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

Monday

Good morning and what a fabulous one it is, not a cloud in the sky and my it’s warm. I am a bit disappointed with the Olympics so far, as I write this we have not won a single gold medal. Lots of hype about some swimmer last night but he was beaten into joint second place by an Eyetie. Why are we so often second or third?

I see a CCTV video has emerged of the couple of minutes before the copper kicked the Arab man in the head at Manchester airport and a bit more of the story has leaked out with the Manchester Police calling for witnesses to violent incidents on a flight from Doha, in the baggage hall and in the airport Starbucks. It seems the police wanted to talk to these men about these incidents and the new video starts with three coppers, one man and two women, trying to arrest one of the two men when his brother kicked off, punching the male officer six or seven times before being dragged off by the female officers. He then laid out both women and attacked the male officer from behind who was controlling his brother by threatening to taser him. It was then that one of the female officers tasered the man attacking the male officer who then kicked him. I can’t understand why these people have been released on police bail, surely they should have been remanded in custody?

Seven Just Stop Oil idiots blocked an entrance to Gatwick South terminal this morning trying to stop people from going on holiday. They had their hands locked together inside what looked like orange suitcases. But I was delighted to see that the passengers just walked over them, before the police turned up, arrested them and carted them off. I don’t think the British public has any truck with JSO. Some people may support the idea of going fossil-free but not the actions of JSO. I don’t support them either.

I have been reading about the US Navy taking part in an exercise called RIMPAC 24 (sounds like filth to me) in which they have been trying out a ‘stealth’ anti-ship missile. The AIM158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile is a version of the AIM158B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile – Extended Range Missile and is designed specifically to take out Chinese surface ships. The US Navy launched an F-18 from a carrier and the missiles sunk two decommissioned US Navy warships with one missile each from over 500 miles away. I don’t think the missile has been integrated into any aircraft that the RAF flies but it is possible to launch it from the Mk41 vertical launch system we have on many of our warships.

This morning a High Court judge threw out a case where trans activists claimed that the last government’s ban on puberty blockers was illegal. The judge said the emergency legislation introduced by the Tories had been carefully considered and was legal. The ban makes it illegal to prescribe the drugs in the U.K. or to import them into the country. The one exception is it allows their use in an NHS clinical trial. I hear that Liebore is in full agreement with the emergency legislation and is likely to make it permanent.

I understand that the new Limp Dump MP for Torbay MP Steve Darling, has issued a challenge to me. He is blind and has a guide dog, called Jennie, who has 18,000 subscribers to her X (Twitter) account. Darling says it is his aim to overtake me for subscribers, but she has a long way to go as I have over 100,000 subscribers. Darling says he would like his dog to meet me, well I’m up for that provided Jennie is willing to admit I’m the boss.

I have been watching the mountain bike racing on the office TV where we won a gold medal on the sprint to the line. The Frog who had been leading since our man got a puncture and had to change a wheel was overtaken. But it was the Froggy crowd booing our man that upset me and then cheering their man home in second that I didn’t like. I can’t remember the crowd at the London Olympics booing anyone. Typical of the garlic-eating surrender monkeys.

Tuesday

Hello peeps, yet another warm morning in London. It is always 2° or 3° warmer in the city, and I hear it might get up to 30°C today. Anyway, I might have to find somewhere shady to nap tomorrow, the windowsill was a little warm yesterday. Fancy me complaining about the weather being too warm I’m normally moaning it’s too cold or too wet.

Can you imagine what the lefties would have said if the Tories had removed the pensioner’s winter fuel payment? Well, that is exactly what the Liebore Party have done, less than three weeks after coming to power. It was only back in April that Legohead was talking about OAPs on a visit to Batley and saying that pensioners should vote Labour because they would always look after them. Well, it didn’t take long to break that promise, but where is the outrage from the left? It seems to be non-existent for a simple reason, pensioners are more likely to vote for the Tories or Reform. So, who came out well from yesterday’s announcements, well it was the left-leaning unions, who all got big increases. Scrapping the winter fuel payment saves £1.5 billion and at the same time Red Ed announced that he will be spending £11.5 billion giving money to Third World countries to fight non-existent ‘climate change. In addition, we are spending £8 million a day to keep illegal immigrants in posh hotels.

