Larry’s Diary, Week Two Hundred And Seventy-Four

Monday

Good morning, folks. It’s been raining overnight and is still dull and cold. Legohead is not very happy today—he has just seen the results of the latest MRP poll on the local election, and in spite of the Ginger Growler’s gerrymandering, it is disastrous news for Liebore, with them losing hundreds of seats and Doncaster Council going to Reform. In fact, even the Tories are predicted to pick up seats from Liebore but lose them to Reform. The Tories are also predicted to lose councils to Reform and to no overall control. Of course, this would have been much worse for him had Ginger gone on with the full set of elections.

I see that Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s company, INEOS, has had to buy its way out of a sponsorship contract with Totteringham Hotspurts. The reason is that Ratcliffe has bought into Manchester United using INEOS money. INEOS now owns 29% of Manure, and under company law, if the holding ever reached 30%, they would have to bid for the whole company. I understand that having a sponsorship deal—agreed before INEOS bought into Manure—with another team is not against the rules, but it is rather embarrassing for both parties. The word is that this has cost INEOS millions.

Up in Scottishland, I hear that Caledonian MacBrayne has just placed an order for five small electric ferries. The 50-metre-long new “Loch-class” vessels are to be built in Poland by the Polish firm Remontowa, which has already supplied a similar vessel to CalMac. This comes as a big disappointment to the nationalised Ferguson shipyard, the only remaining shipyard on the Clyde. I hear the deal was lost on cost and delivery, and that Remontowa, based in Gdańsk, has previously built the CalMac ferries MV Argyle, MV Bute, and MV Finlaggan. Not very good news for Ferguson.

I see that BAE Systems and Irving Shipbuilding Inc. of Canada have signed an agreement for Irving to build under licence an initial three Type 26 frigates, which the Canadians call destroyers. But what has also been announced is that there is a provision for Irving to build a total of 15 Type 26 frigates. BAE says they will have 500 people working on the contract, with 200 based in Canada.

An announcement from Reform today states that 29 councillors have left other parties to join Reform, taking their number of councillors to over 200. I watched the event on the internet, and although I didn’t count them, I think the majority were ex-Tories and Independents. Twenty-nine isn’t a huge number when there are thousands of councillors in the nation. Interestingly, Farage says there are many other councillors who are in the process of negotiating a move to Reform. I suppose only time will tell how many will move.

Thames Water won a court case this morning against a group of activists who wanted to stop them from borrowing an additional £3 billion. They say that without the money, they will have to declare bankruptcy. Thames is currently £20 billion in debt and says that without the new money, they would not have enough to even pay this month’s wages. If Thames were to declare bankruptcy, it would almost certainly have to be nationalised. It is the biggest water company in the country, serving London and the surrounding area—it is inconceivable that such a large area could be deprived of water and sewage services.

I hear that Legohead is considering putting a 28-day limit on people losing appeals for political asylum reappealing. The reason is obvious when you see that there are over 42,000 people currently appealing after being denied asylum, and many of those have made numerous appeals. This is up 500% in two years. In the last few months of 2024, the number of appeals went up by over 12,000. This all seems to be tied to the number of successful applications falling to under 50%. These numbers are to the end of 2024 and don’t take into account the record numbers of boat people so far this year. Of course, all these people are being accommodated in hotels and are getting pocket money, mobile phones, DJ lessons, and trips to Premier League football matches at the taxpayers’ expense. The Refugee Council says this is going to cost taxpayers £1.5 billion this year.

Tuesday

Good morning, everyone. A nice bright morning, a shade warmer and without a frost today. I see that later today, the Don is going to have a phone chat with PooTin about the war in Ukraine and a possible 30-day ceasefire. At the moment, Ukraine has agreed, but Russia hasn’t. I always wondered who pays for the phone call. Is it like a normal call, where the person who makes the call pays for it? I can see the Don and PooTin sitting in armchairs, waiting for the other to make the call.

The new Caledonian MacBrayne ferry is back working after being out of service for a few days. A cracked weld was spied just above the waterline, and the ship was taken out of service for inspection and repair. I understand that cracked welds are not uncommon in new ships and have many causes, including poor workmanship and stress. The cracked weld will have been ground out and re-welded. If the cause was stress, additional steels will be welded across the crack to strengthen it.

