Larry’s Diary, Week Two Hundred And Sixty-Two

Monday

Good morning all, it was bright and sunny early on, but the sun has gone now and it’s grey. Today we have the new numbers out for Channel migrants, 20,210 since the Government came to power on 4 July promising to smash the gangs that about double the number in the first six months of the year. I know July and August are supposed to offer better weather in the Channel, but no one has crossed for the last two months because of bad weather.

The next Liebore party politician in the spotlight seems to be Liz Kendall who has been claiming expenses for heating her rented constituency home while living in her £4 million home in London’s Notting Hill. Apparently, she and her millionaire husband have an estimated income of £760,000 a year. Strangely the claim for £350 a month is the same as the Winter Fuel Allowance was for a pensioner. The MP for Leicester West is the work and pensions secretary, and the person responsible for the allowance being cut. I call that Hypocrisy.

While talking about hypocrisy, the next in line is Sniffer Joe who has pardoned his son Hunter for all crimes against the United States since 2014. This is just 10 days before Hunter was due to be sentenced after being found guilty of gun charges and evasion of $1.4 million in tax. Hunter was shown to have spent the cash on ‘items including cars, drugs, and prostitutes’. The BBC seems to think that the pardon is Trump’s fault for pursuing the Hunter laptop story and threatening to prosecute Hunter over it…

WorthingGooner, Going Postal
I could find a picture with a line of coke.
Hunter Biden – Caricature (51337924653),
DonkeyHotey
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

An interesting thing occurred in the Premier League at the weekend with the position in the table going down to a rarely used divider. Arsenal and Chelsea both have got the same number of points and have scored the same number of goals both home and away. The next divider is the head-to-head record between the teams this year. Well that was a draw at Stamford Bridge and the match at the Emirates is still to be played. So that is all level. The final divider is away goals in head-to-head matches and Arsenal have scored one and Chelsea nil so Arsenal is above Chelsea. But if this happened at the end of the season there would have to be a playoff on a neutral ground to determine the final placing.

There was an interesting report in the papers at the weekend saying that Elon Musk was going to give Reform $100 million to help them win the next election. Before you say that it is illegal for a foreign company to give money to a British political party, let me say there are ways it could be done, for example one of Musk’s British companies donating the money. But I understand that Sir Nigel Farage the leader of Reform says he has not been approached by Musk but if the money was offered and was legal he would take it.

I hear then that in France there is a no confidence vote threat hanging over the Government this afternoon. They have been given a deadline to back down on their budget by opposition parties and could easily lose a vote. The result won’t be known until I have finished today’s stories, but I am sure if the French Government doesn’t back down the vote of no confidence will happen and will be big news. Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government is in serious trouble with the economy and parliament after using a procedural device to force his budget through when it could not be passed on a vote. The French stock market is suffering, and we could well have another one of those French general elections that seem to drag on forever. The word is the election would be next summer!

I read that in America they are no longer to have chlorinated chicken. The chlorine wash is to be used solely for washing down the preparation factory and the slaughterhouse, while a new wash has been developed that is said to be more effective and changes to water and oxygen shortly after application. What bothers me is that American chicken must be washed in the first place. Surely what they need to do is to improve hygiene on farms.

Tuesday

Good morning merry readers, it is another dry day here in the Street, and I see it is going to be a bit sunny. They have put that bloody tree up again next to my special windowsill, so it makes sitting on it a waste of time as I can’t see anything. Did you see Legohead turn on the tree lights last night, it was the most boring countdown ever and he seemed to be astounded that the lights worked. I guess he is used to things in his government not working.

So, the news is out that the town in Britain with the worst life expectancy is Grimsby, some 13 years below the average. Not only that, I hear that half the people of working age are unemployed. I wonder if the town’s decline goes back to the days when its position as one of the countries main fishing ports collapsed due to the Cod Wars and then the EU fishing policy. I don’t think I want to move to Grimsby, I prefer meat, especially chicken, to fish.

In the summer a pair of bush dogs gave birth to four puppies in Dudley Zoo. Now I hear that visitors to the zoo have been taking part in a naming contest. The bush dog is a native of South America, so it is hardly surprising that the puppies have been given Spanish-type names and are now called Diego, Pablo, Bruno and Carlos. The bush dogs are the first to have been born at the zoo in its 87-year history and are likely to be added to the world-wide breeding program where it is at risk of extinction due to habitat loss.