Another thing announced yesterday by Robber Reeves was the imposition of 20% VAT on private school fees from January. I wonder how many people will now withdraw their children immediately and look to send them to state schools from September. I fully expect it to be a pretty high number, and I will be surprised if there are enough spaces available in state schools for them. I expect the drop in private school numbers will render many of them unviable with a wave of closures. This will lead to yet more pressure on state schools at the start of the winter term. I wonder if the Robber has got this in her calculations, very little VAT income and a huge number of new state pupils.

Yesterday ‘travellers’, or what used to be called gypsies, arrived in Littlehampton and occupied loads of bays in the Wave Leisure Centre car park, parking their caravans longitudinally across parking bays including all the disabled bays. The police were called but apparently they can’t do anything as the car park is private land, owned by the council and to remove them the council will have to take civil court action. I wonder what would happen if the council start ticketing the vehicles for not parking in a bay, and exceeding parking time limits. I bet there is a notice at the entrance saying “No caravans allowed” so can they tow them away which is just what they would do if it was your caravan.

Crayons is to make an announcement later today on house building. I understand she is going to talk about some Green Belt land being reclassified as grey so that houses can be built on it. But one thing that I don’t understand is that she is apparently going to remove the requirement for new houses to be ‘beautiful’. Well, you could have fooled me that there was such a rule as so many new builds seem to be ugly right now. So, if this rule is to be removed I hate to think what new buildings will look like in future.

I have reported problems with the Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbo Fan engines, as used on the Airbus A320 and A220 family aircraft. But this was to do with powdered metal turbine blades. Now I hear that the Belgium arm of TUI has grounded its fleet of three Embraer E195-E2s which are also powered by the P&W GTF. But this grounding is different, it is nothing to do with the powered metal issue. This is a new problem; TUI have discovered a very worrying excessive use of lubricating oil by the engines. It may be because TUI use these aircraft in a different way to most other users, flying much longer legs and making more use of their planes. It will be interesting to hear what happens about this problem. The grounding of these planes has caused TUI a major problem in that the E2s were acquired specifically to operate out of Antwerp as the company’s Boeing 737s are limited by runway restrictions. Having all its E2s grounded mean it has had to cancel all its operations out of Antwerp.

I have been reading about FC Bruno’s Magpies, a semi-professional football team from Gibraltar. They are a tiny side formed only 12 years ago by a group of friends drinking at Bruno’s Bar, and Magpies comes from the Newcastle United nickname who some of the founders supported. They started off in the Gibraltar 2nd Division, where they managed to not go down immediately and for several years finished in mid-table. Then they won promotion to the 1st Division and for the last three years they have qualified for the UEFA Conference League, that is the third division of European club football. Mind you they have gone out in the First Qualifying Round in the first two years. This year they have managed to get into the Second Qualifying Round but having lost the first leg match 3-0 at home I don’t expect they will get any further. Still, it’s not a bad performance for what is effectively a pub team.

Wednesday

It’s still hot in London this morning, it is not so sunny but gosh is it humid. I have been attacking my water bowl which is very odd for me. Well, I see that that Legohead went to Southport yesterday and laid some flowers in memory of the three little girls killed by a knife man. However, he wasn’t well received by the locals who said he was robotic, and some reports say he was chased out of town. That’s a bit of a comedown in the three weeks since the election.

I hear that on Sunday past there was a spate of missing children on West Wittering beach with 42 going missing in one day. Apparently, the beach was absolutely packed due to the hot weather and if a child wandered any distance from their family they lost sight of them and were reported lost. I suppose the good news is that all 42 were found and reunited with their families.

The Washington Post reports that the United States airline, Southwest, has a problem with exploding drinks cans, and in the past fortnight over 20 cabin crew have been injured. In case you didn’t know, Southwest doesn’t serve meals on any of its flights, but its big selling point is that it offers passengers free drinks and snacks. This means that they do not employ refrigerated trucks to deliver refreshments to planes, so the cans delivered to planes are often left sitting in the sun. Southwest have realised where the problem lies and are experimenting with refrigerated trucks at some of their hottest airports.