Network Rail has announced some details of the £200 million Cambridge South station that is due to open next year. Apparently, it is going to be the most environmentally friendly station on the network, with solar panels on the wildflower roof. It will also be built to harvest rainwater for use in things like flushing toilets and have racks to take 1,000 bicycles. But there will not be a single car parking space at this commuter station. There will be arrangements to set down and pick up, but no parking. This is the third station in Cambridge, alongside Cambridge and Cambridge North. The other two stations have over 400 parking spaces each, but the new station will only have five Blue Badge spaces, parking for staff, a taxi rank, and a bus stop. Local residents are not very happy, as they foresee commuters parking outside their houses all day.

Openreach, the BT subsidiary that supplies broadband services, wants the Government to amend the Renters’ Rights Bill that is currently going through Parliament. What they want is a clause that allows them to automatically enter rented premises to ‘upgrade’ the broadband from copper wires to fibre. Openreach claims there are 1,040,000 flats in the UK where the owner is not easily identified, and if they are not allowed to make a forced entry, they will be unable to upgrade them to ‘super-fast’ broadband and charge them more for the privilege.

In the fifth round of the FA Cup, there was a trial of semi-automatic checking for offside. It went well in seven of the eight matches, but in the eighth match between Bournemouth and Wolves, it failed miserably. Bournemouth had the ball in the Wolves’ net, but there was a long delay before it was called as offside. But with an automated system, why did it take so long? It seems that the automated system didn’t work because of ‘congestion’ in the penalty area, and a human had to intervene. This meant that it took a record eight minutes to come to the offside conclusion. You may not be surprised to learn that the experiment has been suspended.

Brighton & Hove is one of those areas where there will be no local council elections this May, but there is going to be a by-election in the Westbourne and Poets’ Corner ward because the sitting Liebore councillor has resigned. As yet, no date has been set for the election, and the call for candidates to be nominated has yet to be announced. But that hasn’t stopped the Green lot from announcing their candidate, who is already out canvassing. I expect all the other parties are biding their time, and there will be a full array of candidates announced when the time comes. I will be watching this one closely to see how Reform does.

Liz Kendall Mint Cake announced big changes to the welfare system this lunchtime, making savings of what she said will be £5 billion a year. Mint Cake said it was all about putting right the ‘disaster’ under the Tories. But to me, it seems more like making big cuts to try to balance Richard III’s budget book. The big hits seem to be on Personal Independence Payments and young people not working, but until the Green Paper is published, it will not be clear exactly who will suffer cuts and by how much.

Wednesday

Hi folks, and it is a bit warmer still today with the sun out. So, the Don spent 3.5 hours on the phone talking to PooTin yesterday and got next to nothing out of it. It looks to me like the Don is being played. There was supposed to be an agreement on stopping attacks on power generation and infrastructure, but there was a big attack on a Ukrainian power station overnight.

I read that Citroën is to add an electric van to its range based on the C3 car. The base version of the van is expected to cost £15,035 plus VAT, but most buyers of vans are businesses, so the VAT is irrelevant as it is recoverable. The announcement says it has a range of 200 miles, but that is for an unladen vehicle. There is nothing to say what the range is or how much the load is. I heard a plumber talking about an electric van the other day, saying that his diesel van was fitted with shelves in the back, and he carried a heavy load of parts and equipment around on every call he made, which would substantially reduce the range. He said an electric van was more suitable for a delivery service because the load got lighter with every delivery. One other point—how much range is knocked off a builder’s van towing a cement mixer?

Earlier this week, I asked the question of why the Canadian version of the BAE Type 26 warship was being called a destroyer, while the British and Australian versions are classified as frigates. It seems that the Canadian Department of National Defence says that, although the ship is exactly the same size in all three instances, it actually meets the NATO classification for a destroyer (DD), guided missile (G), and carries a helicopter (H), so its official designation is DDGH. So basically, they are saying the UK and Australia are wrong.

Among other things I learned today is that £8.8 million a year is paid out to give recipients of PIP payments free driving lessons. In London, the waiting time for a driving test is six months, but if you are an asylum seeker, you jump the queue and can get a test in a week. The government has also been paying out nearly £1 billion a year in PIP payments to drug and alcohol addicts. Why do we waste so much money?

