were recently awarded a contract to supply 3 x fleet replenishment ships, so if they were to go bust the government would have to find a new supplier. But the situation has me wondering, did H&W win the competition by bidding a price they knew was impractical with the intention of screwing more money out of the government at a later date? Am I a cynical old cat?

It seems that Carnival have introduced a new thing in Main Dining Room on many of their cruise ships, much to many passenger’s disgust. They have decided to try to do away with paper menus in the dining room and to put the menu out electronically on passengers’ phones and tablets. But of course, not everyone has a mobile phone or tablet so they are still having to print menus but just not so many. I guess they are trying to save money on their printing bill, but if I was on a Carnival cruise I would make a point of demanding a menu every meal.

Interesting developments in the world of electric vehicles. In China, the price of EVs has fallen to equal or below those of their Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) equivalents. How has this happened? Well, it seems to be a combination of two things, a massive oversupply of EVs, and a massive fall in the price of batteries. In the last year, the price of EV batteries in China has fallen by over 50% due to a huge over-capacity in production meaning a battle to retain market share and a fall in the cost of rare metals like lithium. It’s nice for China having cheaper EVs but are we going to see a similar fall in prices here?

In Banda Abbas, the Iranian Navy frigate, IRIS Sahand has capsized and sank. The frigate was based on a design of ship supplied by Britain before the Revolution, but this has been an indigenous-built ship extensively modified since. A large radar tower has been added, as have additional air defence missiles and double the number of anti-ship missiles leading to suggestions that it may have rolled over because it was top heavy. Of course, there is another theory, that the capsize was the result of sabotage. The ship is suspected of passing information about Western shipping to the Houthi and having it out of commission is of huge advantage to the West.

I could hardly finish the week without some mention of the England match on Sunday evening. I am delighted to be able to report that the staff at all 1,800 Tesco Express stores in England will get a chance to watch the match. Tesco, whose big shops (Extra) will be shut anyway because of Sunday trading laws have decided to close all the smaller shops early. They say it is to give staff the chance to get home or to the pub to watch the match, but I suspect the real reason is that they expect so many customers will be watching the TV it won’t be worth opening.

That’s me done for the week and it has been another interesting week in Whitehall, where Liebore has just started to show its true colours, particularly with mad Ed Millipede and his green mania. He has banned new drilling exploration licences in the North Sea, forgetting that we need oil not just for energy, but for lubricants and plastic. Now he has banned the new coal mine, so we are going to have to import coal from the other side of the world for steel making. Maybe the plan is to stop making steel! As I said first thing, it’s quite nice out in the street so I’m off to my windowsill while my 17-year-old body can still get me up there. Chat to you soonish.
 

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