Larry’s Diary, Week Two Hundred and Forty-Nine

Monday

Good morning everyone from my first diary of the autumn. Overnight the weather forecast seems to have changed. Yesterday, this morning was going to be nice and sunny, but I have woken up to rain. I see the forecast has been changed and it going to start wet, then it’s going to be dull and grey and then it’s going to be drizzly. Sounds like a perfect day for back-to-school day and the opening of the parliamentary session.

This Government is really struggling, after 60 days in power they are doing nothing to face the problems in the country, like the epidemic in knife crime and the flood of immigrants. Instead, we get a minister telling us that they had to take the Winter Fuel Allowance away from pensioners to save a run on the pound. This is of course total B.S. The taking away of the £1.6 billion this cost was a pure choice by the Government. They chose to give much more money to settle strikes, to support illegal immigration, to go in overseas aid, and to support African countries ‘fight climate change’. But pouring all these tens of billions into useless things isn’t going to cause a ‘run on the pound’.

This morning, I heard of the FWA for the first time. Apparently, it stands for the Fair Work Agency and is being set up by the government to bring together all the authorities that enforce employment laws. So soon expect to see the enforcement teams bedecked in FWA baseball caps and hi-viz jackets turning up at your place of work to ensure you are getting all your tea breaks and that no one is using hurty words.

In Nantwich, Cheshire, a drunken cyclist who was on his way home from the pub was speeding along the on the pavement in an unlit road without lights on his bike when he crashed into two girls walking home from a night out. One of the girls was thrown high in the air and crashed face-first into the pavement damaging her face, knocking out several teeth and smashing up a finger so badly it had to be amputated. Did the cyclist call an ambulance? No, instead he berated the pedestrians for being in his way before riding off. Unfortunately, the worst offence he could be charged with was ‘wonton and dangerous cycling’ for which he got a six-month suspended sentence. Imagine if he had been a motorist, he would have been locked up but the laws for cyclists are totally inadequate.

Rogue landlord, Labour MP Jas Athwal, claimed he had no idea how bad the conditions in flats that he rented out were. The reporters who were invited into some of his flats by tenants found them ridden with black mould, infested with ants, uncleaned common areas and busted fire alarms. While there, the letting agency who ran the rental on behalf of Athwal phoned tenants threatening to evict them if they talked to reporters. Apparently, Athwal has 15 flats over shops and is parliament’s biggest landlord. This morning Athwal seems to have thrown the agency under the bus saying he had no idea about the state of the flats and has sacked the letting agency. Can you imagine the fuss Liebore would be making if this man was a Tory, as a minimum they would have called for his resignation as an MP. I bet they don’t call for the sacking of one of their own.

Over in Germany there was a state election in Thuringia, where a ‘right-wing’ party won for the first time since the Second World War. They took 32.8% of the vote beating the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) into second place with 23.6%. Of course, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) are described as ‘far right’ by the left who want them banned. Thuringia is a state in the old East Germany and is often dismissed by the states in what was West Germany as being uneducated. AfD also came second in the election in Saxony by a tiny margin, 0.5%. German Chancellor Shultz was not happy and urged other parties to exclude ‘right wing extremists.’ The main problem for Shultz is that large numbers of German voters are rejecting his centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) over it support of immigrants and his SPD support is down in single numbers in the weekends elections.

The crew on the International Space Station sent a worried message to their NASA controllers in Houston, Texas at the weekend. In a conversation recorded by space enthusiasts they complained about an odd noise that had suddenly started coming out of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that is not trusted to bring two astronauts home. An Astronaut reported that the noise was emanating from a loudspeaker in the craft. They somehow managed to rig up a transmission of the noise to Earth and it sounded like some rhythmically banging a spanner on an empty metal barrel. The flight controllers didn’t have a clue what was causing the noise, but didn’t seem too bothered. I wonder if it’s an alien trying to get in or a mechanic trapped behind a panel trying to get out.