Back in 2022, France announced that they were to build six new nuclear power stations to generate 10 GW to replace outdated plants and add some new capacity. The idea is that they will be built by French industry and owned by EDF. The first station was scheduled to be started in 2027 and to cost €52 billion, which EDF doesn’t have. More recent reports say the cost has now gone up to €67 billion. Today, I hear that the French government has agreed to loan EDF over half the money at a highly subsidised rate and to buy the power generated at €100 per MWh at 2024 costs. The current price for nuclear power in France is €61.6 per MWh.

It seems that the Electoral Commission is not happy with some of the returns submitted by Liebore at the last general election. The word is that the costs of the Liebore ‘Big Red Battle Bus’ don’t appear on the accounts of MPs that it visited, and the commission thinks that a share of its costs should. In a number of cases, candidates who are now Liebore MPs had spent very close to the £20,000 legal limit on expenses, and adding in a share of the cost of the bus would take them over the limit. What the commission does now is interesting, because if they let MPs get away with it by doing nothing or issuing a fine, they are clearly opening the door to future abuse of the system. But if they declare the elections void, all hell is going to erupt. This could be fun.

The regional arm of the Polish state airline LOT has asked Airbus and Embraer to bid for 84 aircraft to replace its complete existing fleet and also add to it. The aircraft size being requested is the smallest jets—the Airbus A220-100 and -300—and the Brazilian plane maker Embraer equivalents. Boeing doesn’t get a look-in on this request to tender, as they don’t offer an aircraft of the right size. The aircraft being replaced are nearly all old Embraer types that are between 15 and 22 years old, and any replacement would offer a more modern aircraft for the passenger and a much cheaper aircraft to operate for the airline. I understand that Airbus has confirmed it has put in its tender.

Thursday

Hi everyone, today is the first day of spring, and it was really rather nice when I made my way down the garden for my constitutional. The weather forecast for today in London is that it is going to be 21°C and warmer than Barcelona and Athens. Now that is what I like, so I am going to rush round writing my stories and doing my anti-rodent patrols so I can get out onto the windowsill and enjoy what is certain to be only a brief sunny interlude.

I read that Air India has taken up options with Airbus for another 100 aircraft—10 × A350 and 90 × A320 family. This brings the total number of new aircraft ordered by Air India to 470, with 350 being from Airbus and 120 from Boeing. Air India has already received just five of these orders, which are A350s that had originally been ordered by Russian airlines but could not be delivered because of sanctions.

Good news for the people of Middlesbrough. UK Docks Marine Services, which offers dry docking and ship repair services using two of the old Smiths Shipyard docks and a berth, has taken a long lease on the remaining two dry docks. These are larger docks—one 383ft by 56.8ft and the other 575ft by 73ft—than the current ones they operate. Apparently, this will allow them to take bigger ships, but even at 575ft (175.25m) long, the biggest dock is too small to take even the shortest and oldest P&O cruise ship, Aurora, which is 270m long—and that is quite a small cruise ship. So, I guess it will be ships like the 140m-long Solong, the small container ship that was in the accident in the North Sea last week.

Back in 2017, South Western Railway won the franchise to operate the Southwestern franchise. One of the first things they did was cancel an order for Class 700 trains, despite several already having been delivered, and place an order for 90 Class 701 trains from Bombardier. The £1 billion order was christened Arterio by SWR and was going to be the best thing since sliced bread. Now, eight years later, only six of these new trains are in service, and the other 84 are sitting in sidings all over the network. There have been many reasons given—mainly faults with the software, but some physical, like the length of the windscreen wiper! Now I hear that the problem is a lack of trained drivers. I do wonder if the company really wants to have these trains in service—they have had years to complete driver training.

I hear that several European nations and Canada are having second thoughts about buying big-ticket American defence items, particularly the F-35 fighter aircraft. Rumours have abounded for some time that the US has a ‘kill switch’ inserted in the plane’s software, which would turn off a lot of the plane’s abilities if the Americans didn’t like what it was being used for. In addition, the supply of spares is run by a central system in America, and third-party nations are discouraged from holding their own spares. So, who would benefit if countries were to look for alternatives? Well, the answer is the manufacturers of the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Rafale, and the Draken.

