Monday
Good morning all, there’s a bit of watery sun this morning but it’s a bit chilly. It also a happy day here in No 10 where both Legohead and Robber Reeves are out of the country. Robber has gone to Brussels to a meeting of EU finance ministers. Why? We are not in the EU and Legohead has gone to the Middle East to see how much more of the country he can flog off to them.
I was amazed by the Ginger Growler’s appearances on TV yesterday’s morning TV round. She was arguing about the government’s plans to build 1.5 million homes in the five-year term of this government. Then she was asked about the numbers in Robber Reeves’s budget, 300,000 immigrants this year. Her answer was this was no problem as there are plenty of homes available. So, I have a simple question, if there are plenty of homes available, why are there so many people on council housing lists, and why are we building 1.5 million homes?
I heard an interesting rumour yesterday. Apparently Elon Musk is going to invest some of his £262 billion fortune into a British football club. There is no word on what club he is supposed to be looking at, but I haven’t heard of any of the Premier League clubs looking for a buyer. I wonder if Musk would consider a team in a lower division, it might be quite fun pouring several billion into a National League team and watching them climb up the divisions. Mind you, if he did buy a club the lefties would go potty.
What is going on at Manchester United? At the weekend the sporting director, Dan Ashworth, was in the director’s box for the home loss against Nottingham Forest then on Sunday he was called in to see Jim Radcliffe. Shortly after, it was announced Ashworth was to leave ‘by mutual agreement’, which usually means he was sacked and given a bung to keep his mouth closed. He was escorted out of the stadium. It is all very strange because Manure worked very hard the summer to winkle Ashworth out of Newcastle where he was put on gardening leave for five months before joining Manure at a cost said to be between £2 and £3 million. It seems that despite it being part of Ashworth’s job, he paid no part in the recruitment of Manure’s recently signed new manager. I hear there has been on-going back-room disagreements and the departure of Ashworth is the result. I wonder if we will ever discover how much the payoff was?
This morning Air India has made an addition to its record order of 250 Airbus jets earlier this year. At the same time as the 250 Airbus jets were ordered Air India also ordered 200 Boeings. The order for an extra 100 planes would normally be a big thing on its own but this means that Air India now has 350 Airbus planes on order and this is huge. The order is for 10 more A350 widebody aircraft and 90 A320 family planes. Air India now has 344 Airbus jets on order as 6 x A350-900 planes have been delivered. Air India is now said to have $6.7 billion worth of planes on order.
Canterbury City Council, down in Kent, has just landed its Council Tax payers with a big bill. The Alberta Holiday Park in Seasalter applied for planning permission to build a large extension adding 91 static caravans. Despite the council’s own experts recommending that the permission should be granted and warning there were no grounds for refusal, the planning committee turned down the application. The holiday park appealed and the planning inspector has granted permission. But to show how he felt about the original refusal he has awarded £99,000 in costs against the council. If I had my way I would be reclaiming the costs from the planning committee.

Alberta Holiday Park, Seasalter – geograph.org.uk – 5094898,
Paul Harrop – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
The town of Whittier in Alaska is a town like no other. All its residents live in a single building, Begich Towers. The building houses all 217 town residences as well as a police station, a shop, a doctor’s clinic, and a church. The town has just a low number of residents because its weather is not very good, the town averages 5,000mm of rain a year, which is quite a lot. The building was originally a barracks for US soliders stationed there to protect Alaska from the Japanese during WW2. Oh, and do you know anywhere else where the children all walk to school through a tunnel to an attached building?
Tuesday
Good morning my lovely readers, and it was back to dull, grey, rainy and chilly on my excursion to the bottom of the garden. Another important signing for Reform has been announced. Nick Candy is another defection from the Tories, who has been a huge party donor, and is to become their treasurer. Candy is married to Holly Valance (a long-term Reform member), a very rich property developer, and probably a billionaire. I bet he knows and moves in monied circles and will soon be getting converts to the Reform cause adding millions to their coffers. Liebore and Tories must be getting ever more worried.
I see a new streaming service is coming to Sky TV next year. Sky have signed an extended deal with Warner Brothers Discovery and its subsidiary HBO and the streaming service Max will be provided free to Sky subscribers. Many shows made by HBO will continue to be shown on Sky until the deal commences when many will switch to Max. But its good news for Sky subscribers who are “Potterheads”, the forthcoming Harry Potter TV series is exclusive to Max and will be available.