Tuesday

Hi folks, well I really can’t understand the weather these last few days when the forecast says dry it rains and when it says rain it’s another lovely day! It was damp under paw when I ventured out, but it is beautifully sunny now. I can’t work this government out, first they take away the winter fuel allowance away from pensioners to save £1.6 billion and ‘stop a run on the pound.’ Then yesterday they gave £460 million to councils to give to people who can’t afford heating. They also announced they are to push for 850,000 pensioners entitled to means-tested benefits, who don’t currently claim them to do so. If they all do, it will cost more than the cut saves. It’s all about perception and pretence.

I told you a few weeks ago that Jeremy Corbin was trying to form a party with the four pro-Palestinian independent MPs. Well, it seems that forming a new party has not proved to be possible, so instead they have come together as a group calling themselves ‘The Independent Alliance’ parliamentary group. It will be made up of Corbyn, Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain, and Iqbal Mohamed and apparently will not have a leader. But as a parliamentary group they can get some funding and will get more time to speak in debates. While announcing the grouping Corbyn said that the door was open to other MPs, obviously meaning the currently suspended Liebore MPs.

The Paralympics obviously must adapt the rules of various sports to reflect the amount of disability competitors suffer. Some make a lot of sense like the rules about stopping the game to pick people up in wheelchair rugby and blind runners having a tether to a guide. But in the triathlon I was a bit surprised to see those who could not walk being carried out of the water after their swim. But I really don’t know how they work out things to even up the differences when they have umpteen different classes and disabilities in the same race. They had things like wheelchair users starting two minutes behind non-wheelchair users because they can go much faster than ordinary-legged runners. I really don’t know how they work that out.

I read that if you are going on holiday to Mexico you need to be careful about their rules on how many computers you can bring into the country duty-free. The maximum an individual can bring into the country is one so that’s either a laptop or a notebook or an iPad. If you are found with say a laptop and an iPad a customs officer can assess the items value and will charge you 19% import duty on one of them, usually the most expensive. Of course, if you don’t want to pay you can give up the device. They also have similar rules if you attempt to take in more than two cameras or three mobile phones. Mind you who has more than three mobile phones?

Back in July during the Olympics, the gold, silver and bronze medallists in the table tennis doubles competition were, like all other Paris medallists, handed a camera to take selfies. The only problem was that the winners were China, and the runners-up were from North and South Korea. Well, that made a photo that was widely published and described as historic. Now a month later the North Korean pair of Kim and Ri had been placed under “ideological scrutiny” and could be punished. It is the norm in North Korea for all athletes and officials, who have been in competitions out of the country to undergo a month-long “ideological scrubbing” on arriving home and this appears to be the result.

I hear that in Northern Ireland Tesco has quietly slipped in a change of sandwich and roll suppliers for its popular meal deal lunch. In the past the sandwiches were shipped over from their mainland supplier, but they say they suffered a number of delays when the ferry service was interrupted by bad weather or breakdowns and have swapped to a supplier in the Republic of Ireland. However, I wonder if this is totally true and if Northern Ireland being in the EU trading area made it easier for them?

On 9th September Apple will have their normal autumn product update. You can often get a hint at to what devices are to be updated or replaced by what is in short supply in Apple Store as when something is going off sale they stop producing it to instead manufacture it’s replacement. This time round it looks like it’s going to be the basic iPad and the iPad Mini that are to be upgraded which makes sense as last time round it was the iPad Air and iPad Pro that got the biggest upgrades. But the rumour is Apple is also looking at a new cheaper, more basic Magic Keyboard for the basic iPad and iPad Air. The current Magic Keyboard is good but expensive and apparently Apple has noticed a big increase in sales of cheaper non-Apple keyboards. The word is that Apple, not liking the loss of sales revenue, are looking at jumping into this market segment.