Santander, the Spanish bank, has announced that it is going to close 95 branches across the country. This is close to 25% of all their UK branches. Like other banks, they claim that fewer people are coming into branches for services but are using online services. But this is all tied down to the banks not wanting to handle cash. It costs them money to move cash around the country and to hold it in branch to pay out. Of course, the government is only too happy to go along with cutting out cash. If every movement of money was electronic, they would be able to increase the tax take, as there would be no more paying your window cleaner, gardener, or cleaner in cash.

The P&O cruise liner Azura is currently undergoing a refit, during which it will be converted to be able to use shore power wherever it is available. This means that when in port, it can shut down its engines and plug into the local electricity network. The biggest ships in the P&O fleet, Iona and Arvia, were built with this ability, but it is only available at a few ports around the world. Southampton has two berths that offer this facility, but the draw on the grid is such that only one can be used at a time. However, Azura rarely visits the UK, being based in Malta in the summer and the Canaries in winter. The Port of Valletta has just installed a shore power outlet, which Azura will now be able to use when it is in port one day every week through the summer, much improving air quality in the city.

Friday

Good morning, happy readers. It’s a bit grey this morning but still mild. In fact, it’s so warm that the radiators are off. I hear there is a huge problem at Heathrow Airport this morning. A fire at a substation at Hayes, near the airport, has caused a power cut at the airport and in the surrounding area. So, something like 1,350 flights carrying nearly 250,000 people have just been cancelled. It makes me wonder why a place as big as Heathrow doesn’t have any backup plan to either generate its own power or have a duplicate link to the National Grid. As I dictate this at 07:30 in the morning, it seems that no one in the government is awake and fronting up to the media.

The cost of a new passport is to go up for the third time in two years. The government has signed off on an increase for all passport applications from the 10th of April. The cheapest way to get a new 10-year passport is online, where the current price will go up from £88.50 to £94.50, but if you can’t use a computer and need to send in a postal application, it will go up from £100 to £107. However, if you need a new passport urgently, you can use the ‘Premium’ one-day service, and that is going up from £207.50 to £222. I bet my scribe is pleased he got a new 10-year passport after his Christmas cruise.

Two sets of documents have been released in the United States. Firstly, as promised by the Don, the JFK files have been released but have been so heavily redacted that they are totally unreadable and pointless. The second documents relate to the Ginger One’s American visa application and, once again, were rendered useless by redactions. The document looked more like a barcode on a pouch of Felix Chicken.

China’s new aircraft carrier has been spotted in satellite photos, but it is not what you would expect—it is actually a converted oil tanker. The deck is rather strange as it doesn’t run the length of the ship because the rear has the accommodation and wheelhouse blocking it. Instead, an angled section has been welded onto the port side, with a ski-jump ramp at the front. But the oddest thing is that China doesn’t have a single plane designed to operate from an aircraft carrier. So, what is going to fly from that deck? Probably helicopters — China has plenty of them — and drones, which could use the ski-jump to get into the air. The ship also has an arrester wire fitted, but that is of no use to a helicopter. So, the best guess is that the ship is actually a helicopter and drone carrier and not an aircraft carrier—you really need some specialist planes for that.

I read that when the Birmingham Airport station on HS2 opens, they say you will be able to get from Euston to Birmingham’s new airport in just 40 minutes—just eight minutes longer than it takes to get from central London to Heathrow. I wonder how many people will choose to fly from a much less busy Birmingham rather than a manic Heathrow.

It’s bad news for all you Spoons food lovers. They have announced that from 14th May, they will stop selling three meat dishes—steak, gammon, and mixed grill. This will mean the end of the popular Tuesday Steak Club, where you can get a deal on a steak with either a soft drink or, for a bit more, an alcoholic drink. Spoons say they will be adding three new burgers to their menu: The Big Smoke, Buffalo Burger, and Cheese Meltdown. I guess there is more profit to be made from selling burgers.

The two American astronauts who were stuck on the International Space Station when their Boeing space capsule was declared not fit to bring them back to Earth finally made it back yesterday. They, along with two other astronauts, splashed down in the Pacific in a SpaceX rescue capsule. But what I enjoyed was that a pod of dolphins quickly arrived on the scene to see what was happening, swimming round and round the capsule, leaping out of the water in fun. I wonder what they thought was going on. If Douglas Adams is to be believed, I suspect they thought a spacecraft had arrived to take them away before Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Did they have a note with them that said, “Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish”?