WorthingGooner, Going Postal
That looks more like a bear!
Cute bush dog baby gnawing on the twig,
Tambako the Jaguar
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

Gosh, this country is going down the pan fast since the Budget. On-line sales down 7.8%, in-store sales down 5.5%, temporary Christmas vacancies down 12.9%. Legohead is having a reset and ditching the growth target. Over three million people want another election. An impossible house-building target. A fraudster at transport replaced by someone who oversaw transport in London and was totally useless at it. A chancellor who lied on her CV and a PM who has been taking ‘gifts’. I wonder what else is going to leak out.

Are Airbus going to reach its annual target of 750 aircraft deliveries this year? A month ago I would have said no chance but following a deal with engine suppliers they managed to deliver 80 planes last month bringing the total for the year so far to 640. This means they need to reach 110 deliveries in December to make the target. Is that possible? Well maybe, last December they delivered 112 jets. So, I wouldn’t say they can’t do it, only that it’s unlikely they will make the target.

Today I have a cat story for you. Not a house cat like me but a big cat. Two very rare Amur leopard cubs have been born at Colchester Zoo. The Amur leopards live in the temperate forests in Russia and China, and it is estimated there are only 70 in the wild because they are hunted for their use in Chinese medicine. Consequently, the cubs are very precious to the future of the breed. No one has yet been brave enough to get in with their mother to see what sex they are.

So far this calendar year we have paid out over £1 billion to the operators of wind farms to have them dump the power they have been generating when it has been a bit windy. They have generated more power than the system can use or can carry. The grid was designed to move power from the power stations to the factories and centres of population. When demand increased, such as at breakfast time, evening mealtime or at half time in a live broadcast football match, the grid called on the quick reaction generators to increase the supply and the oil, coal and gas generators turned up the wick and the demand was met. When the peak demand was over, the wick was turned back down, those standby stations were stood down and the base supply went back to those generators that work best supplying a steady output like a nuclear power station.

Then along came wind turbines and solar power which are both intermittent generators. Solar is OK when the sun shines, and wind is ok when the wind blows, but neither happens 24 hours a day and when they do generate, the power is all delivered to the grid in places the grid has not been designed to accept it. So, we have got rid of those standby generators in our rush to net zero and not replace it on a like for like basis. There are plenty of times we are able to get enough power into the grid and move it to where it is needed hence we need standby gas generators to keep the lights on. But in reverse we can’t turn wind off when the wind is blowing, so when we have more wind power than we need we must dump the power and keep paying the generators. We live in mad times.

Wednesday

Hi folks, another sunny but cold morning. The political news this morning is that lifelong Tory Tim Montgomerie has left the Tories and joined Reform. Montgomerie was about as Tory as you could get and even founded the Conservative Home website. The word on the street is that there is going to be a blockbuster announcement from Reform next week. I not going to speculate on what it might be

The chef, Tommy Banks, is not very happy today as he has had 2,500 pies stolen. He has a pop-up stall selling all sorts of his handmade pies at York Christmas Market and an electric van bringing 2,500 pie was stolen from Barker Business Park in Melmerby on Sunday night. It not clear if the van was stolen because it was an expensive electric van or its contents. I’m told the pies were worth £25,000, that’s £10 each! That’s a bit much for a pie.

I understand that the Premier League is considering doing away with it ban on showing live matches that kick off at 3 o’clock on a Saturday. The ban was started in 1960 to protect attendances at other football matches kicking off at that traditional time. The next TV deal starts next season and will allow for any Premier League game not kicking off a 3 pm on a Saturday to be shown on live TV. But it is going to raise less per year than the current contract. The next deal is due to start in 2029 and the Premier League has realised that the only way to get more money is to show more matches and that means showing 3 o’clock kick-offs. I wonder if it will work or has the money bubble burst?

If you tried to get a train into Kings Cross at the weekend you will know that the station was shut for maintenance. I understand that Network Rail took the opportunity to carry out further testing of the digital in-cab signalling that it is installing. The ETCS is already in use by Great Northern between Moorgate and Finsbury Park and work has been ongoing to extend it up the East Coast Main Line to Peterborough. A Great Northern Class 717 was used between Potters Bar and Peterborough while a Grand Central Class 180 ran on the Hertford Loop from Finsbury Park. I hear the trains ran 30 return journeys and the tests were successful. Which is a good thing because I read that the trackside signals are to be removed from the Finsbury Park to Moorgate branch at the end of the year.

