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

Monday

Hello merry readers, and welcome to another working week and the weather forecast down here in London for the week is pretty good. In fact, the first day there is rain in the forecast is next Sunday. I see the government has finally found a mug to accept the poison chalice and sign up as boss of the new Border Security Command. The person is former police chief Martin Hewitt who among other things was in charge of enforcing the Covid lockdown. I heard someone say he is a very nice man and is very compliant to government orders. Sounds just like the person they were looking for.

Well, I see Legohead has had a pretty mixed weekend. First he was told to go away (or words to that effect) by Sniffer Joe when he and the Tottenham Turnip asked for US permission to let Ukraine fire our Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Russia, apparently they use an American-made GPS chip. Coming home he went to the races at Doncaster on Saturday to see the St Ledger and was greeted by chants of “wanker” and very loud booing. He did have a better day on Sunday when he and the Tottenham Turnip turned up at the Spurs v Gunners match and the Gunners won at Tottenham for the 3rd year on the trot. I hope he is going to declare this hospitality as I bet he didn’t pay for his seat. But things took another turn for the worse when it emerged that he took another £5,000 gift for his wife’s clothing and didn’t declare it on time, something he has been admonished for eight times previously.

The Tottenham Turnip was out on Sunday morning doing the media round and tried to defend Legohead taking thousands of pounds worth of clothes for himself and his wife saying that Legohead only wanted to look his best for the country and that the PM and his wife didn’t get a clothing allowance, unlike the president of the United States. Well, the Turnip got it wrong again, the US president is the head of state, comparable to King Big Ears, not the PM, and he gets a $20,000 annual expense allowance. But his wife, the First Lady, gets nothing. She may accept clothes as a gift, but after wearing them once must give them away to charity. I understand that previous PM’s wives have got around this minor difficulty by hiring expensive clothes, but for a man earning £167,000 a year plus expenses, owning a £3 million house, getting free travel, use of a chauffeur-driven car and living rent free in Number 10, he is a bit of a cheap skate. Oh, and his wife earns another £50,000 a year.

There was another failed assassination attempt on the Don at the weekend. This time he was playing golf when the Secret Service spotted an AK47-type rifle with a telescopic scope poking out of bushes on the next hole to be played. I don’t want to talk about the appalling security that lets a potential assassin get so close, but about how Sky TV reported it. They cut off an American associate of The Don, Sebastian Gorka, when he called it an assassination attempt as they were calling it an ‘incident’, only changing sometime later when the FBI talked about an ‘assassination attempt’. I see that Sky are owned by Comcast, that owns the US Harris supporting TV channels NBC, MSNBC, CNBC and USA Network.

I see that Qatar has placed an order for 12 German-made RCH155 mobile Howitzers. They will replace their existing 12 x PzH 2000 mobile guns. Now have a guess where the old guns are going? Right first time, they are to be gifted to Ukraine. One thing about Iran sending drones and missiles to Russia is that it seems to have turned many of the Middle East nations into Ukraine supporters.

I see we have signed a new agreement with Australia and the USA as part of the AUKUS pact. In future we will be able to export all sorts of nuclear equipment to each other without any licences having to be issued. I suppose this is a good thing because we have all seen what recently happened with the withdrawal of export licences to Israel. The law is supposed to stop weapons that are being used wrongly from being exported but the Tottenham Turnip said in parliament that the withdrawal of the Licenses was to stop the possibility of the weapons being used wrongly, and that is not what the rules say.

It’s paedophile Huw Edwards day in court today for having 41 sexual pictures of young boys on his phone and it has emerged that Edwards paid a man £15,000 for the explicit photos of children, some as young as seven. The man who sent him the pictures was only given a 12-month suspended sentence. In the end Edwards got a measly six months, suspended for two years. I suspected he was mighty surprised as he had turned up at court with a small suitcase, obviously prepared to be sent to prison.

