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

Monday

Good morning, folks, and I’m ready to go into another week of my waffle. It’s been a lovely sunny weekend and even quite warm in the sun, but it was very frosty this morning. I was hanging around yesterday waiting for all those bigwigs to turn up at Number 10 until I learned there were so many of them, and their hangers-on were coming, that the whole thing had been shifted to Lancaster House. Still, a few people came here for private meetings, including that little bloke from Ukraine.

Just 592 illegal immigrants (I refuse to call them irregular) crossed the Channel on 11 small boats yesterday. It looks to me that the ‘smuggling guns’, as Legohead called them, are piling more and more people onto the small boats rather than smashing them. Sunday’s arrivals averaged over 50 a boat; that is going up all the time. Legohead isn’t making things any better, as he promised to do. In fact, things seem to be getting worse.

For my first story this week, I turn to the Republic of Ireland, where word has crept out that they are thinking of creating an Air Force. They used to have a few French second-string fighter aircraft, but they were retired years ago, leaving a few training turboprops. Instead, we have been protecting them using the RAF. They don’t even have a primary air defence radar and once again rely on us when these Russian Tupolev aircraft come probing. The first step was to order a £300 million radar system, which is still a couple of years away from being up and running. Now thoughts have turned to jet fighter aircraft and apparently they have a £2.5 billion war chest to buy them. They would like a squadron (12 planes) to base at Shannon, where there is an existing long runway. But realistically, what planes could they buy for that amount? The Eurofighter Typhoon costs about £73 million each and £25,000 per hour to fly, a Rafale is even more expensive at over £100 million each, and that is without pilots, mechanics, support structure, buildings and training. I wonder if £2.5 billion is enough.

While talking about new aircraft, I hear a tale that the 6th Generation Tempest that we are developing with Italy and Japan could be made partly from recycled bits of retired Tornado jets. It seems an experiment has been going on to grind down rare titanium parts to a powder that is used as the feedstock to 3D print new parts, particularly things like jet engine turbine blades. I hear that these blades are actually better and cheaper than forged ones. They have also been tested in jet engines and have proved themselves to meet every criterion. With titanium both rare and expensive, this isn’t such a mad idea as it sounds. Oh, by the way, this method also works for steel and aluminium.

Yesterday, Legohead announced a deal with Ukraine with them buying £1.3 billion worth of air defence missiles. The order is for 5,000 lightweight multirole missiles (LMM), which will be supplied along with RapidRanger launch systems, both to be built at the Thales factory in Belfast, which is trebling production. Firstly, I wondered where the money was coming from, but I see we are loaning money to them so they can buy the weapons. Secondly, I keep reading that we are short of anti-aircraft missiles in our armed forces; why have we geared up Thales to build LMMs for us?

While I am dictating this, lunchtime on Monday, I see that the share prices in the major supplier to the Ministry of Defence and consequently the British forces have leapt this morning. BAE is up 14%, Babcock is up 11%, and Rolls Royce is up 7%. Anyone who already owned these shares must be rubbing their hands together, and I wish them well.

I read that the international committee that writes the rules that govern football matches has announced a new goalkeeping rule that will be implemented next season. At the moment, if a goalkeeper holds on to the ball for more than six seconds, he is committing an offence and is supposed to be punished with an indirect free kick, but I can’t ever remember seeing this happen. Next season, the law will say that if the goalkeeper holds the ball for more than eight seconds, he will be committing an offence, and the punishment will be the award of a corner. I wonder who will go into the record books as the first goalkeeper to be punished in this way.

Tuesday

Good morning, everyone, just like yesterday, it is lovely and sunny but frosty again. I have been out once, but I shan’t be bothering to go again until the frost has melted. It’s Shrove Tuesday today, otherwise known as Pancake Day. I strongly doubt anyone will make me one, but I don’t really mind as I am not terribly keen on them. Mind you, if somebody were to present me with one with chocolate spread and cream on it, I would lick it clean and leave the pancake. However, I definitely wouldn’t do that if it had the traditional lemon juice and caster sugar on it. Yuk!