Saturday

Good morning, everyone. It’s grey again but still warm and dry. I hear the OBR are expected to halve their predictions for growth this year from a pretty poor 2% to a terrible 1%. Robbers Reeves has dug herself in with so many self-imposed rules and is going to have to make a lot of cuts as she can’t or won’t back down on her disastrous autumn budget. I would fix things very quickly: stop the Net Zero rubbish, open the North Sea oil and gas fields, frack for gas, no subsidies of any kind for wind and solar, build Rolls-Royce SMRs immediately, and lock up Mad Red Ed Millipede in the Tower.

The best story I heard today is about the school caretaker down in Bognor Regis who claimed he was nuts. So, now he has died, he is to be buried in a coffin that is themed to look like a Snickers bar. But he was also a Chelsea supporter, so there is also a Chelsea badge on the coffin. Hearing this got me thinking about archaeologists finding his coffin in 1,000 years and wondering what was going on. I can’t see anyone here in Downing Street bothering to give me a fancy funeral and a burial in the pets’ cemetery. No, I suspect that it will be a black plastic bag and a hole at the bottom of the garden where I usually have a poo.

The French government has decided to issue a 20-page booklet to every household telling them how to survive a nuclear attack, an industrial disaster, or an invasion. Apparently, there are 63 tips on how to survive, including having a ‘survival kit’ containing six litres of water, canned food, batteries, a torch, and basic medical supplies such as paracetamol and bandages. I’m pretty sure that paracetamol won’t do a lot of good in the event of a nuclear attack, nor will the other tip of ‘lock your front door’. I really can’t think what good that would do. I think I could sum up what the French would do if invaded—it is the same as in WW2: retreat, surrender, and collaborate.

The EU has told us that they will not buy weapons funded by the EU Defence Fund from the UK as we are not members of the EU. Well, this is a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face and saying you will only ever buy EU equipment, even if the UK-manufactured stuff is better, cheaper, available sooner, or not made in the EU. But if—and with the EU there always is an if—we let them have more of our fish, they will think about letting us bid. Well, I think that we should tell them that we might think about letting them have a bit more fish if they agree to take back illegal immigrants. A haddock for a Hindu, a mackerel for a Muslim, a shark for a Sudanese, and a pollack for a Pakistani. Sounds like a good deal to me.

The Points Guy, a holiday and cruise blogger, has just issued a tip to all travellers: always put a roll of duct tape in your bag! Well, I’m sure you would never think of leaving home without a roll of duct tape — it’s so handy. The Points Guy says it has several uses, like repairing busted cases, sticking labels on the outside of the case, and getting lint off clothes. I don’t think I could be bothered. I’d just buy a new suitcase if it got damaged and leave the old one in my room or cabin for someone else to dispose of.

In India, they are seeing a 20% increase in long-distance travel in the current financial year that ends on 31st March. This growth is continuing to expand, which explains why Air India added another 10 to its order for Airbus A350s. But it doesn’t stop there. Apparently, the numbers show that Air India is going to need even more widebody aircraft than the 100 × A350s, 20 × Boeing 787s, and 10 × Boeing 777s on order. The word on the street is that Air India is looking at adding up to 50 more widebody aircraft to its orders and is talking to both Airbus and Boeing, with an order likely to be announced at June’s Paris Air Show. With the B777X still not certified, Airbus must be favoured for the majority of the order.

When is a refrigerator not a refrigerator? The answer is apparently when it is in your cabin on some cruise lines. I hear that some cruise lines put what is called a thermoelectric cooler in their cabins because they are cheaper to run than traditional compressor-driven mini-fridges. The problem with them is that they can only get temperatures down by 30°F lower than the temperature in the cabin. This is probably good enough for cold drinks or to stop those bars of chocolate melting but not cold enough for some medicines that are supposed to be kept in a fridge at 3 or 4°C. If you are one of those people who has to keep medicine cold, then you should talk to your cruise operator when booking, and they can tell you if they have fridges or thermoelectric coolers in their cabins. Many of the operators can put a proper refrigerator in your cabin for the duration of your cruise if you give them sufficient notice.

I’m done, and it’s very pleasant out there in Downing Street, so I’m off to my favourite windowsill for a snooze. I have enjoyed the comfy chair in the Thatcher Room these last couple of weeks. Chat to you all next week!
 

© WorthingGooner 2025