Tuesday

Hi folks, it’s another lovely sunny morning with no rain in the forecast. I saw Mrs Legohead all dressed up to the nines last night. This time I understand she had only been loaned her £2,000 outfit by a designer, which was probably a good thing. But she was acting as a free advert for the designer. I must say I thought she had a well-paid job in the NHS so I was rather surprised to see her, as I thought she should have been working. I hope she was on a leave day, but at this rate they will soon run out. Oh, one interesting thing I had been told she was earning £50,000 a year, but yesterday someone was saying she was on a 6-figure salary. I wonder which is right.

Yesterday the OBR put out a report on ‘the impact of migration on the fiscal forecast’, it ran to 125 pages but if you could be bothered to read through it there were some interesting numbers hidden away in its dark corners. Of course, it started with the good news that the likes of high-skilled immigrants bring in £4.5 billion annually to the British economy. But this is only the tip of the immigration iceberg that is above the water. What the report goes on to say is that low-skilled immigrants cost £150,000 a year and that is only the main immigrant, they all bring in several dependents and their costs aren’t mentioned. You have to look at a different report to see that skilled immigrants who arrive on a visa are a fraction of the unskilled immigrants. Eight hundred illegal immigrants arrived on Sunday, that was another £1.2 billion a year if they were all allowed to work. So, it’s easy to see that the cost of unskilled workers quickly wipes out the few skilled workers who contribute. Oh, I also am waiting to see this mentioned in the MSM.

I hear that the Royal Caribbean cruise ship ‘Rhapsody of the Seas’ has had a bit of a problem. They have had to throw off several hundred passengers because they were short of a lifeboat. It seems that one of the ship’s lifeboats had been damaged and had to be removed for repair. This meant that the ship had more passengers for a cruise than would fit in the remaining lifeboats so the company chose to reduce the number of passengers to a number that could be safely carried. Those removed have had their full fares refunded and been offered replacement cruises. I should think so too.

Speaking of ships I see that Harland & Wolf, the Belfast shipyard, whose major claim to fame seems to be that they built the Titanic, have gone into administration. I hear that there are plans to sell one or two viable small parts of the company but at the moment there is apparently little interest in the Belfast yard. This makes me wonder what will happen to the yard’s contract for three Fleet Solid Support ships for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. I know these were ordered from a consortium with Spain’s Novantia, with blocks of the ships built in Cadiz and Belfast and the final assembly and testing taking place in Belfast. As they are effectively warships, the order was supposed to be only placed with a British shipyard and this definition was already being stretched. Will this desperately needed order be re-tendered or will a foreign country be allowed to build our warships?

I have regularly reported on the rebuilding of Casement Park so that it could be a host venue when the European Championship (the Euros) comes to the U.K. and Ireland in 2028. It now looks like the rebuild is dead because the government has announced it will no longer be helping to finance the project. The government has withdrawn funding following the announcement that the project cost had risen to £400 million against the original estimate of £77.5 million. It seems incredible to me that anyone can make an initial estimate that is so badly out, but it seems that no matter what is being built, be it an aircraft carrier, HS2 or a new road, the initial estimate is always miles from the truth. I know that inflation on long term projects can make a massive difference, but I do wonder how many contractors bid low knowing they can push the price up considerably once they have the order in their pocket.

I read that Aston Villa fans are not happy about ticketing arrangements this season and some odd things have occurred. It seems that as many as 42 people paid for season tickets only to find the seats sold to them didn’t exist. Others were sold restricted view seats but told they were unrestricted seats which are normally cheaper. Up to 900 season ticket holders were moved because of rebuilding work and long term season ticket holders who had used the club’s instalment payment scheme found out at the last minute that they had not been accepted, due to a problem with the scheme. Their season tickets had been sold to others. On complaining they were told to join the season ticket queue. It sounds like Villa need to get their systems sorted out.

10,024 have now crossed the English Channel illegally since Legohead and his lot came to power. Now this is the same lot who crowed that once in power they would smash the smuggler gangs behind the small boats. It was all “we have a fully funded plan in our manifesto” but it does not appear to have worked. Instead, we have record numbers crossing the channel and record numbers drowning. What I have noted is that now they are in power the rhetoric has changed, and they are now going to ‘tackle the gangs’ and the idea of shipping immigrants abroad for processing now seems to be an acceptable idea because it is being looked at by 17 EU countries. Liebore seem to be learning that shouting in opposition and doing in government are two very different things.

