Larry’s Diary, Week Two Hundred And Fifty

Monday

Good morning folks, well it was a little chilly early this morning and the thermostat turned the heating on so there was a nice warm radiator when I woke up. So tomorrow nearly 2,000 people are being released early from prison after doing just 40% of their sentence. Many of these have been in prison for doing some very nasty things and in most cases the victims will not be told. It’s just plain wrong.

Back when Teresa May was PM it was rumoured that she was thinking about doing away with the Winter Fuel Allowance and the Liebore party went potty. It has just emerged that Liebore put out a scare report at the time saying that this would kill 3,750 pensioners. Well of course it never happened because the rumour was wrong, and May didn’t stop WFA. But now Liebore have done just that, and say they are not aware of this report. But this is the Liebore Party taking the money away from pensioners so that’s alright then.

There is another report out today that has been reviewing the BBC’s reports about the Palestinians and Israel and found that the BBC have been between 70% and 80% biased in favour of Palestine. Well, I must admit that didn’t surprise me in the slightest as the BBC still prefaces every report by saying that Hamas is considered a terrorist organisation by the Government implying that they don’t. They also report, verbatim, every report put out by Hamas and rarely question them. For example, Hamas says that 40,000 innocent people have been killed in Gaza and not a single one was a Hamas fighter. Now the Israeli numbers for dead are similar but they have 20,000 of those being Hamas fighters. I know who I would rather believe.

I hear that Legohead is off to the Trade Union Congress today to give a speech where he is expected to mention the Winter Fuel Allowance being cut. The unions have come out against the cut, so Legohead is on a sticky wicket. Then there is a vote coming in the Commons on the same subject and the Liebore party is likely to have a three-line whip on the vote. At the moment I hear there are about 50 MPs who are against the cut. So, what are Liebore going to do? Well, as I hear it if you vote against the whip you will be in serious trouble, but Liebore is offering their MPs a way out. If they just abstain they will be OK.

Over the weekend I see that our Paralympics athletes managed to increase the number of medals won to a total of 124 which is exactly the same number as in Tokyo three years ago. But this time we won more gold medals (49). As usual there were plenty of medallists who were never expected to win anything while a lot who were predicted to win a medal failed. I hear that many of the familiar faces have been to their last Olympics, and they will be replaced by some of the youngsters that have just made their first appearance like the 13-year-old table tennis player. I quite like watching some of the events, but I just get a bit confused with all the categories in the same event.

I read that at the weekend a donkey was killed at a sanctuary on the Isle of Wight. Apparently, it was struck by lightning, and I wonder if is this common for animals out in storms as I have never heard of it before. I understand that the donkey was called GiGi and that a JustGiving page has been opened to collect for a memorial.

Do you remember that when Sad Dick wanted to introduce the enlarged ULEZ zone he told us all that the new zone was going to reduce emissions in London by 22% and it was important to stop killing people. Well, a report out today says the new zone has failed to reach this 22% reduction. In fact, it has actually failed to bring any reduction at all! So, what was the purpose of ULEZ if it wasn’t to reduce emissions? Well, the answer is very simple, it was to raise more money for Transport for London who are short of funds. In the year to 7th January 2023, it took in £150 million in payments collected and another £80 million in fines. So, it brought in £230 million in extra income for TfL and that’s why Sad Dick will never admit that he was wrong to bring the zone in.

Tuesday

Hi folks, it’s a bit grey and chilly this morning, and I am not very impressed by the weather. I see that there are 1,700 people being released from prison early this morning after serving only 40% of their sentences. The idea is to make room for the newly convicted. I had a chuckle this morning when a man on the radio equated it to emptying your full dustbin in the middle of your living room to make space for more refuse.

Has anyone in the Liebore Party ever thought about how this idea about getting the eligible 850,000 people who could claim Pension Credit, but don’t do so, will work? Firstly, if you are a couple where only one of you is over pension age, then forget it you are automatically excluded. Then you must have access to the internet as the only way to claim is to answer a 243-question form online, paper forms are not allowed. If you are so hard up you need to claim Pension Credit you are hardly likely to have a PC or internet access. Maybe you have a friend, relative, neighbour or friendly Librarian who will help you out with the online form. Well, I wonder who is going to check the form and approve it, are there enough civil servants to do so, considering there is already a three-month long delay in processing Pension Credit applications. This means that even if you put your application in today, and it is approved you won’t get the Winter Fuel Payment this winter.