I hear that The Arsenal is thinking about refreshing their Emirates Stadium. Not that the 22-year-old stadium is in poor repair, in recent years they have spent money on repairing the roof, customising both the interior and exterior, and replacing both the giant TV screens. Supporters have not been complaining like those at the London Stadium and Old Trafford where the leaking roofs are in urgent need of repair and create waterfalls when it rains. However, I hear that what The Arsenal wants to do is increase the capacity above its current 60,200. When the Emirates was built I understood that it was constructed in such a way that an extra tier could be added but it would neither be easy or cheap.

It looks like taxi drivers in Mid Sussex are going to be forced to take plastic card payments. At the moment, some do, but the council licensing authority have been receiving numerous complaints about taxi drivers only accepting cash. Apparently, the drivers are not happy for a number of reasons, they have to buy or rent machines, the machines have trouble connecting to the telephone network in some rural areas, and that card payment companies are often very slow at transferring funds into driver’s accounts. All these problems disappear with cash. There is now going to be a ‘public consultation’ period, but I think that the result has already been decided and accepting plastic is a certainty.

An intriguing story reaches me from the world of ladies’ football. For a couple of years now Arsenal Ladies have been looking to upgrade their goalkeeper. Last season they had the Austrian national keeper Manuela Zinsberger and the Canadian national keeper Sabrina D’Angelo, but they were not the absolute best as both are now in their 30s. At one point, it was thought the English number one keeper Mary Earps would be joining Arsenal Ladies but today they have announced the arrival of 24-year-old Dutch keeper Daphne van Domselaar from Aston Villa, who is considered to be one of the best ladies’ keepers in the world. Going in the opposite direction is Sabrina D’Angelo who has been released by Arsenal Ladies.

This time around the Summer Olympics is supposed to be based in Paris, but for 48 competitors they have travelled over 15,000 Km to the French Tahiti, to take part in the surfing competition. Once it was agreed to include surfing in the Olympics, the French had to find a site where they could virtually guarantee waves, so they settled on Tahiti. But then they needed to find accommodation for them and rather than the cardboard beds supplied to athletes in Paris in Tahiti they are staying on a cargo/luxury cruise ship, Tahiti Aranui 5, with over 200 cabins to choose from. They also have a gym, pools, restaurants, balcony cabins, bars and a spa. Rather surprisingly the Americans have chosen to stay in private villas.

Thursday

Good morning merry readers and I am pleased to tell you that it is another fine morning in London although I hear there could be scattered thunderstorms today. Before any more reports may I first wish you a happy Yorkshire Day. More trouble kicking off around the country last night following the child murders in Southport. I hear that there were over 100 arrests in Whitehall although from bits of video I have seen the police do seem to have gone over the top. Of course, the left-wingers blamed the right wing, particularly the EDL, which I thought had declined to virtually non-existence. But it was the media who referred to the EDL directed by Tommy Robinson. I understand Robinson is not in the country, having been reported in court on Monday, as have left by Eurostar on Sunday and he resigned from the EDL over ten years ago!

Huw Edwards was in court yesterday charged with having indecent pictures of children. Well, at least he had the good grace to plead guilty. It does raise the question as to why the BBC was still officially employing him and paying him £400,000 a year. I suspect he had a watertight contract that would have cost them a lot of money if it had been broken.
But I do question if they had to give him a big wage increase in the five months after they were told that he had been charged with such serious offences.

I hear that as previously promised, Ukraine received its first F-16s at the end of July. Mind, I have yet to find out how many were delivered, but i don’t expect it to have been very many. But I do understand that the Yanks are supplying both compatible short-range and long-range air-to-air missiles for them. For close defence, I hear they are getting AIM 9X Sidewinder missiles that have a 20-mile range, and for long-range attack, it is the AIM 120 that has a range of up to 100 miles. I wonder how many aircraft have been supplied and how effective they will be.

I think I must be getting old because I am having difficulty in understanding how the Indians count money. Someone was talking about a new car that cost ten Lakh rupees and I had absolutely no idea what that meant. So, I decided to look it up and I learn that a Lakh is 100,000 in India counting, so 10 Lakh is a million rupees which sounds like an awful lot of money but is actually about £9,280. But it gets worse because 100 Lakh is a Crore, so one Crore is worth 10,000,000 Rupees or £92,800. But you write it as 1,00,00,000. Now I am totally confused.