Wednesday

Good morning and quite a pleasant one here in London this morning but it’s supposed to rain this afternoon. Terrible news yesterday when Legohead’s daughter turned up with a kitten. I understand it’s not a streetwise moggy like me but something fancy called a Siberian forest cat. I suppose that’s better than having a German Shepherd puppy that the children actually wanted. I haven’t told you yet but JoJo, the existing family cat belonging to the Legoheads, is struggling because there aren’t any cat flaps in the Number 10 doors because they are all bombproof! If it had half a brain it would get one of the human servants to open the doors like I do. When I find out what the kitten is called I’ll let you know but they are keeping it away from me at the moment.

Construction on the £4 billion TATA electric vehicle battery factory in Bridgewater, Somerset is due to start work before Christmas. The plan is that the factory will be the biggest EV battery factory in Europe and TATA’s first Gigafactory outside of India. The 620-acre site was a Royal Ordinance factory and produced bombs during WW2. By 2026 it should be employing 4,000 people to churn out batteries initially for Jaguar Land Rover and other TATA EVs made in Europe. However, the factory is so big that it is capable of producing 50% of all the batteries expected to be needed in the U.K. in 2030.

Here’s an odd little story. It was recently announced that contactless travel is to be extended to a number of stations in the east of London. Included will be Tilbury Town, but not Tilbury Riverside. Why not Tilbury Riverside you may ask, well the answer is both simple and complex. The station on a branch line closed 30 years ago, but as part of the deal to close it, a Parliamentary Service was introduced and passengers with a ticket to Tilbury Riverside can to this day present their paper tickets on the 99 bus and get free travel from Tilbury Town to the remains of Tilbury Riverside. The problem is that contactless tickets don’t work across the trains onto the bus so you will still have to buy a paper ticket. This is hard luck if the booking office at the station you board the train has closed.

I read that Babcock International are bidding to look after the new Polish ORKA submarine programme. Babcock are in a strong position as they are on good terms with the Poles, who have chosen the Babcock Arrowhead 140 design for its new frigate programme. This is the same design chosen by the MoD for the Royal Navy’s Type 32 frigate. Although Babcock aren’t a submarine maker or designer they have vast experience of supporting the submarines of several nations including all the Royal Navy submarines (which are all nuclear) and the diesel boats belonging to the Canadian Forces, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Spanish Navy. They are also like deeply involved in the AUKUS nuclear submarine programme.

Earlier this week Iran announced that it was modernising its remaining M60 tanks, and the new version would become the Soleiman-402 and is now equipped with a computerised sight and reactive explosive blocks. The M60 was introduced into US service in 1960 so is a pretty old tank and the model has been superseded in US service. The Iranian Army lost hundreds of them in its war with Iraq, where they were considered inferior to the more modern Russian T72s used by Iraq. However, the Israelis used the M60 in its war with Syria where again it came up against the T72, but with huge success. I have read of T72 crews abandoning their tanks on the battlefield rather than being incinerated in them. I guess that when it comes to tank warfare, the capabilities of the crew and their tactics matter.

Have you heard about the new dating craze in Spain? The story is that if you want a date you should go to a Mercadona Supermarket between 7 pm – 8 pm and pick up a pineapple from the fruit and veg section. You then place it, upside down, in your supermarket trolly. If you see someone you fancy you should head for the wine aisle and if they follow then you’ve scored. Of course, the supermarket is not terribly happy as it has led to lots of trollies being abandoned with a single pineapple in them. I seem to remember hearing that an upside-down magnet pineapple on a cruise ship cabin door sent a similar message to swingers.

Now that autumn has arrived the Met Office has put out the news that this has been the coolest summer of seven years. Not only was it cold it was also very wet particularly in the North of England and Scotland, which seems to run in contradiction to the story of global warming, where the temperature is supposed to be getting warmer and rainfall reducing. Of course, according to the Met Office this summer’s weather is confirmation of global warming but I fail to see how.