It was announced yesterday that we are paying £180,000 an hour to wind farm owners to not generate electricity as we can’t transmit it. That’s £4,320,000 a day, or £30,240,000 a week, or £1,576,800,000 a year. This is carbon net-zero madness and why we have the most expensive electricity in the world. The sooner we get rid of Red Ed Miliband and his crazy ideas, the better. One other little point: this is being paid for by you on your electricity bill, as what is called ‘constraint payments’. There are roughly 30 million homes in the U.K., so that is £52.56 per home we are throwing away.

In Newbury, the home of the writer of Paddington Bear, a statue was unveiled last October to celebrate the little bear. The bear was sitting on a public bench, wearing his trademark duffel coat and floppy hat, eating a marmalade sandwich. Over the weekend, the statue was smashed off the bench (it was bolted down) and stolen. Unusually, the police responded very quickly, and two men have been arrested and the smashed statue recovered. I don’t like bears, but this was pure vandalism.

I have been reading about one of Princess Cruises’ latest ships, Sun Princess, and how Princess Cruises claims it is the greenest cruise ship at sea. The Sun Princess produces all its own water from seawater using reverse osmosis. It creates heat and electricity by incinerating all the rubbish it can. But it is the removal of the ship’s buffet that is the most surprising thing onboard. Apparently, there are 30 places to eat on the ship and you are served in every single one, because the people who know say it saves waste. Ships’ buffets throw out a lot of uneaten food daily because it has been on display. But I read that you can ask for just what you want in a restaurant and have extra portions if you ask. It’s double Felix chicken for me with a side of cat treats.

What are the most stolen articles on cruise ships? I would have guessed towels, robes, smellies from the bathroom, or those little writing pads and biros on the desk. But I would have been wrong; it is actually coat hangers. On the newer ships, they have taken to installing what I call hotel-type coat hangers. They are those ones where half the hanger is fixed on a bar in the wardrobe while the other half can be removed. This renders stealing the detachable bit pointless. Mind you, it is always possible to ask the cabin steward for extra hangers; they keep a stock of wire ones which rattle against each other if it’s a bit rough.

In June and July of this year, the second Football Club World Cup is to take place in the United States. The competition is initially played in groups of four, with 32 top club sides from around the world taking part. With 3 British clubs taking part, it was expected there would be a lot of interest from TV for the British broadcasting rights. The winner was DZAN, a channel that has been trying to get into British sports broadcasting for some time. But at the moment, it mainly carries boxing and the Women’s Champions League on subscription on the internet. They secured the rights with a bid of $1 billion. In contrast, ITV is understood to have entered a speculative bid of $0. With a limited number of subscribers, DZAN are expected to look for a terrestrial partner to bring in some money by sharing the rights, so maybe ITV will get to show some matches.

In Sunderland, a company called Wastefront has just given the French engineering giant Technip the order to construct a plant that will recycle used car and truck tyres. The plant will be built in four modules and will eventually process 73,000 tonnes of worn-out tyres a year. Among other things, the plant will produce 24,000 tonnes of recovered carbon black and 32,000 tonnes of recovered liquids, which will include liquid fuels. The carbon black is used as a dye and can go back into the production of tyres and printing ink. The liquids can be further refined into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The government has issued a mandate that by 2030, aviation fuel will have to contain 10% SAF. The 32,000 tonnes of liquids produced by the plant will go to a central processing plant, together with the output from 3 similar plants to be constructed around the country, where the resulting 128,000 tonnes will produce approximately 90,000 tonnes of SAF a year. Who knew there were so many old car tyres in the U.K.?

Wednesday

Hi folks, it’s another lovely morning here in London. I hear that Donald made the longest speech ever to Congress yesterday, in which he announced that he had received a letter from Zelensky, in which he said thank you for American help. I understand that despite the things JD said, Zelensky was already on the record of saying ‘thank you’ 94 times, so that makes 95 times.

This morning, I start by bringing you the story of Ionit Rova, 20, from Harrow in London. He has just been jailed for 10 weeks for stealing from supermarkets. But for some reason, all he seems to have stolen was chocolate. He targeted nine Tesco stores and one Aldi store across multiple counties, including Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Norfolk, Surrey and Rutland. His first theft, worth £800, was from Tesco in Daventry, then it went on and on until he had taken over £5,000 of chocolate. The reports don’t say if he ate the chocolate.

