Larry’s Diary, Week Two Hundred And Eighty

Monday

Good morning on this beautiful Monday morning. When I went for my pre-breakfast poo it was wonderfully sunny and warm. For a change, I got back before my feeder arrived and, after saying hello to me, she opened a pouch of my favourite Chicken Felix. I have a feeling this is going to be a good week.

Today is General Election day in Canada and, until the weekend, the Canadian Liberals were in the lead in the polls. When the runt of a PM resigned a month or so ago, the right-of-centre opposition Conservatives were 20 points in the lead, but they recovered under the new PM Mark Carney and were expected to win until this weekend’s poll that puts the Conservatives back in the lead. It looks like it’s going to be a close-run thing.

An excellent March for Airbus. They delivered 71 aircraft, which is about double the total for January and February combined. But they also took in orders for 211 planes. Interestingly, over 100 of these orders are for unannounced customers. I wonder if this is one or more of the big leasing companies and feel they have a competitive advantage by not revealing their name, but it could be a big airline who, in the past, have been a loyal Boeing customer. I’m sure it will all come out soon.

I hear that yesterday another 55,000 tonnes of coking coal was landed at the Immingham bulk terminal and will now be sent to the Scunthorpe steelworks by train. This, with the earlier delivery, is said to be enough coal to keep the steelworks’ blast furnaces going for several months. Of course, the two blast furnaces also need iron ore, and I hear that 66,000 tonnes of iron ore pellets and 27,000 tonnes of iron ore fines are due to arrive from Sweden early next week. With raw materials secured, British Steel has stopped its consultation on making 2,500 workers redundant.

Grand Central Trains have applied to the Office of Rail Regulation to run an open access service between Newcastle and Brighton. This would need a train capable of running on power from third rail, overhead and diesel, as the route specified is Brighton to Redhill to Reading, then Oxford, Birmingham, Derby, Doncaster and then up the East Coast Main Line. Some years ago, there used to be a service that went from Brighton to Glasgow, but it went via Clapham Junction and Kensington Olympia and onto the West Coast Main Line via Birmingham and Manchester. I would have thought this a quicker route to get to Birmingham and avoid reversing the train at Redhill.

Apparently, many of the big defence contractors have put out a warning to their employees who drive Chinese electric vehicles not to charge their phones in their EVs. It seems that Chinese EVs are capable of searching a phone that is connected to it for charging, revealing secrets and sending them to the makers over its vehicle monitoring network. As all Chinese companies have a legal requirement to report back to their government, this is a problem. If Chinese EVs spy on people, why do we allow them to be on sale in the U.K.?

A big problem in Spain and Portugal this morning, where there has been a huge power cut affecting vast areas of the countries, including both Madrid and Lisbon. In Madrid, there was traffic chaos as all the traffic lights failed and the metro stopped. Apparently, there are no trains and even Madrid Airport is closed. Even parts of France seem to have had problems but have managed to recover. No word from the Spanish grid operator as to what has caused the problem, but I hear a whisper from Portugal where a cyberattack has been mentioned. There might be more for me to report tomorrow.

Tuesday

Good morning everyone, it is even warmer this morning and is quite lovely out in the sun. This morning the BBC is telling me that Mark Carney’s Liberal Party has won the Canadian General Election. Well, I understand that is not quite the full story. The count is still going on and the Liberals are leading when you add up declared seats and those they are leading the count in. But they are not leading or winning in enough seats to form a majority government, and they will need to form a coalition with someone who can get them over the line. The only likely ones that are predicted to have enough seats are the NDP or the Bloc Québécois. This is one to keep an eye on.

In a desperate attempt to stop people voting for Reform, Legohead has promised that after the local elections he will look at the number of asylum seekers in the country. Now, if he was serious about stopping these people, he would be doing this today, not next week. I don’t trust him an inch. After the local elections, if people have voted for him, he has no reason to do so. Now he has a reputation for lying to people and, before the General Election last year, he made promises about supporting WASPI women, not raising taxes, not cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance, cutting energy bills by £350, wouldn’t tax farmers, and didn’t keep a single one, so I bet he won’t keep this promise.

It seems an Iranian illegal immigrant has won an appeal to stay in this country and not be returned to Iran because, when he lived there, he made his living as a sex toy smuggler. In Iran, sex toys are banned, and he would be treated unduly harshly, perhaps with one of his own whips and furry handcuffs. How can judges be so stupid as to believe this tosh? Are we to become a country filled with paedophiles, sex toy smugglers, Albanian chicken nugget haters and people who can’t eat the spicy food in the Caribbean?