Thursday

Hello my happy readers, I haven’t wished you a good morning today because it isn’t good, it’s wet and chilly. I watched PMQs from the office yesterday and I thought Legohead was awful. The Rich Boy initially went on the Winter Fuel Allowance being cut and all Legohead could do was waffle about an imaginary £22 billion black hole, and not answering the questions. Oh, and he doesn’t know who he is, he called the Rich Boy the ‘Prime Minister’ five times yesterday, is he suffering from dementia?

I overheard an interesting conversation this morning. It seems like the Government has been shocked at the public’s reaction to its axing of the pensioners’ Winter Fuel Payment, and has been looking for a way to restore it, without appearing to have backed down. I hear they are considering putting up the retirement pension by more than the triple lock and claiming they have the pensioners’ interests at heart. This is total BS they are only interested in votes and staying power.

What has long been expected of Sky TV has now been partially confirmed. With the introduction of Sky Stream, it has long been suspected that Sky wanted to migrate customers from satellite broadcasting to the internet. It’s a cheaper distribution system with fibre broadband now on over to more of the U.K. Sky have been working to make its Sky Glass and Sky Stream products as close to Sky Q as possible. Although still not quite the same, Sky have slowly been shutting down its satellite offerings starting off with the standard definition service meaning that very old Sky boxes were no longer usable. It has also closed its Sky Sports Active red button service. Now Sky has announced that its ‘Sky Q Triple Play’ offering is no longer on sale to new customers. This was an offer to buy Sky TV, broadband and phone in a cheap bundle. For those with Sky Q, I suspect it will be around for a few years yet as Sky’s contracts for the satellites have a while to run. But if I was coming new to Sky or looking to upgrade I think I would be looking at Sky Stream.

Yesterday I mentioned the extension of contactless rail ticketing to the 45 stations to the east of London. One of the stations to come within the scheme is Stansted Airport, which has long caused consternation to people travelling from Liverpool Street to the airport. At the moment the situation was very misleading in that you could board a train in London and use contactless to get on, but when you get off at Stansted there is no way to use the system to check out. Instead, you will be fined for travelling without a ticket. This is obviously a terrible situation and could have easily been stopped by only letting people with paper tickets onto the train. But the Stansted Express makes an intermediate stop at Tottenham Hale which is in the contactless zone and Network Rail didn’t want to cut out the stop. The sooner Stansted gets contactless travel the better.

Down in South London, the Premier League team Crystal Palace have announced a plan to extend their main stand. At the moment, at around 26,000, their ground capacity is one of the smallest in the Premier League. With a succession of big teams coming to the ground they have regularly sold out the stadium. For some time, Palace have been planning how to increase capacity and yesterday announced they have placed a £100 million contract to extend the capacity of its seating from 26,000 to 34,000. However, the contract is subject to inflation and is currently expected to go up to around £150 million. Palace cannot afford to lose capacity while the work is done and plan to work around the existing stand while keeping it in full use.

During the recent Football transfer window Fulham came to an agreement with the French team Lyon to purchase the Ghanaian player Ernest Nuamah for £16 million. Nuamah had joined Lyon only last year at a cost of £24 million, so it seems that Lyon wanted to get rid of him. The player flew to London and was undergoing the normal pre-contract medical when he suddenly burst into tears, walked out and disappeared. It seems that Nuamah didn’t want to move away from Lyon, and this was a desperate attempt to stop the move. Since he walked out of the medical neither Nuamah nor his agent have been seen.

The recent engine failure on a Cathay Pacific A350-1000 seems to have been down to a failed fuel line causing a small engine fire which was quickly extinguished. The quick diagnosis of the fault has led to Rolls-Royce, the engine maker being able to supply ample spare parts to replace the part on all the planes in the Cathay fleet. The full fleet will be back in service this week as the part can be replaced without having to remove the engine from the wing. Rolls say they are keeping other operators informed of this ‘minor problem’.