I told you a lot about civil aircraft orders at Farnborough, but I failed to mention there was a new model of the latest version of the sixth generation of the Tempest fighter. The design seems to have moved on rather a lot from earlier models and 3D renders. The big development seems to be its wings have changed into a swept back delta like the old Vulcan bomber or Concorde. I understand that this sort of wing configuration is likely to be able to accommodate more fuel and weapons internally while remaining stealthy. All features that are highly desired by the three countries working on the concept as more fuel means more range and the idea was always to produce a plane that was able to fly further, carry more weapons internally and hence be stealthier than the F-35. The only problem is that with a delta wing, it may have sacrificed some manoeuvrability, however with increased stealth and extra internal weapons that may not be seen as necessary. Mind you, we will have to see if the Tempest survives the government ‘in-depth defence review’.

News from California this morning that Whinge says she wishes Ginge would give up on all his court cases and just get on with his life. I rather suspect that she has had a look at their bank account and realised just how much it is costing them, not only paying their own lawyers, but also having the costs of the other party when he loses again.

A strange case in the Royal Courts of Justice this week where an ex-husband is applying for access to twin sons that his ex-wife says do not exist. The husband claims that his ex-wife was pregnant when they divorced and that she had told him so and shown him scans and ultrasound pictures of twins. He believes the babies were born in the January or February of the year following the divorce. The wife claimed she had never been pregnant but admitted she had told him she was. There had been several court appearances before this one that had presented evidence that the children both did and don’t exist. The judge said there was good evidence that a least one child existed but didn’t know where the child or children were. I wonder what will be the next step in this case?

Friday

The weather has changed this morning and there is no sun, and it is cooler. Did you see Legohead telling the people of the country they are all right-wing thugs, and he will do everything he can to protect Muslims? He is now showing us his and Liebore’s true colours that he successfully hid in the election campaign.

I read of a man from Portsmouth who has just been sent to prison for eight months for shoplifting. I know that it’s unusual for a shoplifter to be prosecuted, let alone to be sent to prison but this case was rather different in that the man specialised in stealing Cadbury Creme Eggs. In fact, he stole 798, worth £3,463.96, from 19 different shops across Dorset, Hampshire and West Sussex. The report I read didn’t explain as to what he was doing with all those Creme Eggs. I wonder if he was selling them off in pubs at half price, had a customer for them, or ate them himself?

I have long heard that the CalMac ferry services from the Scottishland mainland to the islands are extremely poor, but a story reaches me about the ‘Turn up and go’ service from Largs to the island of Great Cumbrae. The ferry trip only takes ten minutes, but CalMac are warning passengers that the demand is such that passengers with cars will have to wait around 2.5 hours to be transported. However, there is good news for foot passengers, there is no waiting for them. CalMac associates the delays with the holidays and the high demand associated with them and say there is no delay in services from Great Cumbrae to Largs. I suggest they wait a week or two before telling us that, as all those people will want to come home.

Now that Huw Edwards has pleaded guilty to publishing indecent pictures of children, I am waiting to hear an apology from all the high-profile lefties who said he was being picked on. The likes of Alister Campbell, Jon Sopel and Owen Jones, who all said he had done nothing wrong and should be left alone, have all been remarkably quiet on Edwards of late.

Now that an Italian female boxer has quit a match with an Algerian transgender fighter, will the International Olympic Committee wake up and throw this man out of the competition? It has already been thrown out of the world championships for scoring too high on testosterone but the IOC think it’s OK for a man to fight a woman. I understand that in the near future, a second man will be fighting a woman. Perhaps all women should refuse to fight transwomen then the IOC might come to its senses if it has no boxing to broadcast and has to pay fees back to the broadcasters.

I was interested to see that Rolls-Royce have just published their results for the first half of their financial year and are doing pretty well which is good to see. They have announced that at the end of this FY, they resume paying a dividend to shareholders. But they are also going to reward their employees, and everyone will get £700 worth of RR shares. I hope they keep them and don’t sell them off. Rolls-Royce shares have gone up more than double in the last two years. I wish someone would give me £700 worth of RR shares.

It will hardly surprise you to hear that the Scottishland ferry Glen Sannox has had its delivery put back once again. This time round it’s only five weeks, which is neither here nor there when it is already years late. I have mentioned it before, but the delay is said to be caused by the installation of the liquid natural gas propulsion system into the machinery space. The yard had no experience with LNG and subbed the design out, but it seems that the design of the machinery space is very tight for the amount of kit that has to be installed in it.