Wednesday

Good morning and hello from another lovely morning in the street. Two bits of Legohead news this morning, firstly it has emerged that he declared more freebies than any other MP, I knew he loved a freebie but not that much. It also emerged that last year he earned over £404,000 but only paid £99,000 in tax. I can’t get my little cat brain around how he paid so little tax, surely he is in what used to be called the supertax bracket?

A year or so back Apple introduced a crash detection system into their iPhones. If a phone suffered a rapid deceleration it would automatically start a 999-call procedure. If the procedure is not stopped in 30 seconds by the phone’s owner it dials 999 and gives the GPS location of the incident. The problem has been that the police have either been ignoring the automated calls or calling the number back to check that there is a problem. Of course, if someone had been in a serious accident they were more than likely not capable of answering the call, so when the call went unanswered or went to voicemail the police ignored the call. This is exactly what happened to a young man involved in a car crash, and it wasn’t until much later when a passerby dialled 999 that the emergency services arrived too late to save the driver. The police say they have learned from the incident!

So Scottishland has been convinced to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games after Australia pulled out on cost grounds. After hosting a Commonwealth Games in Glasgow 12 years ago it was considered the ideal place to step in as host as it still had many of the necessary venues. But the authorities were worried about the potential cost liability, they simply didn’t have the £400 million available it was expected to cost. However, following discussions with the Commonwealth Games Federation, it has been agreed to stage a much cutback games at four existing venues. The games will be cut back from 17 sports to just 10 sports and the federation will pay the estimated costs of £114 million. One interesting thing is that there will not be an athlete’s village this time round. It looks like it’s going to be a bumper payday for Glasgow hotels.

As you probably know, Saudi Arabia has been busy setting up a new professional football league and have been attracting players by offering huge wages that have secured the contracts of loads of ageing players making a last killing before retirement and some players who could secure as lucrative move as they thought they were worth in the last transfer window. I read that Al-Ahli; a Jeddah-based team were hosting a match against Persepolis. Midway through the second half Al-Ahli were given a penalty and playing at centre forward they had penalty specialist Ivan Toni, a player I can never remember missing a spot kick for Brentford. He is pushed aside by ex-Man City player Riyad Mahrez who took the kick, and it was saved. It just goes to show that loads of money doesn’t equate to common sense.

I have found the ideal place to send our illegal immigrants to, Henderson Island in the South Pacific. It is one of the four Pitcairn Islands, a British overseas territory and is said to be idyllic. The Pitcairn Islands are spread over several hundred miles 5,000 miles from the U.K. and around 4,000 miles from the mainland. The main reason for it being uninhabitable is that there is no source of fresh water although plants, animals and birds seem to survive. All we need to do is set up a desalination plant and I’m sure it will make a great place to dump our illegal immigrants. I’m sure all the engineers, rocket scientists and surgeons on the small boats will be able to create a wonderful community.

Sad Dick has come up with another brainwave. This time he wants to ban all traffic from Oxford Street and turn it into a pedestrian-only zone. He says this will lead to the recovery of what was once London’s eminent shopping street. The street has been messed about with for years by the Greater London Authority who are responsible for its downfall. They have overseen the closure of major shops and their replacement by numerous American candy stores. They have banned all vehicles except buses and taxis from the street, and they have even stopped M&S from rebuilding their store that is falling down. All those buses that are routed along Oxford Street will have to be rerouted along tiny backstreets causing major problems. The man’s a menace.

My favourite story of the day is the case of the exploding Hezbollah pagers. The Associated Press agency reports that in the Lebanon the terrorist organisation uses the good old-fashioned pager as a means of secure communications. But on Monday all over the Southern Lebanon, 1000s started exploding, all within a few minutes of each other, injuring both fighters and officials, including the Iranian Ambassador (I wonder why he had a Hezbollah pager?). Naturally, Hezbollah had already blamed it on a dastardly plan by the Israelis. If it was all a plan by Mossad you must admit it was bloody clever. Somehow they have realised that Hezbollah use pagers, then produced a load that are actually bombs, and then infiltrated them into the Hezbollah supply system. Finally, they have coordinated them exploding at a similar time. I guess someone in Mossad sent a command to all pagers at the same time and ‘bang’, bye-bye lots of Hezbollah operatives. This is going to make a great film.