When you next get on a train, you choose from travelling First Class or Standard Class, so that leads you to think that Standard Class is Second Class, but it isn’t. The railways actually removed Second Class over 100 years ago, originally leaving just First and Third Class carriages. Over the years, Third Class was renamed Standard Class. The earliest railways had only 1st and 2nd classes, but to gain more passengers, open carriages with benches were introduced at a lower fare. Parliament eventually legislated about the comfort and safety in Third Class and controlled fares. People started moving from Second Class to Third Class to save money, and the railway operators cut the underused Second Class. So, if when commuting in Standard Class you feel like a third-class citizen, it is because you are.

I hear the piling work on Tata’s EV battery factory down in Somerset has been halted by Sir Robert McAlpine, the contractor. Apparently, 16,800 piles have already been driven for the first build, but a redesign happened as the manufacturing process for the batteries has moved on, and the building needed can be shortened by about 100 metres, saving a lot of money. However, the redesign has put the project completion back to 2007. The steelwork makers, Severfield, were due to deliver the first steel in January, but it has been put back to the summer, resulting in them issuing a profit warning.

Australia has confirmed that it is shipping 49 Abrams A1M1 tanks to Ukraine. These tanks have been withdrawn from Australian service but are supposed to be in usable condition. The A1M1 is probably the least useful of the tanks that have been transferred from the West to Ukraine. Many of the models were initially damaged or destroyed. However, I understand that Ukraine has been upgrading their existing tanks as it repaired them, adding, among other things, cope cages and reactive armour. The word is that the upgraded tanks are performing much better. I bet these tanks will all be upgraded before they arrive on the front line.

When Arsenal was knocked out of the FA Carabao Cup, their manager, Mikel Arteta, complained about the ball used in the competition not being up to the same standard as those used in the Premier League and European competitions. He was accused of moaning because his team lost. At the weekend, Manchester City played against Plymouth Argyle in the FA Cup and won 3-1, but after the match, their manager, Pep Guardiola, complained about the Mitre ball used not being of the same standard as the ball used in the Premier League. The FA were quick to defend the ball, saying it was the same as the one used in its Carabao Cup, and all its competitions, which perhaps explains the complaints.

Some years ago, Worthing Council joined with neighbouring Adur Council to save money by operating joint services wherever possible. They got together to jointly run things like elections, computer systems, and rubbish collections. Now I hear that the Joint Strategic Committee has recommended a move to electric dust carts. The existing diesel fleet is supposedly responsible for 45% of the council’s CO2 output. In a tiny bit of realism, the Committee has recommended replacing only those trucks that need replacing and monitoring how they perform. It looks like just one of the joint fleet of 133 vehicles will be replaced this year. I hope they get on better than Brighton and Hove, where they have suffered numerous breakdowns of the electric fleet and arson attacks on at least four dust carts.

Thursday

Good morning everyone. It was getting misty when I retired to my cat basket last night, so I expected it to be a foggy morning in London Town. My, was I wrong! It was absolutely beautiful when I woke up this morning, clear blue sky and no frost; even the daffodils are out. It feels like spring is in the air.

Cruise lines try to cover themselves in the contracts they sign with passengers, in order to limit their liability should anything go wrong. This is particularly useful when a cruise ship hits bad weather and must miss a port. They usually rely on the passengers taking out travel insurance, something that is very common in the U.K. and Europe, but not in the US. But sometimes, the weather is just so bad that passengers are confined to their cabins and ship’s services are completely closed down. One such case was the P&O Australia Pacific Aria. The Carnival group ship left Brisbane and sailed into a Category 5 cyclone, resulting in rough seas, on-board closures, and missed ports of call. Passengers on board got together and sued Carnival for $2.4 million. Carnival must have thought they were going to lose, so they have settled out of court and paid the group and its court costs. The 713 on board will now get around $1,750 each.

One of Britain’s biggest and oldest finance firms has just renamed itself Aberdeen Group. The 200-year-old company renamed itself from Standard Life Aberdeen to Abrdn back in 2001 and has been constantly criticised for its awful woke English in removing all the vowels in its name. I was watching Only Connect on the TV on Monday night, and they have a missing vowel round—Abrdn would have been well placed there.

A bit of an odd story reaches me from the Republic of Ireland, where Fingal County Council has refused the operator of Dublin Airport permission to demolish the spiral ramps that used to serve the Terminal 1 car park. However, the car park is being remodelled, and the ramps are no longer required. The Dublin Airport Authority say the demolition is essential for the rebuilding of the car park. On the other side, the council says that the application has failed to show an appropriate rationale or justification for the demolition of the spiral ramps, which the council says are of ‘architectural interest’. It sounds like typical Irish rubbish.