Friday

So far this week it seems to have rained every day, and this morning is no exception. It was just drizzling when I went down the garden, but on my way back there was a flash of lightning and a huge bang of thunder that rolled on for ages. I shot indoors as I expected a downpour, but it never came, and it is still just drizzling. Gosh, I now hear that Robber Reeves is getting a cat. I’m worried that they are planning to make me redundant or do away with me. Two extra jobs for me to do today, check on how much redundancy pay I can claim and get one of the other cats here to be my food taster.

A new type of AI camera is being trialled by 10 of Britain’s police forces. The new camera comes from an Australian company and like current traffic cameras can be used as a speed camera and an APNR camera that checks for stolen vehicles and things like no tax or insurance. But this camera can also take a very fast exposure photo that looks inside the car to see if the driver is on a mobile phone or not wearing a seat belt. If the artificial intelligence says the driver has committed an offence the photo is sent to a person to confirm the offence before a fine is issued or the picture destroyed.

Network Rail has put out a list of the top animals that caused disruption to train services by trespassing on the tracks in the year to March this year. In reverse order they were goats, foxes, pigs, cats, horses, dogs, sheep, swans, cows, birds and deer. But the biggest trespasser of all were humans. I must say I don’t know why swans are listed separately to birds, I always thought they were birds.

Passengers who bought apartments on Villa Vie Residences’ cruise ship Odyssey Legacy finally got a short trip to sea today. The ship has been converted from a cruise ship into a floating apartment block and is intended to follow summer around the world. I understood that an apartment on board cost £100,000 and then £16,000 a year maintenance. But something went wrong with the ship, and it has spent the last three months in Harland and Wolff in Belfast being fixed with passengers aboard. Today it made a short test voyage to check repairs to its rudder and gearbox. If it is ok it could finally sail tonight or tomorrow. I bet the passengers will be delighted to see a different port to Belfast.

Earlier this week Transport for London admitted that they had suffered a cyberattack. They are not putting out much information about what actually happened, but it must be serious as they have called in the National Crime Agency to look into it. They say that the early indications are that no passenger personal data was lost, but they also say IT experts are investigating exactly what happened, so perhaps it’s a little early to say that no data was lost.

Last Sunday was the 1st of September and as all Harry Potter fans know this is the day when the train taking prospective wizards to Hogwarts departs from Kings Cross at 11 am. The fans gather and countdown to 11 am when traditionally a Tannoy announces the train’s departure to cheers from the assembled throng. But for some reason Network Rail decided not to play the game this year. This year thousands of fans turned up, had their countdown to the 11 am announcement and then nothing. So, they started booing, I can’t blame them. Network Rail said they had stopped the announcement because they didn’t want hundreds of extra people turning up at a busy station. That worked well then.

On Wednesday evening Arsenal Ladies played Glasgow Rangers Ladies in the first round of the qualifying competition for this year’s Women’s Champions League. Arsenal had finished 3rd in the English Women’s Super League and Rangers were runners-up in Scotland. The WSL season hasn’t started yet, so there is no form line for Arsenal but in Scottishland Rangers league is in full swing, in fact last weekend they won 10 nil and are top of the league having played five games and winning them all, scoring 45 goals and conceding none. On paper this should have been a tough game for Arsenal Ladies, but they beat Rangers 6-0, what does that say about Scottishland ladies’ football?

Saturday

Morning dear reads and it’s wet once more. Last night was a KFC night and I went down to the office to get a share, drawn by the smell wafting through the building. When I arrived, the man who went to get the takeaway was having a moan. Apparently, everyone had paid him cash, so he intended to buy all the stuff at the counter so he didn’t land up with a pocket full of loose change. He was a bit annoyed to see notices saying the counter was closed and you had to use one of the ‘order point’ machines. So, he placed the order, and the machine told him he could pay by card or if he wanted to pay by cash to go to the counter! Anyway, he paid cash and was then told there was a twenty-minute wait for chicken pieces! Fancy, a fried chicken shop with no fried chicken. If there was an alternative shop around here I would have gone to it as this one clearly is trying to drive customers away.