Thursday

Hello friends and it’s another sunny morning, not quite as warm as yesterday but still very pleasant. I had a bit of a surprise this morning the feeder was putting something I didn’t recognise in my special bowl this morning. I sneaked a look at the package, and it said Felix, but it was something new to me, Felix Shreds. It was strips of meat in gravy. Well, you all know I prefer my dinner in gravy to jelly so I gave it a good sniff and it smelt like Felix Gravy, so I gave it a try. Actually, it wasn’t bad so I tucked in. It wasn’t as good as Felix Chicken but much better than fishy stuff.

This morning, I hear that Tupperware are on the brink of filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the States. It seems that gone are the days when nearly everyone had Tupperware containers in their kitchen, people took their sandwiches to work in one and every fisherman kept their bait in one. Their cleverness came with the airtight lid that came with every container. But it seems that sales have fallen through the floor as people have realised that they don’t have to pay Tupperware’s prices for an airtight plastic box. These days you get your takeaway Chinese and Indian meals in a free one. Need a bigger one? Buy a big tub of ice cream from a supermarket.

I’m beginning to think that if politicians aren’t freeloaders then they are too stupid to be. We all know who the biggest freeloader is, but more and more politicians are indulging in stupid stunts so maybe they aren’t freeloaders, but then who knows? We had all the stunts pulled by Ed Davey before the general election when he did everything bar being shot out of a cannon. We’ve had Ed Millipede play a ukulele in front of a wind farm, comparing himself to Batman and of course no one will ever forget the ridiculous EdStone. But Ed Davey singing at the Limp Dump convention was really cringeworthy. Whoever suggested that needs to be tarred and feathered, it was just pathetically awful.

The new head of the Border Security Command has reportedly told Legohead that his plan to ‘smash the gangs’ is not good enough to put an end to the boats coming across the Channel. He says what is needed in addition is a deterrent. Now isn’t that just what we had with the Rwanda scheme before Legohead cancelled it? But I also hear that the reason so many of the rubber boats have been sinking is because they are in short supply and the boats have been badly overloaded.

An interesting bit of news coming out of Sydney, Australia. Apparently, the three AUKUS partners, Australia, United Kingdom and United States are in talks with New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Canada about collaboration on defence technology projects. This would make them Pillar Two partners which does not include the nuclear submarine project. Interestingly of those four only New Zealand has shunned nuclear power, the other three have nuclear power industries.

Britain’s biggest bicycle maker, Brompton Bikes, who pioneered the folding bike, are on the verge of launching a new model on the market. The so-called ‘G Line’ is aimed squarely at the new trend known as ‘gravel biking’. The new range will have bigger wheels and more powerful brakes to allow them to be used off-road. The new bike comes with 20” wheels but still can fold away into a compact size. It also has eight-speed gears as standard, hydraulic brakes and comes with a small medium or large frame and a range of extras such as a rack, mudguards and lights. There is also an electric version.

I hear that on Saturday a pair of squirrels decided to travel on a Great Western Railways train from Reading to Gatwick Airport. The Squirrels boarded the train’s rear carriage without tickets when it stopped at Gomshall station, and one refused to get off. The guard moved the passengers to other carriages and locked the squirrel in the last carriage. When the train got to Redhill an attempt was made to get the squirrel out of the train but failed totally so the train was taken out of service. I understand the train returned to Reading where the squirrel got off. The reports don’t say if it found its way back to its partner in Gomshall.

Friday

The run of nice weather seems to be coming to an end, it’s a bit overcast first thing and definitely a bit cooler. Legohead seems to be picking up more and more disparaging nicknames at the moment, in the last few days I have heard him called Starmer the Granny Harmer, Two Tier Keir, and Free Gear Keir. But his love of a freebie has come over very strongly and more and more of his party are also being shown to love a freebie. Is this turning into Liebore’s version of Partygate?