Saturday

Morning all, it’s my favourite day of the week, where I know that once I have done all my jobs for the day I can take it easy until Monday. It’s a bit grey out there this morning and not so warm as yesterday. I see there was more trouble on the streets last night, this time it was in Sunderland where a police station was wrecked and then burnt. When will Legohead learn that it is the ordinary folks who are not happy, and it is not the ‘far right’ whoever they might be.

I hear that there is a bit of a crisis at TfL this morning. Yesterday Sullivan’s Buses, who operated 12 bus routes in north London issued a statement saying that they were withdrawing from their contract with TfL at midnight, as they could no longer operate the services profitably. The South Mimms-based company had been locked in discussions with TfL about rising costs, but it seems that TfL’s own financial position is precarious with buses said to losing £2 million p.a. The final straw is believed to have been TfL’s refusal to revisit the contracts which have been affected by rising costs, TfL’s insistence on penalties for late running caused by traffic increases and TfL’s late payments. At the time of the withdrawal, I understand that Sullivan’s is owed over £100,000. Sullivan’s also operate some 16 routes for Hertfordshire County Council, and these are unaffected. Sullivan’s was the last SME running services for TfL following the earlier withdrawal of two other companies. I understand that at least one of the major operators is said to be not looking to take up a new contract when the current one expires. A number of other cities have quoted TfL as the model to follow, including Manchester where the recently introduced ‘Bee’ bus network is based on the TfL model. I wonder if a rethink is on the cards.

Despite the above story mentioning TfL’s lack of money, I see they are still looking at expanding the Dockland Light Railway to Thamesmead, a project the talk says will cost about £1.7 billion. Now the government has just cut the ‘restoring your railway programme’ to save money and that was only £76 million, so I doubt they will be supporting this extension. Can Sad Dick find the money without going cap in hand to the government once more?

For those of you who subscribe to Sky Sports, I hear that any day now they are expected to launch its new service Sky Sports+. The service is going to host up to 100 channels at the same time and is designed to carry its coverage of the English Football League. This service will be free to Sky Sports subscribers and requires you to have the internet as that is how the Channels will be broadcast. Mind you, I hear it will not just be carrying every team in the Championship, Division 1 and Division 2 at least 20 times each season, there will also be coverage of other sports Sky have the rights to like tennis and golf. The interesting thing is that with the football season so near starting Sky are still to announce the exact start date.

I you go back 40 years or so, Cuba had the most powerful Air Force in Central America, their closeness with the USSR had given them access to all their latest aircraft and weapons. But times have changed, the USSR is no longer and if Cuba wants weapons from the now Russian Federation they must buy them with a hard currency. Consequently, the Cuban Air Force is having to make do with the remnants of the fleet acquired before the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1988. Today they have 3 x MiG 29, 24 x MiG 24 and 11 x MiG 21, a collection more likely to be found in a museum than an Air Force.

Are you a fan of Wimpy burgers over McDonalds or Burger King? I know my scribe likes them better than McDonald’s. But I don’t think he is a super fan like a man from Leeds I have been reading about, who has just finished a tour of every Wimpy Bar in the U.K. Although he is the first to eat in all 68 of the U.K. branches, it would have been more impressive if he had eaten in all the McDonald’s UK branches as there are over 1,650 of them.

I read that there could be a lot of trouble around the U.K. tonight as the media tells me there are over 200 demonstrations planned and that’s just the ones that ‘the powers that be’ know about. There could easily be more, but I guess if it rains they might not happen. I suspect Legohead is praying for thunderstorms to keep the demonstrators in the pub! I hear things have started off early today with big crowds gathering in Portsmouth, Stoke, Hull, Belfast, Liverpool and Manchester. The crowd have been displaying ‘stop the boats’ posters. In a number of towns and cities the police have been granted dispersal orders, these include Manchester, Blackburn and Cardiff. It remains to be seen how effective this tactic will be. The protests in Belfast are interesting as the British and Irish Nationalist flags are on one side and the rainbow and Antifa flags on the other.

That’s me done for the day and I’m off to claim my spot on the windowsill. There is no sun here this afternoon, but at least it’s not raining. I shall be keeping one eye on the comings and goings on the street until it’s time for my dinner. Chat to you next week.
 

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