WorthingGooner, Going Postal
Not on Test!
Grand Central Class 180, Cromwell Moor,
Phil Sangwellis
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

The new winter train timetables are due to start before Christmas and I hear that LNER has finally succeeded in introducing a reduction in the time taken by some trains running between London and Edinburgh. This speeding up of two trains an hour was first announced in 2019 and should make one northbound and one southbound service twenty minutes faster at just over four hours. Apparently, it has taken five years to come about because the tracks were being worked on!

This story seems to come up every year and I have reported on it before, but it never ceases to amaze me how many items get left on TfL services. In the year to last March, 298,682 items were taken to the newly renamed ‘Not Lost’ office in East London and only 52,371 were claimed. Unsurprisingly the favourite lost items were mobile phones, wallets, bunches of keys and purses. But I really can’t understand how only 17.7% of the items are claimed and in some categories it is even less, like only seven bicycles out of 373.

If you want to buy an old Grand Prix or Formula 1 car then your luck is in. Former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone is putting his collection of 69 cars up for sale by auction. In his collection are Ferraris driven by the likes of Hawthorn, Lauda and Schumacher, a pair of pre-war Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union cars, and a Vanwall VW10 driven by Sir Stirling Moss. How much is it all worth? God knows, probably what people are willing to pay, but my guess is several hundred million. Why is he selling? Well, he is 94 and says he has not got many more years on this planet, and he has a younger wife who will now not have to bother to arrange a sale and can benefit from inheriting the cash. As if she needs it, he is said to be worth $2.9 billion even after paying a disputed £650 million tax bill last year.

Thursday

Morning everyone, it’s back to a wet one but the forecast says it’s not going to rain until this afternoon so that’s ok then. Two little things in the world of politics to report this morning. The French Government collapsed last night, but under the French Constitution they have to wait a year between general elections so that is June next year and a lame-duck government until then. Today is Legohead’s ‘reset’ that mustn’t be called a ‘reset’ because it will be a list of ‘milestones’. More like an ‘Ed stone’ around the neck of another lame-duck government.

I see that Forest Green Rovers, the football team owned by Dale Vince the green-loving Liebore supporter, are to go ahead and build a new stadium made of wood. Apparently they are ‘the only vegan football team’ and want to expand on their eco lunacy. The stands and cantilevered roof will be all made of wood for the new stadium. The plans for the new 5,000-seat stadium were approved by Stroud Council earlier this week. Even the food sold at the existing stadium is vegan and the players’ kit is made of recycled plastic and coffee grounds. The one thing that did surprise me is that the new stadium is to have parking for 1,700 cars. That’s not very green, surely there should be parking for 1,700 bikes, now that would be green.

Since the beginning of November, Derbyshire Police have been running a campaign against illegal e-scooters and e-bikes and have just said they have seized over 100. On one day they took 39 off the road. The police stopped anyone on an e-scooter or e-bike and tested them to make sure they complied with the regulations and were being ridden legally.

On the 22nd of November, Mary McNab won a by-election to the Glasgow Council in Glasgow North East, but the Scottishland Liebore winner failed to follow the regulations and resign from her council job the next day so has been disqualified as a councillor meaning there will have to be a new election at the cost of £80,000. Anus Sarwar, the Liebore leader in Scottishland, says the whole thing was an ‘administrative mess’. But the election officials say they told all candidates of the rules before the election and in the past candidates have always followed them. It sounds like a massive cockup to me.

Because of the delay in getting the two reactors at Hinckley Point ‘C’ online, a decision has been made to further extend the life of four existing nuclear power plants. Hartlepool, Heysham 1, Heysham 2 and Torness are to have their lives extended to 2030 when Hinkley Point ‘C’ should be online. But this will not give us an increase in nuclear power which is what we desperately need.

WorthingGooner, Going Postal
I wouldn’t be on that beach.
Playing on the beach by Heysham 2 – geograph.org.uk – 3837726,
Karl and Ali
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

I wrote last week about Norwegian Cruise Lines cancelling the cruises of three cruise ship’s winter programs out of the blue. At the time it wasn’t clear what Norwegian was going to do with the ships. Now it has emerged that the three ships are to be moved to offer cruises to the Caribbean, one out of New Orleans and two out of Port Canaveral. It has also completely rehashed its program of cruises out of Tampa to offer seven-night and 14-night Caribbean cruises. It seems that American cruise passengers have recently been showing a strong preference for Caribbean cruises and the cancelled cruises were to Asia, the Indian Ocean and Africa.