I hear that Lee Barron, the Labour MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire, is not very happy because the daily price of parking at Corby station is to go up from £3.50 to £10.00. North Northamptonshire Council says that it brings parking at Corby in line with the lowest-priced station parking in the area. This is a case of the council putting up the price of parking to fill its coffers, not because it needs to.

Corby station 1990 geograph-3319313-by-Ben-Brooksbank,
Ben Brooksbank – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
The rumour is that the case against Manchester City, who are accused of 115 charges of breaches of the FA financial regulations has concluded and the three-man commission has withdrawn to consider it. The result is expected next January or February and could be anything from not guilty to a fine or relegation. But whatever the result, an appeal is expected and that would mean a final result may not be known until the end of next season.
The P&O ship Iona was supposed to depart on a week’s cruise out of Southampton late on Saturday afternoon but its sailing was delayed because it would have sailed into the teeth of storm Darragh. With winds in the Channel still at 40 mph on Sunday the passengers enjoyed all the ship’s facilities safely tied up to the terminal and were allowed to wander ashore to sample the offering of Southampton. The ship finally sailed at 02:30 on Monday morning but on a slightly different itinerary, going to Rotterdam, Zeebrugge, Le Harve, and then back to Southampton, but it must have time to waste as it headed initially west down the English Channel. Either that or the captain was lost.
While talking about P&O cruises I hear that they have had a refresh of both their Main Dining Room menus on ship and the way the menus are presented with some dishes local to the ship’s location added. I guess this is OK when in somewhere like the Caribbean (jerk chicken) or Italy (pasta) but what do you serve as local in the middle of an Atlantic crossing, fish I suppose. I wonder if it is on every ship or just one as an experiment? We will find out soon as my scribe is sailing with them over Christmas and the New Year.
You may think that the Liebore Government has caused chaos to the British economy but it is nothing like as bad as the major banks think about the problems in France and Germany. I hear that several of the big banks had been considering expanding their operations in Paris and Frankfort but have had a rethink and will instead be looking at expanding their operations in London. The Remainers predicted mass post-Brexit exodus of bankers from London to Paris and in particular Frankfort just never happened, partly because the top bankers simply refused to leave London for what was considered the cultural dessert of Frankfort. Now the banks have decided that the mess that is the British economy is nothing like as bad as that in Germany and France.
Wednesday
Hi folks, it was very dark and grotty when I went down the garden this morning, we are nearly at the peak amount of nighttime, and I can’t wait for the daylight hours to get longer. Today is PMQs and for once Legohead will be here and not abroad. But it’s also the day when farmers are due to bring their tractors to London. I hope they block Legohead in Downing Street.
The Webb space telescope seems to have confirmed readings first made by the Hubble telescope that showed that the expansion of the universe is getting faster. When the event was first reported by the older Hubble telescope it was suggested that it could be an error with its readings and the calculations as the speeding up did not match any known theories. In fact, it conflicted with the accepted ideas. But now the readings have been confirmed by Webb which means that scientists are going to have to rethink their theories.
Some odd statistics regarding parking fines have recently emerged. Sixteen million fines have been issued since 2022 and for some unknown reason most fines, 16%, are issued in November and December. Last year there were 5.8 million PCNs issued and much like previous years around a third were successfully challenged with nearly everyone being challenged on the same basis, that the signs are confusing. You would think that local authorities would realise that so many challenges were being upheld on the same grounds and simplify the signage. On the other hand, perhaps, they are raking in so much money from those who can’t be bothered to appeal that a change to better understood signs isn’t worth the effort.
It seems that Russia is paying off Iran and North Korea for their help in the war with Ukraine by sending them old military aircraft. First it was Iran who got Yak-130 combat trainers, then Iran announced that they were getting Su-35 fighter jets and Mi-28 attack helicopters. The Su-35 is the Russian rough equivalent of the US F-16, a pretty old jet which is being replaced in Western airforces. Now it seems North Korea is to receive Su-27s and MiG-29s in payment for the thousands of troops that have gone the other way. The Su 27 went into Russian service 40 years ago and the MiG 29 is even older. Is it cheaper for Russia to give Iran and North Korea these hand-me-downs than to scrap them?