I hear the Labour leader of Thurrock Council has quit. The council is only £900 million in debt after investing £1.5 billion in a solar farm and has borrowed £74 million to meet this year’s budget. John Kent has stood down as a new mayor for Greater Essex is due to be elected and will be taking over many of the Thurrock Council major decisions. Is this a case of rats deserting a sinking ship?

Do you remember the plane crash in Washington back in January when the female pilot of a military Blackhawk helicopter flew it into a plane on its final approach to Washington’s Reagan Airport, killing 67 people including herself? It has emerged that she was a junior officer and was on a night flying exercise with a senior pilot in the main seat. She was flying too high and on a collision course, but she ignored repeated orders from the senior officer in the right-hand seat to reduce height and change course. It makes me wonder if she was committing suicide or just grossly incompetent.

I read that the Republic of Ireland has placed an order with the US for 44 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 30 launchers. A few things come to mind. Who does the Republic think it is going to use the missiles on? They are one of the only countries in Europe that no one is likely to invade using tanks, they only have a land border and that is with the UK province of Northern Ireland. I suspect that if we decide to roll armoured vehicles across the border we would be in Dublin before their defence force was out of bed.

Last week Jeremy Whine had his bike stolen, much to many people’s delight. But if you think that is good news, then here is better news: he has decided to stop putting his cycling videos on the internet. It seems he has finally got fed up with being abused by motorists. Whine can’t see that he ever does anything wrong, it is always the fault of others and in particular car and lorry drivers. Admittedly, there are some rotten drivers on the road, but there are also some damn awful cyclists.

Wednesday

Hi folks, it’s yet another beautiful morning with not a cloud in the sky, this is my kind of weather. I bumped into Legohead earlier and my, is he grumpy. He was moaning to a subordinate about tomorrow’s elections and asking, ‘Why aren’t people supporting us? Just look at all the things we are doing for them.’ I had to walk away before he saw me smirking.

I hear of an embarrassing incident on board the US Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, Harry S. Truman, in the Red Sea on Monday. An aircraft tractor was manoeuvring a F/A-18 Super Hornet on the deck when somehow the crew lost control of the tug, and both the tug and the aircraft went over the side and were lost in the ocean. I understand the tractor crew and other ground crew leapt clear and only one minor injury was suffered. Mind you, if the US Navy is anything like the Royal Navy, there will be a court of inquiry and some poor sod is going to get the blame.

So far I have heard two different reasons why the electricity grid failed in Spain, Portugal and parts of the south of France near the Spanish border. The first reason was that, due to some unusual weather phenomenon, a section of grid in Spain became unstable and shut itself down, causing a cascade of grid lines and power stations all over the peninsula crashing. The second story I heard is that the grid operating company got into problems balancing the load between the intermittent supply from wind turbines and solar panels with the output of generating stations and, once again, the whole network of grid and generating plant suffered a cascading failure. I tend to favour the second story as more plausible, but then I am only a cat with a small brain, so what do I know? But if the problem is basically down to the problems being forced on the Iberian grid by the Climate Change lobby, I hope Red Ed Millipede is taking note.

The Irish rap group Kneecap has apologised to the family of MPs Sir David Amess and Jo Cox over calling for the killing of MPs, saying it was taken out of context. This isn’t the first time Kneecap have said something outrageous, like ‘the only good Tory is a dead Tory’ or supporting Hamas. Kneecap has a lucrative booking to appear at Glastonbury this summer and only apologised when there was a call for them to lose the gig. I hear that a police enquiry is on the way.

The number of illegal immigrants crossing the Channel in small boats has now exceeded 10,000 for the calendar year, the earliest this has ever occurred. Last year this didn’t happen for another month and is double the number of two years ago. But with good weather forecast for the next fortnight, I hate to think how many more are likely to come over in a month. But don’t worry, Mrs Balls has announced that in the future we will not accept any immigrants that are sex offenders. Just how we are supposed to know who is and who isn’t a sex offender is beyond me, as all the boat people dump their passports in the Channel so we don’t know who they are.

KLM has come up with a new rule for people transiting through Schiphol Airport by demanding that they obey the same rules as entering the Schengen zone: that your passport must not be more than ten years old, and you must have three months left on it when you leave. It also demands an EU entry visa for a list of countries including Turkey and Morocco. These rules do not apply if you are changing flights at Frankfurt, Paris or London, so I can see Amsterdam losing passengers.