Cuba’s Antonio Guiteras power plant collapsed again at 2 am on Wednesday morning and brought the whole of the Cuban grid down yet again. The only buildings in Havana with lights still on were reported to be those with standby generators. Out in the country it was pretty black, but the hotels, particularly the big inclusive resorts, all seem to have generators. That could well be us if Red Ed Millipede gets his way.

Friday

Quite chilly again this morning but at least it is dry. I was amazed to see Nigel Farage on Question Time last night get several rounds of applause and clearly own the other guests. The BBC clearly made a big mistake and didn’t plant the normal load of Left wingers in the audience. Someone will be in trouble this morning.

HMS Defender has emerged from Dry Dock 15 at Portsmouth where it has been undergoing a major refit since July 2023. She has had her hull cut open and three new diesel generators inserted as part of the ‘Power Improvement Program’. At the same time, she has been undergoing a major ‘up keep’ program which I understand is a fancy term for heavy maintenance. She is also in a ‘Capability Insertion Period’ as the first of the Type 45s to be fitted with Sea Ceptor missiles housed in a separate 24-cell silo. I hear that a big hole has been cut in the deck and the 24 cells silo is being produced off-site so it can simply be dropped into place. All the Daring class destroyers are supposed to undergo similar work to get them into a position where we can always have four of the six Type 45s ‘available’. Not at sea just ‘available’. That might be a bit difficult as HMS Daring hasn’t been to sea for nine years.

WorthingGooner, Going Postal
Back in the water.
HMS Defender,
Defence Images
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

The nurse convicted of baby murder, Lucy Letby, has been questioned about the deaths of other babies at hospitals she worked at. I wonder if the intention is to prosecute her and to then add more years to her whole life sentence. I hear that she now has 50 ‘experts’ ready to defend her. Which could lead to an interesting event, her being found not guilty at a subsequent trial. That would lead to a huge question being thrown over her initial finding of guilt.

Bad news for you draught Guinness drinkers, it is being rationed in the run-up to Christmas. Diageo, the brewers of Guinness, say that over the past month demand in pubs and bars has been exceptional and despite working at 100% capacity demand is exceeding supply. Therefore, pubs are being restricted in the pre-Christmas orders. Apparently, the rugby union autumn series had a big effect with pubs seeing a boost in draft Guinness sales with drinkers watching the matches in the pub.

An interesting story from the ex-head of Border Force. He is now retired but keeps in touch with many of his old colleagues and told of an old friend who oversaw the arrival of three female care workers from Ghana who had valid work visas. Each brought their husband who didn’t need a visa to accompany them. In addition, they had 15 children between them. That is a total of 21 people coming in legally on three work visas. How much are those 21 people going to be making as a positive contribution to the country?

The Building Safety Regulator is starting a review of the ‘Approved Documents’ to join the other 67 reviews announced by the new government. Unless you are involved in the construction industry I expect have no idea what an Approved Document is. Well, these are the documents that everyone involved in the construction industry must follow and sets out all the rules and regulations people constructing new buildings or refurbishing old ones must work to. They include all sorts of things from the heat loss from buildings, fire protection and escape, electrical regulations, changes of air, access, you name it and it is all regulated even down to the steepness of a staircase. Approved Documents have been around for years, if my memory is right they were introduced by John Prescott when he ran the Office of Deputy Prime Minister, and they gave him the task of introducing them to give him something to do. I expect the BSR will report just before the next election and the report will be buried.

A strange story reaches me from Horsham in West Sussex where, without any warning, workmen erected plastic barriers in front of the entrance to the church. The following day more workmen arrived and installed public EV chargers and painted bays on the road labelled Electric Vehicles. The church complained to West Sussex Council that they had neither been consulted on or told of the EV chargers. They block the area used by cars dropping people off for services, Funeral cars and Wedding cars. The council says these places are not actually reserved for EVs only and any car can park there. If so I hope they have told the Traffic Wardens.

Saturday

Good Morning everyone, it’s wet and windy today, not very nice, although I hear it’s a lot worse down in Wales. Today is ‘Fat Bike’ day. This is not a special for day fat people to ride on bikes, or even a day for riding on special bikes for fat people. It is actually for bikes with ‘fat’ tyres that can be used to ride around in the country. Didn’t that used to be called ‘off roading’?