SU-27 Flanker – RIAT 2018 – My 154th Explore shot :-),
Airwolfhound – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
In Southampton common sense seems to have come to some of the city councillors. A while ago they voted to impose 20 mph speed limits on a number of roads. Now, they are looking at going back to 30 on many of these roads. Why? Well, it seems the local people just don’t like it, it hasn’t improved traffic (in fact it has made it worse) and the accompanying parking and other rules, introduced at the same time, have ruined some shopping streets.
Have you noticed the cost of mince pies have gone up steeply this year? I see that a pack of four is about £1 more than last year. The blame is being put on a massive increase in the cost of sultanas due to a very poor harvest in Turkey. I hear that in June and July Turkey suffered prolonged wet weather which has caused a huge fall in the crop, which in turn has pushed the price up. Turkey normally produces about 310,000 tonnes a year, but it is estimated that this year’s crop will only be 250,000 tonnes. I’m happy to say I don’t like mince pies.
Down on the South Coast there is a big row going on over proposed big increases in the fares on the Sandbanks chain ferry. The county council is to hold a public meeting to discuss the increase, and the venue was announced as Studland Parish Hall which rather suited the residents of the Isle of Purbeck for whom the ferry is a lifeline. But the council has now moved the inquiry to Poole and then Wareham. Probably the biggest users of the ferry are residents and visitors to Swanage, but it looks like they are being ignored.
Thursday
Morning everyone, it’s another chilly grey one, but at least it is dry. The members of the committee that will handle the ‘committee stage’ of the Assisted Dying Bill were announced yesterday by the bill’s proposer Kim Leadbeater. Well, as you might expect she is on the committee and has selected 14 MPs who voted for the Bill (including herself) and nine who voted against it. I guess that is what most people would call a fix.
In the Commons they were discussing a ban on people marrying their cousin and everyone seemed to agree and were surprised that it wasn’t already illegal. But not independent MP for Dewsbury and Batley, Iqbal Mohamed, who argued a ban would be ineffective. The pro-Palestinian MP argued that it would mainly effect Muslims and Irish travellers where first-cousin marriage helps to sustain family bonds and family wealth. I really fail to see how these antiquated ideas should be allowed in Britain.

Official portrait of Iqbal Mohamed MP crop 3,
House of Commons – Licence CC BY-SA 3.0
Last weekend I understand that Russia was testing what they call the National Net. It is an internal version of the internet that will only allow users in the Russian Federation access to approved websites. This is basically just an internal Russian site so no Going-Postal for ordinary Russians. I hear the tests took place in Chechnya, Dagestan, and Inigushetia and lasted 24 hours. Russia already blocks many Western sites, but the current system can be defeated by a VPN. It was reported that VPNs were unable to defeat the new system, meaning that the Russian public could be fed propaganda and have no way of finding an alternative source of news like Larry’s Diary.
I was a bit dismissive yesterday when I was telling you about the Russians giving old jet fighters to North Korea, but I hadn’t looked at what they would be an upgrade on. The North Korean Air Force currently consists of Russian and Chinese jets. The newest are a few MiG-23s and MiG-29s. But the bulk of the planes are positively antique, Soviet-era MiG-21 Fishbeds and their Chinese F-7 equivalents, and Chinese-made F-6 Farmers, a first-generation supersonic fighter. They even operate Chinese-made F-5 Fresco jets, a license-built version of the MiG-17, which was first flown in 1950. However, it is understood that the F-5 would only be used as a ‘Kamikaze’ type plane.
Reports say that Israeli forces have been undertaking a vast number of pre-emptive strikes on Syrian National Army ammunition and weapons stores, airbases and naval bases. One reason given is to remove the stocks of chemical weapons that the Assad regime had used on the civilian population and stop them falling into the new government’s hands. Video emerging from Syria shows pictures of wrecked jets and helicopters and Israel is said to have sunk the Syrian fleet. All 16 missile boats are said to have been sunk while docked in Al-Bayda and Latakia by Israeli missile boats. Israel says it has also set up a five-mile buffer zone in the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel and its forces have no intention of taking on Syrian forces. We shall see.