You might wonder why you never see produced US pork, beef, or turkey in the butchery department of your local supermarket. Well, the answer is really simple: the US FDA allows farmers to add ractopamine to their feed, and it is banned in the U.K. and 161 other countries around the world. In fact, there are less than 200 countries in the world, so the vast majority of the world bans the substance. Why is it allowed in the USA? It’s that rule that it must be shown to do harm before it can be banned, and as it makes animals put on muscle, it is not in the US food industry’s interest to ban it. In the U.K., the drug is banned because it can get into the meat and consequently anyone who consumes it. I hear that ractopamine causes lameness, shortness of breath, and even death.

I mentioned earlier yesterday that Ukraine was getting 49 tanks from Australia. Now I hear that Poland is gifting 96 PT91 tanks to Ukraine. The PT91 is a Polish-made version of the Russian T72, which is equipped with explosive reactive armour and several other enhancements. Poland has several thousand PT91 and T72 tanks, which are being replaced in the Polish inventory by a mixture of American Abrams and South Korean K2 Black Panther tanks. The Poles have over 1,000 K2s on order, and the PT91s going to Ukraine have already been replaced by K2s. I wonder if Ukraine is in line for all the replaced PT91s.

I hear that the BBC is poised to announce the next series of MasterChef, but without Gregg Wallace. The restaurant critic Grace Dent stood in for Wallace in the recent recordings of the last series of Celebrity MasterChef, but I hear that she will not be hosting the next series. That honour falls to Matt Tebbutt, the popular host of Saturday Kitchen, who will be co-hosting with Aussie John Torode.

Friday

Hello my happy readers, another sunny morning, but today there’s a bit of high cloud. So, the recommended change in the ‘sentencing guidelines’ originated in a report written by that well-known defender of all things Black, the Tottenham Turnip. I can now completely understand how the new racist rules came about being proposed, but surely someone on the committee realised that what was being proposed was racist, as it treats white and black people differently and is therefore quite likely to be illegal.

Down in Brighton, I hear that the Liebore Council has decided to spend £4 million restoring 80 grade 2 listed lampposts on the seafront, some of which are little more than stumps. The cast-iron posts have all been carefully logged before removal so that after restoration, they can be returned to the same spot. The lampposts are to be taken to a specialist cast-iron welder who will strip all the old lead paint off them and carefully restore them to their original state. Although that is not quite true, as the corroded posts are to be fitted with new lanterns with LED bulbs. Apparently, the new bulbs will match the colour and temperature of the original lights. The project is expected to take several years to complete. I wonder if it will still be a Liebore council when the project is finished.

A report says that there are 1,000,000 people in the U.K. who don’t speak any English. I really find it hard to believe that people live here for any length of time and don’t learn the language of the nation. How much is it costing to translate official letters into foreign languages, to have translators at courts, or to have bilingual notices? It makes sense to have bilingual stuff at airports and seaports where there are a lot of foreign visitors, but not for letters from HMRC. If you are working and paying tax or appearing in court, you should provide your own translation as happens in many other countries.

A bit more about the plans for the Type 83 Destroyer has emerged, and it seems it is to be an Air Dominance System and will replace the six current Type 45 Destroyers. Whether we do it on a one-for-one basis is unknown, but I would say that is the minimum we need to have, as it is probably too few already. The design specification is being refined from a wish list to what is possible and affordable, but it is to be hoped that it will be equipped with plenty of Vertical Launch tubes and not a limited number like the Type 31 Frigates. The Type 83 is likely to be also armed with laser weapons and railguns. It all sounds expensive; I wonder if Robber Reeves can find the money down the back of the sofa.

The long-standing free satellite sports broadcaster Eurosport has disappeared from screens this week. The channel was owned by Discovery/Warner Brothers, and the sport that Eurosport had contracts for has moved to other channels that are owned and operated by Discovery. In the U.K., the sport has not disappeared as it will be on Discovery+ and TNT Sport (which was BT Sport). The problem is that both these outlets provide subscription channels, and in the case of TNT Sport, it is not exactly cheap. So, the likes of cycling will now be behind a paywall. Admittedly, a subscription to Discovery+ is included with some Sky subscriptions, so something will appear to be free to some people, but it’s not really.