The Princess of Wales has issued a statement saying that she has finished her chemotherapy and is reportedly currently cancer-free. She says she hopes to resume some of her royal duties. I hope she doesn’t rush into things as cancer has a nasty habit of recurring if not taken seriously. It will be nice to see her back doing things, but I hope she is very careful not to do too much too soon.

A woke UN agency has announced a long list of words it wants us to stop using. The one that stands out to me is Englishman, as man is too gender specific. Instead, we are encouraged to use English person. I refuse to go down that path, I will continue to use Englishman and Englishwoman. But it is things like cave dweller instead of caveman, chest feeding instead of breast feeding and fisher instead of fisherman that drive me mad. Perfectly good descriptive words that describe what they do. The one that really made me laugh was replacing lumberjack with wood chopper which is not the same thing at all.

Have we got a new tennis star in the making? A 15-year-old English schoolgirl has just won the junior tournament at the US Open in New York. The winner was Mika Stojsavljevic from London who studies at the Loughborough University National Tennis Academy (LUNTA) and she is six feet tall with size 10 feet. She beat several seeds on her way to becoming the first British winner since Heather Watson 15 years ago. This year she was also a runner-up in the girls’ doubles at Wimbledon, so I predict she is someone to keep an eye on for the future.

Legohead is off to the US of A later this week for a meeting with Sniffer Joe. I didn’t really know why he wanted to talk with the old fool who is on his way out, until I heard some of his team talking. Apparently, he really wanted to meet with the Don and the Camel, to talk about their presidential plans, but he was snubbed by both. Instead, he is trying to make the best of his trip by having a chat with Sniffer. I hope it’s one of his more lucid days or it will be a waste of time meeting him.

I am delighted to tell you that what is probably the world’s worst national football team has finally won its very first competitive match. San Marino has somehow managed to beat another of the world’s minnows Liechtenstein 1-0 in the Nations League. The country played its first-ever game in 1986. In all the years between then and now they have only won one other match, and that was a friendly, also a 1-0 win against Liechtenstein 20 years ago. They have managed a few draws here and there, but their biggest problem has been scoring goals and at one time went over 20 years without managing to score.

Wednesday

Good morning and for once it is sunny but not very warm. I didn’t see the presidential election debate because it was in the middle of the night and I was tucked up, asleep, in my cat basket. But I heard on the BBC this morning that Harris was magnificent and won easily. The same was trotted out by the Guardian, the Independent and all the left-wing outlets. But then I saw Talk TV in the office and their take was that the Camel did better than expected but was still not very good. I then saw the result of several flash opinion polls that all gave it to Trump by a big margin.

So, 52 Liebore MPs either abstained or were allowed to stay away from the Winter Fuel Allowance vote yesterday, reducing the majority to 120. Of course, Liebore came nowhere close to losing the debate, but I hear those numbers came as a bit of a shock to Legohead. One suspended Liebore MP, John McDonald, said he was going to vote with the opposition, and he was joined by another four suspended MPs, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne and Zarah Sultana, but they had already lost the whip so weren’t included in the 53. Others who didn’t vote were Hilary Benn, veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott, and Imran Hussain and Rebecca Long-Bailey who are both currently suspended. However, I hear one brave Liebore MP (Jon Trickett) did vote against the whip. I wonder if he will be suspended for six months like the last lot were? I also hear there is a ‘kill motion’ in the Lords next week, I won’t keep my paws crossed though.

Yesterday the Office of National Statistics reported various numbers for July which next April’s pension increase will be based on. Under the triple lock the retirement pension should rise by 4.5% or £460. I heard the Chancellor claims that this increase makes up for the loss of the Winter Fuel Allowance. But does it, the fuel payment is paid later this year and is used to pay this winter’s fuel bill. The pension increase is paid next April in arrears and is to make up for increases in the previous year, so it is not a replacement for WFA.

Up north in Bolton the council (No Overall Control but minority Labour-led) has just shown its true colours. It has decided to support an Extinction Rebellion cafe with a grant of £1,134 and that has caused a huge row. The money is to support Saturday morning discussions where a guest speaker will make the ER case. I suppose that this is not much of a surprise as Labour is floating further and further left and will soon be aligned with ER.

Are you a Greggs fan? If so, they have you seen their new jewellery range? For £36 you can get gold-plated sausage roll stud earrings, with both ordinary and vegan versions available. You can also get a jammy heart necklace, Greggs signet ring and Greggs charm bracelet with 10 product charms on it if you can afford the £96 that it costs.