In West Sussex, the county council has made government money available to local councils for ‘sustainable travel’. In Shoreham by Sea, the Adur authority decided to use a WSCC grant to install a number of bike racks which you can lock your bike or scooter to and are concreted into the ground. In their wisdom they choose to install one opposite Beach Green shops. The only problem was they were installed in the middle of the pavement completely blocking it! When people complained, they said no one had commented there had been a 28-day consultation. But they will now hold a ‘consultation’ about moving the rack. I wonder who they will consult?
Passengers on Royal Caribbean cruise ships have had several ‘incidents’ to deal with recently. First it was Symphony of the Seas where passengers were soaked when a smoke machine set off sprinklers. Then it was Harmony of the Seas when passengers were again soaked when smoke from a burnt pizza again set off sprinklers. Then two ships repositioning from the Mediterranean to the US hit Atlantic storms. Explorer of the Seas severely tilted on Nov. 7 due to a wild wind gust and Odyssey of the Seas was rocked by rough seas a few days later. Now it’s the turn of the Allure of the Seas, that was on a short cruise to the Bahamas, when passengers where abruptly woken in the middle of the night when a pipe in the ceiling over a hallway burst and flooded the corridor and some cabins. Allure is about to get a $100 million refit, sounds like it needs it.
Friday
Quite chilly again this morning and still grey and grotty. I wonder if it will drizzle again today, like it did yesterday. The latest GDP number is out this morning for October, and it is down 0.1% and this is before the effects of the tax-raising budget. Now I see the truth of Liebore’s election promise to save us all £300 a year on our energy bill is being shown up as rubbish the wording is changing. First it ‘could’ save us £300, then it was over the length of the parliament. Now we are about to get the second energy increase since they came to power. If we ever get a reduction it will only be on the increases, so we will still be paying more.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday Legohead boasted that the government had just deported a record number of people to Pakistan. It emerged yesterday that this record number of deportees was just 37, fewer than come over the Channel in one small boat. What is still to emerge is what kind of deportations these were. Were they failed asylum seekers, criminals who had finished their sentences or overstayers? Also, I want to know if these people’s deportation was a hangover from the last Tory administration, as everything else seems to be, or was it the work of the new government? I suspect it was the former or Liebore would have been boasting about it.
The Army has been testing a small laser mounted on a Wolfhound armoured vehicle designed to kill the type of small drones being used in the Ukraine to drop single small bombs onto troops, vehicles and tanks. The tests, at the Radnor range in mid-Wales, are said to have been completely successful taking out every target, whether it was moving at various speeds, hovering, or at various heights. Of course the report doesn’t say how much it costs, how much power it requires and what computer power it needs to track a moving target. But the fact that it was on a smallish vehicle like a Wolfhound is good news. Now we need to get them in production and out to our troops as soon as possible.

Mastiff and Wolfhound Armoured Vehicles in Afghanistan,
Defence Images – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
On the day Robber Reeves announced that she was looking for 5% saving on departmental expenditure, it emerged that the Department for Culture Media and Sport spent nearly £1,200 on two A4 ring binders. They could have bought two A4 binders from the Commons shop for £30 if they really wanted or needed one with the Commons portcullis symbol on it, or for a lot less at the local branch of W H Smiths. But the two £594 leather folders are very nice and came from Barrow Hepburn & Gale, who make the red dispatch boxes used by Cabinet ministers to carry around official papers. As an aside, have you noticed that Legohead is now to be seen lugging his red box down the steps of the plane on his every overseas visit? I understand this is to make the plebs think he is working and not on a jolly.
Delighted to see that Qatar is to buy another 12 Eurofighter Typhoons to add to the 24 it is currently receiving. The order is worth around £2.8 billion and is to bolster Qatar’s borders and relations with the U.K. The Eurofighter is made by a consortium of British, German, Spanish and Italian plane manufacturers. I understand that Qatar has received 22 of the initial 24 plane order so the follow-on order is welcome. The planes are assembled at BAE Wharton so the order will help sustain British jobs. Now that Turkey has received the OK from Germany to buy 40 Eurofighter Typhoons, I will be looking out for that order.
I have just had a little chuckle as I watched a clip of a guide dog leading its blind master through an airport security check. Unsurprisingly the dog’s harness set off the metal detector meaning the blind owner and the dog had to be body searched. Like most people the man submitted but didn’t look very happy about it. But the dog, a golden retriever, who I believe was called Mr Maple, absolutely loved it as it was more akin to a petting session when the searcher gave him a pat down.