Sue Gray, Legohead’s Chief of Staff, is reported to earn more than he does. The PM’s official salary is £166,788 pa plus expenses and all the freebies he can get his hands on. The report says Gray demanded £170,000 pa and that Legohead had to revise the pay bands for special advisers shortly after taking office. The top band was previously £140,000 to £145,000 and her Tory predecessor is understood to have been paid at the top of the band.

The story that pagers were exploding all over Lebanon was fantastical on its own with over 2,800 exploding and their users being seriously injured depending on where the Hezbollah operatives were carrying them. But today the news is that the tale continues with walkie talkies exploding injuring hundreds more. The Israelis haven’t admitted they are behind the incident, but I can’t see who else it might be. I doubt there are very many other countries with the capacity to undertake such an attack. Hezbollah have already stopped using mobile phones because one of their leaders was assassinated with one. I wonder what communication devices will be next. Two treacle tins and a length of string?

Apparently Free Gear Keir, aka Legohead, has a season ticket at The Emirates Stadium but can’t use it because of ‘safety’. Instead, he has been gifted a private box where it is easier to control security. Is he that unpopular that he is in danger from the crowd and he can’t sit amid people who he has sat with for what I understand is years? I saw what happened when he turned up at the St Ledger meeting at Doncaster, loud booing and chants of ‘wanker, wanker’, but no one physically attacked him unlike Nigel Farage, but he is ‘far Right’ so that’s OK. The smallest box is for 10 people and costs £8,750 +VAT per season. So even in the cheapest box there is plenty of room for his cronies. I wonder if he also gets free food and drink which is an extra for everyone else and if he also pays for the extra for any match other than a Premier League game?

Robber Reeves has decided that she doesn’t like the eleven paintings that adorn the walls of 11 Downing Street, her ‘grace and favour’ home. She wants to replace them with pictures of and by women. I have a suggestion for her. I hear there is a very nice and expensive portrait of Lady Thatcher available at the moment. It would look lovely on the wall of her flat. Still on the subject of Robber Reeves, I hear she has been given the use of Dorneywood House, a 21-room ‘grace and favour’ mansion in Buckinghamshire. This has been the country home of the deputy PM going all the way to John Prescott. This means the Ginger Growler has been sidelined with even chunks of her portfolio being handed over to others. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has been given greater responsibilities over workers’ rights reforms and enforcer Pat McFadden has strengthened his position having been appointed to the National Security Council. I almost feel sorry for the Ginger Growler.

Hull Trains, who have been running a very successful ‘Open Access’ direct service between Hull Paragon and London King’s Cross, have announced plans to run a service from Sheffield to King’s Cross. ‘Sheffield by Hull Trains’ would be another open-access service and restore a direct link to King’s Cross for the first time in nearly 60 years. The current trains between Sheffield and St Pancras run via Leicester. I suspect if Hull Trains can offer the same type of quick, clean, reliable and direct service that they currently run it will be a big hit.

The more I hear about the Hezbollah exploding pagers the more I am impressed by whoever was behind the plot. The leader of Hezbollah decreed that they should not use smartphones after a previous leader had been killed by one that exploded. There was also the worry that their position could be revealed by the phone. So, he ordered they use pagers instead and Hezbollah set about purchasing thousands of the outdated devices and chose a Taiwanese model. The only problem was that this was a model the company no longer made themselves having outsourced the model to a Hungarian company. What they didn’t know was the company was an Israeli skin company owned by another Israeli skin company. So, Hezbollah were supplied with potential bombs. When a beep was sent to the pagers alerting the user to look at a message, three seconds later, just in time for them to hold the pager up to view the message, it exploded, damaging eyes and hands. The next day walkie talkies and solar panels blew up. I wonder what the story behind them is?

Saturday

Morning my dear readers, it’s Saturday again and I need a rest, it has been a crazy week here at No.10. We’ve had exploding pagers, free gear Keir, the Tottenham Turnip upsetting foreign countries, and Ed Davey singing. This morning Legohead has announced that he is no longer going to accept donations for clothes. I suspect that has been carefully worded and if you were to give him ticket to football or Taylor Swift, even a free holiday, it will be snapped up.