I watched a video of the latest Space X launch on the TV where four astronauts will be going up to 650 miles above the Earth. The take-off was perfect with the separation of the main motor section separating just as expected and making a safe landing back on Earth so that it can be reused. One of the four astronauts is a multi-billionaire and is paying for his and a friend’s flights. The other two astronauts are SpaceX employees and will be taking a spacewalk to test a new space suit. This suit has been designed to be used on the planned journey to set up a manned base on Mars. If I was to venture into space I know who I would rather fly with and it’s not Boeing.

Chelsea FC have a bit of a problem in that they would love to increase the 42,000 capacity of their existing Stamford Bridge stadium but it is hemmed in by roads, railways and housing. They have bought some of the properties surrounding them but to expand the capacity will mean knocking them and an existing stand down and rebuilding a new bigger one in the space created. This means that they would be playing in a much-reduced capacity stadium while the rebuild takes place, or playing at someone else’s ground or maybe Wembley if that can be arranged. Today I hear that Chelsea FC have been in discussions to build a new stadium at Earls Court. But even this has problems, Chelsea lease their current ground from a company that owns it and could stop them from moving.

Thursday

Hello readers, it’s quite sunny this morning and pleasantly warm in the sun. I see that some of the released prisoners I reported on earlier in the week were quickly back inside. I thought the record was going to be the 25 minutes before the first one was arrested after committing a new crime. But I hear one old lag was rearrested as he walked out the prison gate. I understand it is known as a gate arrest and is a quite well-known event. I’m not sure why this prisoner was allowed to leave before being arrested for rape and other sex crimes. Surely the police could have questioned the man in prison.

I find the revelations in this morning’s paper that Robber Reeves has claimed £4,400 in heating allowance for her second home in London very interesting. Apparently, any MP who represents a constituency outside of Greater London can claim expenses on a second home in the capital. Surely this needs to be looked at. Why should an MP who lives in easy commuting distance of Westminster be allowed to claim for a second home? I get it if an MP represents say somewhere in Scotland, Wales or the North or West of England. Maybe I would accept an MP from the Midlands having a second home in the capital city, but not the MP from Maidstone or St Albans who can probably get into Westminster more quickly than an MP for Rainham.

I understand that Wizz Air is to base its first Airbus A320XLR at London Gatwick to introduce a non-stop service to Saudi Arabia. Now only Saudia, the Saudi state airline, operates a non-stop service from Gatwick. Of course, there are plenty of one-change services and even one from Wizz Air via Malta. Saudia is of course a full-service carrier whereas Wizz Air are a no-frill carrier and will be offering a cheap service in a narrow-body aircraft. I suspect that Wizz make most of their money moving cost-sensitive passengers between European cities, I don’t expect the people flying to Saudi are in the same bracket, they will be mainly businessmen flying at their company’s expense.

Boeing thought they had come to an agreement with its workers on a new contract giving them a 25% wage increase. The union agreed and put the deal to a vote of workers who rejected it and went on strike. To try to encourage the workers to accept the agreement Boeing hinted that they would not be building their next aircraft in their Washington State factory, but the workers saw through the suggestion. The problem is what sort of plane would Boeing be thinking about. The word I hear is that the 797 would be a replacement for the 737 and would be a clean-sheet twin jet with huge next-generation engines. But the big questions are, is there a space in the market for such a new plane, what would it cost to develop, what would it have to sell for, and do they have the ability to develop such a brand new aircraft? They have so far taken 11 years to develop an existing plane, the 777 into the 777X and it still isn’t in service.

I have just read the story of a female Chief Petty Officer on the USS Manchester who installed an unauthorised Star Link satellite dish on the ship so that the Petty Officers mess could message home, look at social media, check sports scores and watch movies. Chief Petty Officer Grisel Marrero was an information systems technician, who arranged the installation, collected the money to pay the monthly rent and lied to the ship’s Captain about the installation. I hear she was court marshalled and demoted, I’d have sacked her.

The Government is going to give Tata Steel a £500 million grant to keep their South Wales steelworks in production. But that isn’t enough money to stop Tata closing the one remaining blast furnace and replacing it with an electric arc furnace meaning thousands of workers being made redundant. However, it does mean that we will no longer be capable of producing new raw steel, instead we will have to buy it in from foreign countries which puts the country in a poor position. Electric arc furnaces are only capable of recycling scrap steel. Another terrible decision by Liebore that they are pretending to be a success.