In Norway many towns and cities generate their own power with small power stations and because of the Green lobby many are looking at building a Small Modular Reactor. Yesterday Norwegian generator Norsk Kjernekraft started looking at its options for its latest city, Holden. This joins quite a long list of towns and cities which includes Oslo, Farsund, Lund, Vardø, Aure and Heim, some of which would require more than one SMR and Bergen which they say may need as many as five SMRs. The export markets for SMRs is clearly enormous, why is our government still messing around with five manufacturers and not pushing Rolls-Royce?
Saturday
Good morning everyone, and it is a tiny bit warmer this morning and a little brighter, but it has been raining. Mad Red Ed Millipede says he has the power to approve the building of wind turbines on land. I don’t doubt it, but companies aren’t going to build them unless they are subsidised. That is basically why so few wind turbines were built on land under the Tories, they insisted they got local planning permission and, unlike offshore ones, they didn’t get any subsidies. No subsidies simply meant no one wanted to build them proving that unsubsidised they are not economic.
Back in June 2023, Kentish Town station on London’s Northern Line closed for a year while its dilapidated escalators were replaced. The station is also on the Thameslink line and those trains continued to stop there but there was no interchange with the Northern Line. Unfortunately, work has badly overrun because much of the concrete supporting the escalators was found to be crumbling. Now I hear that the station is to reopen on 23rd of December, only to close on the 24th for Christmas. I really don’t know why they are bothering, wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to leave the reopening to Boxing Day (26th) and reopen it with the rest of the underground system.
BAE Systems has announced that it has won a contract to supply Denmark and Sweden with CV90 Infantry Fighting Vehicles. The order is for 115 vehicles for Denmark and 50 for Sweden and is worth $2.5 billion including spares and support. The Danish Army already operates 44 of these vehicles. The CV90 is one of the most popular IFVs and has been bought by 10 countries, eight of whom are members of NATO. So far over 1,900 are in service in 17 different variants.

CV90 photo-021,
Alfvan Been – Public domain
I hear that since Liebore came to power the number of people in Britain awaiting asylum claims to be decided has gone up by over 24,000. This includes many new applicants from those war-torn countries Pakistan and Vietnam. Why do we ever entertain applications from countries such as these, where they don’t want to integrate and learn English, but want us to adopt their traditions and religion?
Apparently, the train operating companies have a bit of a problem getting drivers to work over the Christmas break. In the past they have paid extra overtime to entice drivers to work in this period, but this year few drivers are interested. The reason is that since Liebore gave them a massive wage increase in the summer they simply don’t want the money as it will lead to them paying huge amounts of tax. Now it looks like scheduled services between Christmas and the New Year are likely to be subject to lots of cancellations. Is this the rule of unexpected consequences!
I read in the Moscow Times that Russian cruise missile engineer, Mikhail Shatsky, has been found shot dead. Shatsky was deputy chief of design and head of software at the Moscow Experimental Design Bureau and an expert in the design of software for drones and subsonic missiles, including many now being used against Ukraine like the Kh-59 and Kh-69. The speculation is that he was assassinated by Ukraine but as yet this is only speculation and there has yet to be any arrests. The body was found in a park 10 minutes walk from Shatsky’s home.
Google have recently introduced a new feature to Google Wallets, now along with your credit cards, store cards and football season ticket, you can store and use your passport details. Well, you can if you have a US passport and are travelling from a participating airport in one of 27 US states. At the moment it is like a credit card, you can wipe it over a reader and the details are read, and you don’t need to have your physical passport with you. However, as it only currently works in the US that is not a lot of use if you are flying to say Paris or London where the system has not been implemented. Then you will need a paper passport, so you can’t leave it safe at home, which rather defeats the system. It might be OK when other nations’ passports are accepted, and it can be used on readers in other countries but until then the system is pretty useless. It will only be of use to me if it accepted animal passports and I doubt that will ever happen.
That’s done for the week and as I explained last week it’s pointless me heading for ‘my’ windowsill with that bloody Christmas tree in the way. So I’m off to snooze in the Thatcher room because I like it, as I get left alone. This is my last diary for a bit as my scribe is off on his holidays again and will be cruising the Caribbean and stuffing his face every day. Chat to you in the New Year.
© WorthingGooner 2024