An interesting bit of news reaches me about the $3 billion deal Serbia has signed with France for 12 Rafale fighter Jets. As part of the deal Serbia will be trading in 36 MiG29 jets. Now Dassault has no need, or want, for these planes so it is really the French Government who is facilitating the trade-in. Now I hear that these planes will find their way into the Ukrainian Air Force when they arrive in France before the end of the year. At the start of the war with Russia, Ukraine had under 100 old Russian planes in its airforce. I understand that the fleet is currently between 120 and 130, and to Russia’s consternation still growing. There are most of the promised F-16s still to come and now another 36 MiG29’s. The Ukrainian Air Force is said to have a problem of getting enough pilots.

In a strange twist to the yacht sinking off Sicily, I hear that the coroner has found that at least two of the victims died from suffocation and not drowning. It seems that when the yacht sank, people were trapped in their cabins but were kept alive by trapped air bubbles. They then suffocated when the oxygen ran out. What a horrible way to die.

More news of the troubled Glen Sannox ferry that will be six years and four times over budget when it gets handed over to the operator later this autumn. It is then scheduled to enter a two-month period of crew training and familiarisation before going into service on the route to the Isle of Arran in late November. Now I hear that the ship is scheduled to also come out of service on 3rd December for its ‘annual maintenance’ and will be out of service for the rest of December and January. I have small a question as to why a brand-new ship needs two months maintenance? If it was a brand-new car, only a few weeks old, it wouldn’t be reasonable to be in the garage for two months maintenance.

The new Northern Ireland £340 million ‘transport hub’, Grand Central Station, is due to open very early tomorrow. The station is due to be Belfast’s main station and bus station, but it’s only the bus station that will be opening tomorrow. A date for the transfer of rail services is yet to be announced but it is expected to be before Christmas. The first service is scheduled to be a bus to Dublin at 5 am. I hear that groups in the Irish Republic have already been complaining that signage at the station is only in English. That’s a bit rich as only 2% of Irish citizens use the Irish language daily and even less do in Northern Ireland.

In York the local bus operator, First York, part of the giant First Group, has recently introduced new electric buses on its number 10 route. This is part of the investment of £100 million in going green. However, there is a major problem, the new single-deck buses are too tall to go under a 13-foot-high railway bridge on the route. So, First York has had to change the route and is now unable to serve a large area it used to. First York say it is going to be some time before they have a solution. I can think of a simple one, just restore the old buses while you sort things out.

This year’s ballot for private member’s bills in the Commons was entered by 458 of the 650 MPs. The result was a little odd in that 15 of the 20 winners came from the Liebore party, four were Limp Dumps and the last one was the single Traditional Unionist Voice MP who is aligned with Reform. It is really no surprise that the vast majority of winners were Liebore MP’s, they are by far the largest party, but the second largest party, the Tories, and the SNP didn’t get a single win. It is very unusual for a private members bill to be successful and unless you are number one or two in the draw you stand virtually no chance. This year no.1 was Liebore’s Kim Leadbeater and no.2 was Limp Dump Max Wilkinson. As yet there is no news as to what the bills might be but it is suggested that Legohead might push for Leadbeater to bring in an Assisted Dying Bill which the government could support at arm’s length.

That’s me done for the day and it’s another rotten day, not good enough for the windowsill so I’m off off for a snooze on a comfy chair. I think I might try the Thatcher Room as that will annoy Legohead if he happens to bother to put in an appearance today. It’s not much of a day for sport on the TV in the office, as it’s an international break for football, the cricket is likely to be rained off and that just leaves the Paralympics this afternoon. Chat to you next week.
 

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