Computer Weekly, the journal that first raised the Post Office Horizon scandal, reports on a new Post Office branch problem. The Post Office has been under pressure to step away from Fujitsu, the suppliers of both hardware and software used by Horizon. The replacement software is going to take some time to develop, but in many branches the hardware is getting old and slow so is being replaced under the New Branch IT programme (NBIT). And this is where the new problem stands. The new hardware is a completely different size and shape to the existing Horizon hardware forcing the branches installing NBIT to spend money on new counters when the old ones are perfectly good. I understand that there are currently thousands of the new Hewlett Packard Point of Sale terminals sitting in a warehouse waiting to be installed because the branches can’t afford to replace counters.

Friday

I have woken up to a lovely sunny morning today, so I nipped through the two houses and was let out of the back door for my constitutional. Then the shock hit me, it was bloody chilly outside. I had been fooled because it was warm in the houses, as the central heating was on. It should be a good weekend in the street as Legohead has gone off to Washington for a meeting with Sniffer Joe, if he is not sleeping on a beach somewhere. I see the Tottenham Turnip has gone to hold Legohead’s hand wearing his best trainers, hasn’t he got any decent shoes? Mind you he looks like he is wearing a sack when he has a suit on.

Tomorrow is the first North London derby of the season, and for the first time ever Arsenal have been banned from wearing their traditional red shirt with white sleeve, apparently the Premier League say there is too much white that could be mistaken for Tottenham’s white shirts. The two teams first played over 100 years ago and the shirts have never been a problem before.

Interesting report out yesterday on how useless the NHS is. The report basically says that the NHS is currently getting a record £165 billion a year and is now employing more people than ever but seeing less patients. Legohead said ‘reform or die’ but didn’t say what should be reformed. He also said the NHS should not get any more money until they change. I wonder if Nigel Farage will pick up on the ‘reform or die’ slogan.

I had to laugh about the story of two wholesalers who have surrendered boxes of ‘Zombie’ knives to the Bedfordshire Police under the latest scheme to hand in the knives. The two wholesalers are actually brothers and one has surrendered 5,000 knives and the other 35,800 knives as selling them has recently been outlawed. But this is not just the wholesalers doing the right thing, what they are actually doing is mitigating their losses as by surrendering them to the police they will get £10 a knife which is better than not being able to sell them.

Airbus have announced another big order for its A320neo model. This time it’s the leasing subsidiary of the China Development Bank, CDB Aviation Lease Finance that has signed up for 80 A320neo family aircraft. The Singapore-based company already has nearly 40 A320s on order, but this new order is looking to the future as the planes are currently to be delivered between 2030 and 2032. The problem with ordering A320 family aircraft is that they are hugely popular and consequently the wait for a new order is enormous. Hence leasers hoovering up delivery slots so they can lease out aircraft and make pots of money.

Over in the world of women’s football, I hear they are claiming that last week, when the first week of the second tier Championship began, their strategy of moving the broadcasting of matches from the FA Player to YouTube was an immediate success with the match between London City Lionesses vs Newcastle United attracting an audience of 55,000 where the highest number viewing on FA Player last year was 4,500. It will be interesting to see what the audience numbers are like when the Women’s Super League starts at the end of this month. One or two games will be on TV each week shared between BBC and Sky Sports and all the other WSL games will be on YouTube so it will be interesting to see to see how big the viewing figures are.

Now I have been hearing a lot of suggestions from snivel serpents who have been asked to look at ways for Robber Reeves to give pensioners back the Winter Fuel Allowance without being seen to lose face. This morning, I heard the suggestion that the pensioners’ Christmas bonus could be the answer. The current £10 bonus is ridiculously small and has never gone up so is always being moaned about. If the bonus was increased to £200, a pensioner couple would get £400. It could replace the WFA at the right time of year and Legohead could claim the Kudos. Remember you heard it here first.

Saturday

Morning my dear readers, another lovely sunny morning but I didn’t get caught this morning, I checked that the heating was on before going out, so I was ready for it to be chilly. I saw pictures of the meeting between Legohead and Sniffer Joe. The Tottenham Turnip was there looking like he was wearing a sack which reminded me of the saying ‘dress like a sack, and you will be treated like a sack.’