The FA Cup Final by tradition is the last football match of the domestic season, kicking off at 3:00 in the afternoon. For some unknown reason, there has been a lot of talk of this year’s Cup Final kicking off at 17:00 or 17:15. Apparently, ITV have no objections to a later kick-off, but the BBC do because if a game kicking off that late went to extra time and penalties, it would clash with the start of the other big BBC programme of that day, the Eurovision Song Contest. It’s obvious that ITV would be quite happy for the BBC to have a problem, they invariably have a tough time for viewers when in direct competition with the BBC for the Cup Final, and the Eurovision Song Contest is another programme the BBC can rely on to pull in the punters.

Thursday

Hi everyone, it’s another lovely day, with perfect voting weather, so get out there and show Legohead exactly what you think. I don’t think I will stay up late and watch the results, as I think most of them are not likely to be counted until Friday. Cash-strapped councils don’t want to pay people extra to count the votes overnight when it can be done at normal times tomorrow.

Tony B. Liar has come out against the Liebore rush to net zero. He has said it is irrational, just what sensible people already know. Net zero is a huge drain on the economy and when we get there we will not have made any appreciable difference to world emissions. I wonder if this is the first step on the road to getting rid of Mad Red Ed Millipede in the cabinet reshuffle that is certain to come following today’s local elections.

Avanti West Coast has paid a ‘digital artist’ to design and draw a mural wrap for a train showing the company’s diversity. The wrap features everything from an LGBT+ flag to a Muslim in a headscarf. But what is notable is that just about everyone depicted is black and a woman, how diverse is that?

It has been obvious this week that we have been nearing an election from the number of ‘new’ policies the government has announced. Early this week they announced a ridiculous policy of not giving any illegal immigrant who commits a sex offence asylum. We all know that they will only have to appeal on the grounds of being ‘denied a family life’ to stay. Yesterday it was crushing the vehicles of fly-tippers. Well, that bit of legislation has been on the statute book for over five years, having been introduced by the Tories. Liebore are getting desperate.

What is going on with the fast-food chain Subway? Last year the ‘sandwich’ chain reported a loss of $631 million and closed 600 US stores. But they have been closing stores in the USA for years, last year their number of US stores fell to 19,502, the lowest it has been in 20 years. In 2015 they had over 27,000 US outlets, meaning they have lost over 7,000 in a decade. However, they have 37,000 outlets worldwide. Do you have a Subway outlet near you, is it busy?

I see that Babcock International has just completed the lifting into place of the final big block for the second Type 31 frigate, HMS Active. The last block was the rear section of the helicopter flight deck. The pictures show that Active is nearly complete externally and metal has already been cut for the third ship in the class, ready for construction as soon as ship one is rolled out, making space for it.

I hear that Carnival Cruises have banned a group of 24 people from ever sailing with them again after they were brawling in the terminal building in Galveston, Texas. CCTV footage shows people collecting luggage at the end of a cruise and suddenly turning on two people en masse. From the footage, it is impossible to see what started the fight, but it was a pretty nasty incident with many punches being thrown at the two. Fights on US cruise ships seem to be quite common. I suppose it is a good thing that passengers have to pass through a magnetic arch when boarding, or American passengers would be taking guns on board and the incident could have been a lot worse.

Friday

Good morning, happy readers, what a beautiful morning again, sunny and warm. Not only that, but the election results also coming in are almost unbelievable, with Reform smashing the Liebore and Tory gangs in Runcorn and in the Lincolnshire Mayoral Election. When I got back from my constitutional, the Feeder had the TV on, and I was able to see the overnight numbers, with Reform also picking up council seats and the Tories and Liebore losing them. The main counts don’t start until later today and that is going to be worth me going to the office to watch.

The FA has announced a change in its rules, starting next season. From then, trans men will no longer be able to play for women’s teams. This is another result of the Supreme Court ruling men and women being the sexes. Until now, trans men could play in women’s teams if their testosterone was below a fixed level, meaning around a dozen trans were playing in the lower levels of women’s football. Is common sense finally coming to the fore?

Have the wheels started to come off Net Zero? A couple of days ago it was the blackout in Iberia. Then it was B. Liar saying the current policy was never going to work, now the unions have come out against it. Add in the sudden realisation that we are killing the steelmaking industry because of the cost of energy and importing raw materials. One mad step in recent days is banning solar panels made with slave labour (basically anything Chinese) and the say that all new houses will have to have solar panels, adding thousands of pounds to house costs which people can’t afford now. I love the Norwegian minister who just said about us not exploring for more oil, gas or even coking coal, ‘why borrow money when you have gold bars under the bed.’