The Ukrainian attack on the massive Russian arsenal at Toropets was initially dismissed as a nothing burger by the local Russian authorities. The first reports I saw on the internet reminded me of those statements that Comical Ali used to put out about the Iraq war where he said the Americans were being destroyed as American tanks were driving behind him. Well, this time it was the Russians spokesman saying that all the Ukrainian drones had been shot down and the plumes of smoke in the background were from debris that had set the woods alight, but huge explosions could be heard in the background. Now the smoke has partially cleared the satellite photos show at least 67 storage warehouses and hardened shelters destroyed many of which are now just holes in the ground.

I hear that BA has been struggling to meet all its scheduled flights this summer and is particularly looking forward to the change to the winter timetable when less flights are scheduled. The biggest problem has been with A380 jets going down with faults. BA only has 12 of these huge jets and seems to have more problems with them than other operators. This could be for several reasons, 12 is not a massive fleet and as the planes are no longer in production spare parts are not so easy to come by. But another problem is believed to be that BA chose to take its A380s out of service during Covid and stored them at an airfield in central France. Big jets are designed to be used and not stored, particularly in damp conditions and the chosen storage airport has more rain than Heathrow! Also, when a plane goes un-serviceable, because of the small fleet, BA don’t have a spare they can swap in. BA has two other problems, a lot of A380 pilots were recertified to fly the A350 during Covid when the A380 fleet was grounded, so BA have a shortage of A380 pilots. Under U.K. law a commercial pilot can only be certified to fly one type of aircraft at a time. In addition, British commercial pilots are limited to 900 hours per annum, after which they are on paid leave for the rest of the year. It’s no wonder BA is begging for winter.

The first E7 Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning aircraft for the RAF made its maiden flight yesterday. This is a converted Boeing 737 fitted with state-of-the-art radar and this is the first of three planes for the RAF. It is basically a replacement for the RAF’s E3 AWACS planes that went out of RAF service in 2021 leaving a bit of a gap in the RAF’s inventory that has been filled by relying on NATO AWACS planes. The RAF operated a fleet of 7 x E3 Sentry aircraft for many years and the idea was to replace them with five of the much more modern E7s but but to save money this was cut to three planes and the E3s scrapped. It remains to be seen if the RAF can operate an effective AEW service with just three aircraft or whether they will need to go back to the original five or even more.

The huge British construction company ISG which has many government contracts for hospitals and prisons has filed for administration causing a major headache for the government. The company had eight operating divisions and six filed for administration on Thursday. The remaining two, who filed on Friday, were the ISG Fit Out and ISG Internal Services. I believe that the delay was because the company had been trying to sell these last two divisions which were profitable. For example, in the last published accounts, ISG Fit Out turned over £500 million and made £25 million profit. I suspect the administrators will be offering this division as a going concern.

I hear rumours that Airbus is looking into a stretched version of their current biggest plane the A350-1000. The word I hear is that airlines are looking for a plane a bit nearer the capacity of the A380 that seats around 500 passengers in normal airline service. The A350-1000 seats around 400 passengers which is not quite enough for many airlines. The story I hear is that the plane could take a four-metre stretch which would add another 50 seats, moving it into the A380 replacement zone. I wonder if this is just Airbus floating an idea to see if any airlines bite, before committing development money to the actual design.

Another rumour going around Number 10 is that Robber Reeves is going to put up alcohol tax in the coming budget as one of her tax-raising measures. Liebore love to increase the tax on booze, fags and petrol they see it as an easy way to top up the coffers. These people never learn the lessons of history, the last time Alcohol Tax went up the tax take fell by £1.6 billion.

That’s another week’s reporting finished and although it was not so good this morning the sun has come out, and it is lovely out if you stay in the sun. It is plenty good enough for the windowsill, so I’m off for my afternoon snooze. The forecast for tomorrow is thunder and lightning (very, very frightening) and a grotty week getting colder every day. Chat to you next week.
 

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