During Wednesday’s PMQs the Rich Boy initially asked Legohead to publish the impact assessment they had done on the scrapping of the Winter Fuel Allowance. Of course, Legohead’s answer didn’t mention an impact assessment but waffled on about it all being the Tories’ fault for leaving the now infamous £22 billion black hole. The Rich Boy’s second and third questions pushed hard on getting hold of the impact assessment but were met with Legohead’s same robotic answer. Now it has emerged that the reason Legohead didn’t want to talk about an impact assessment is very simple, they didn’t do one. It’s a good job that Parliament is in abeyance for weeks for the party conferences or Legohead would have been facing some embarrassing questions.

On a similar topic, a newspaper has put in a Freedom of Information (FoI) request for details of the £22 billion black hole. I don’t expect they were very surprised when the FoI request was turned down. The official reason for the refusal was that the numbers were still being checked. Of course, this has led to speculation that either the number is a complete fabrication or that it was actually made up mainly not by Tory legacy spending but by the spending choices made by Liebore. I somehow doubt that the make-up of the black hole will ever be published.

I hardly believe that I’m having to tell you this, but the commissioning of the much troubled Scottishland ferry Glen Sannox has hit a problem with its sea trials. The testing of the LPG part of its dual fuel propulsion system was supposed to start this week but so far they have been unable to do so as they haven’t been able to load any LPG on board the ship. I hear that before loading can begin the piping has to be supercooled so that the LPG in it doesn’t immediately flash off to gas, but the supercooling systems are not working properly and the pipes can’t be yet be made cold enough. At the moment it is thought that this is going to lead to another two-week delay but that really is nothing as the ship is already six years late.

The Indian Air Force has a bit of a problem in that it believes it needs some 42 fighter squadrons to properly defend itself against its main threats Pakistan and China but can currently only muster 30 squadrons and some of these are ancient Migs. They have contracted for some 83 indigenous improved Tejas Mark-1A jets which should be starting to be delivered now, but aren’t because the US company General Electric has not delivered the GE F404 engines the plane uses. The first two engines of the 99 on order should be delivered in November, nine months late, and GE say they will deliver a further two a month from then but this makes delivery of the aircraft painfully slow for the IAF who had expected to have been delivered 16 of the aircraft by the end of this year. A follow-on order for another 97 Mark 1A jets is about to be signed but it will require additional engines from GE and that is obviously a problem. In addition, the IAF has announced its intention to order 108 (six squadrons) of Tejas Mark-2 planes. These will use the more powerful GE F414 engine, but India is understood to have a deal to build these under licence in India. I only hope, for India’s sake, they get engine deliveries speeded up soon.

Here’s a story about sanctions busting. The Kazakhstan Air Force flies the Russian Su-30SM, the same aircraft as the Russian Air Force who had 130 on the planes but are believed to have lost around a dozen in the Ukraine War. The Su-30SM uses multifunction displays, navigation systems, and heads-up displays manufactured by French company Thales and, of course, they have been sanctioned so spares and replacements can’t be supplied. But that doesn’t apply to the Kazakhs and Thales have happily been supplying them with parts and training their technicians in how to fit them. It has now emerged that Kazakhstan has been maintaining the Russian Air Force Su-30SM for them and supplying spare parts. I wonder what Thales thought the Kazakhs were doing with all the additional spares they were buying? Will France be plugging this loophole?

I love yesterday’s story about the Police and Crime Minister having her handbag and purse stolen while giving a speech at a hotel in Kenilworth. The best bit is that Dame Diana Johnson was making the speech at the Police Superintendents’ Association (PSA) conference and was blaming the Conservatives for an “epidemic of antisocial behaviour, theft and shoplifting.” I wonder if it was one of the coppers who stole her stuff for a laugh.

Just before the election, Legohead said that when elected he would stop the last oil refinery in Scotland being shut down. Now the closure has been announced he has not said a word. The Petroineos refinery at Grangemouth to close next summer with a loss of 400 jobs as a direct result of Ed Millepede’s policy to stop oil and gas production in the North Sea. Petroineos will turn the refinery into an import point for oil refined overseas. In an ironic twist, Millepede has said that the closure is wrong and that he is ‘working in lockstep’ with the Scottishland government to protect jobs. Tell that to the 400 who will be redundant next summer and will never vote Liebore again.

That’s me done for the day and it’s a lovely day if you stay in the sun. Today is good enough for the windowsill, so I’m off for a snooze. I don’t expect there to be many more nice days this year so I must make the most of it. Chat to you next week.
 

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