The latest numbers for illegal immigrants crossing the channel in small boats are up by 8% so far this calendar year to over 2,200, with 1,168 coming in March alone. Legohead is not saying much, instead talking about sending people home with bodged-up numbers. But one thing is certain, he is not smashing the gangs as he promised.

I have just heard the story about a theatre in Paris that has gone bankrupt because it invited 200 homeless people to a conference on homelessness. They gave the homeless, who were mainly illegal immigrants from Africa, free tickets for the day, but they refused to leave at the end of the day and started living there. The left-wing theatre has now lost hundreds of thousands of euros because it has not been able to put on any performances for months and has now declared itself bankrupt. You couldn’t make the story up; it’s so crazy.

Saturday

Good morning everyone, it’s nice and sunny this morning, which is exactly the opposite of the forecast. Only a couple of days ago, it was going to be very wet today. I don’t know who tells more lies, the weather forecaster on the TV or Legohead.

Now, here is a strange bit of news I heard this morning. Paolo Zampolli, the US special envoy to Italy and someone who is very close to Donald, has been talking to the Italians about the US joining with Italy, the U.K., and Japan in the GCAP 6th Generation Jet Fighter (or Typhoon as it is better known in the U.K.). Given that I recently heard that the equivalent American project, NGAD, has problems with development already overrunning on development costs and a projected unit cost of $250 million. The word I hear is that the Typhoon already looks to be a better and cheaper prospect than the American offering. In the past, the USA has been very reluctant to share the technology of its own fighters with others, so if we did go all in with the Yanks, there are going to be some very interesting contract discussions.

The General Cargo ship H&S Wisdom ran aground in the Humber Estuary on Sunday. Apparently, it missed the mainstream and has ended up stuck on a mud bank off the East Yorkshire town of Brough. So far, three failed attempts have been made to drag it off, but the water has not been deep enough, even at high tide. The problem now is that the level of tides is falling, and it’s not until early next month that we will see the spring tides. I suspect the H&S Wisdom is going to be stuck in the mud for quite a while.

A Nigerian criminal has come up with a new reason for not being sent back to Nigeria now he is out of prison. Apparently, he is possessed, or so he told the immigration tribunal. He says that because he hears several voices in his head, he would be discriminated against back in Nigeria. Well, if he really is hearing voices, then maybe he should be locked up in an asylum for treatment. I wonder how come he wasn’t under treatment in prison.

Three Bulgarians were found guilty at the Old Bailey yesterday of spying for Russia. They have joined three others who have already pleaded guilty. It seems they were being run by a spymaster in Germany who is now on the run and is believed to have disappeared to Russia. I find a couple of things interesting here. The Russians seem to have been using Bulgarians to spy for them because we cleaned out the last actual Russian, and they communicated via WhatsApp and Telegram messages. They also didn’t ever delete the messages from their phones, helping the police tie together all the operations they had been involved in. That is a bit amateur.

Boeing has lots of orders for its 787s, but over the past few years, it has been failing to deliver them to customers. The reasons are numerous: problems with engines, problems with manufacturing, Covid, and limits placed on them by the FAA. But now, my favourite problem has emerged: they have problems with the seats. Not the cheap ones most of you are used to in Economy, but the posh ones in First Class. Of course, the seats are a bought-in item, specified by clients who are buying the aircraft. Customers have been persuaded by the specialist manufacturers to specify their latest fancy designs, which seem to be little cubicles with seats that change into flat beds at the flip of a switch. The problem is all the fancy frills installed need to be certified by the FAA before they can be installed, and manufacturers are struggling to get the fancy cubicles certified.

On Thursday night, Friday morning, I understand that Ukraine used the French Dassault Mirage 2000 in combat for the first time. The Mirages arrived in the Ukraine Air Force about a month ago after pilots finished their training on the type. The plane was used not to attack Russian aircraft but in defence against the 261 cruise missiles of various types that Russia launched, mainly at what were described as ‘Energy Related’ targets. I have yet to hear how successful the Mirage was, but I’m sure we will hear.

I’m done again for the week. It’s quiet in No. 10 today, and there is not a cloud in the sky. It’s quite warm in the sun, so I’m going to chance the windowsill this afternoon. Chat to you all next week!
 

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