I hear that earlier this week the country came within a whisker of having power cuts as we hit what is being caused the ‘energy gap’ where we had less power being generated than we required. We just scraped through with imports from abroad. Now Mad Red Ed Millipede tells us we are going to have to spend more money on nuclear power to be safe. The man with a milli-brain has come to a conclusion that we sane people knew years ago. The problem is it takes many years to build a big nuclear power station, and the Small Modular Reactor program has yet to be approved. So even if one or more are selected in the spring, it is going to take ages to get the factory making them ready, the first site(s) agreed, planning permission granted, all the nuclear permissions in place, the plants manufactured, built and commissioned, before we have any power. Wouldn’t it be a bit quicker and cheaper to build a couple of gas turbine stations with HRSGs attached or does Green ideology beat realism?

I see there was another disaster on the railway network yesterday when the radio system that connects drivers to signallers failed. The system took five hours to sort out but in the end it was traced to a department where people were only in the office two days a week and it couldn’t be fixed by those ‘working from home’. Where have I recently heard of a similar story? Oh, I remember, it was the air traffic control system meltdown of last summer where it needed rebooting and it could only be done on site and the man who knew how to do it was ‘working from home.’ It’s no wonder that employers want employees back in the office.

Earlier this week I was hearing that Hitachi train factory’s Newton Aycliffe site, in County Durham, was likely to be in trouble as the cancellation of the HS2 second leg had sparked fears that the company was going to have a gap in orders putting about 700 jobs at risk. Then I learn they have signed an order to manufacture 14 “state-of-the-art” trains at the factory. The order for five-car Class 80X Hitachi bi-modal trains was agreed with FirstGroup and the trains are to be used for the expansion of services run by Lumo and possibly Hull Trains. Lumo has just bought Grand Union Trains who have recently acquired rights to run a service from Sterling to Euston and from Carmarthen to London Paddington. They have also applied to run five trains a day between Paddington and Paignton. Hull Trains want run a direct service between Sheffield and London. These companies run open access services, which means they take no Government money. I wonder if they are included in the nationalisation program?

WorthingGooner, Going Postal
Class 80X bi modal trains.
Trainbow 800008, 800315, and another GWR Class 80X at Paddington, Sept 2021,
TheFrog001
Public domain CC BY-SA 2.0

You may remember that a while ago there was a bit of a fuss when the MoD pulled all the RAF Hercules aircraft out of service to be replaced by the Airbus A400M. Did you ever wonder what became of the old C130s? It has just been revealed we sold them off to Turkey. Apparently we maintain our military aircraft to the very highest standard, so our old planes are quite saught after. Turkey have taken all 12 and will be using them to replace 12 much older models of the Hercules they currently operate.

An interesting proposal was made yesterday by Attorney General Sir Michael Ellis. He suggested that if Greece wants to have the Elgin Marbles back, which the Greek nation sold to Lord Elgin because they were about to crush them for road-building material, we could swap them for the Ionian Islands. In 1864, under the Treaty of London, Queen Victoria gifted the island to Greece. The attorney general said if the Greeks want to ignore a sales arrangement over 200 years old, we should be able to ignore the treaty and reclaim the islands which were previously sovereign territory. What a good idea. Using the same principle we could reclaim a big chunk of the United States and a load of other places.

It seems that Totteringham Hotspurts have been holding discussions with DHL over naming rights for their stadium. The perceived wisdom is that companies are willing to pay top dollar only for ‘virgin’ stadiums. That is a newly built one that has never had a name before such as the Emirates or the Etihad and the value drops the longer a stadium has been known by another name. Six years ago, it was reported that Totteringham wanted £200 million for a 10-year deal, I wonder if they are still hoping to get such a sum for a six-year-old stadium?

That’s done for the week and there is no way I’m going to be out on the windowsill, it’s far too wet and windy. It’s not so chilly out there, but even if I were to brave it and head for ‘my’ windowsill that bloody Christmas tree is in the way. So I’m off to snooze in the Thatcher Room because Legohead has a phobia about the room, but I like it. The forecast for tomorrow is sunny, dry, and chilly. I might be able to snooze on the windowsill then if I can get in the sun. Wet and windy again tomorrow, at least until it gets dark. Chat to you next week.
 

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