In the United States, reports say they are beavering away at enhancing the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM). It is currently supplied in the baseline ‘Increment 1’ form and has a range of about 500 km (320 miles). The makers, Lockheed Martin, are working on Increments 2, 3, 4 and 5. Apparently, Increment 2 is a new seeker head that will work on land and sea. Increment 4 is looking at doubling the range to 1,000 km. Increment 5 is looking at even greater range, but it is Increment 4 I find interest. It is said to be looking at making the missile capable of launching both the Raytheon Coyote Drone and the Hatchet mini glide bomb, both would increase the missile’s range and enable it to hit multiple targets at the same time. The PrSM is already an excellent weapon, but this will make it incredible.

The boss of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, has said that Ryanair would consider buying the new Chinese C919 rival for the Boeing 737 Max family and the Airbus A320 family if it was cheap enough. Ryanair currently operates a 100% 737 fleet with many on order, and its Austrian subsidiary, Lauda Air, operates an A320 fleet. But is O’Leary serious or is he playing his usual game of putting pressure on Boeing to get a better deal? I suspect it’s the latter, as he is not happy with the delays Ryanair is suffering on its 737 order. The C919 is only certified to fly in China and has not even applied for certification in Europe or the USA. If an application was made tomorrow, and everything went to plan, it would probably be three years before it was certified.

Interesting report today says 47% of the illegals crossing the Channel in small boats successfully claim asylum. This means that they immediately move out of their 4-star hotel and onto Universal Credit. So, we no longer support them in the hotels; instead, they jump to the head of the queue for housing and social payments. I hear that they are then entitled to bring in their relatives and are costing us £1.1 billion in addition to the £5.5 billion the hotels are costing. This is utter madness.

Saturday

Good morning everyone, it’s still warmish in London but a lot cloudier this morning. I’m delighted that Legohead is not in Number 10 today, as he was getting worse and worse as the day went on yesterday. As the election results came in, his mood got worse and worse. It started with the loss of Runcorn to Reform and got worse the more Liebore councillors that were lost. He didn’t mind the Tories losing councils to Reform, but when in late morning Liebore lost the Cambridge and Peterborough mayor to the Tories, he was livid. But worse was to come when at teatime Liebore Doncaster Council went to Reform, I thought he was going to explode, it was wonderful.

Now the final results are in for the elections, the big winners are clearly Reform, who won a new MP, two mayors, 10 councils and 677 councillors from a start of nothing. The Limp Dumps took control of 3 councils, and the Tories lost every single one of its councils that was up for voting, losing 676 councillors in the process. But Liebore didn’t do too well either, losing 186 councillors and the one council it had up for elections. I wonder what would have happened if Liebore hadn’t postponed the elections in numerous areas.

What were the leaders of the main political parties doing last night? Bad Enoch and Legohead were busy writing op-eds for the Saturday morning papers, telling everyone what went wrong. The irrelevant Ed Davey was missing completely, but Nigel Farage was holding a massive party for Reform members at the Hop Farm in Kent. Farage had been all around the country yesterday, starting at the Runcorn by-election in the early morning and ending in Kent in the evening. I understand there were speeches, appearances by Dame Andrea Jenkyns and Sarah Pochin, music, food, drink and fireworks.

There has still been no official explanation as to what caused this week’s power blackout in Spain, Portugal and small parts of Southern France, but it has been categorically stated that it was not hacking, and the early statements that it was ‘an unusual weather phenomenon’ and human error have also been dismissed. That realistically only leaves a grid imbalance. For a grid to operate effectively, it has to have generators and consumption equal. It can play around a little bit with the power frequency to make this work, but it is much harder to achieve in a grid that, like Iberia’s grid operator Red Eléctrica, gets most of its power from renewables, as they have no latency or ‘spinning reserve’ like the big steam turbines of old. The word I hear is that the grid suffered two system disconnects at the same time and couldn’t match supply and demand, hence the system shut itself down to protect itself. If that proves to be the case, it is all down to having a huge number of renewables on the grid, something that is being pushed into by Red Ed. It can only be a matter of time before the same thing happens in the UK.

I am delighted to report that our ban on fishing for sand eels in British waters is to continue. When we left the EU and got back control of our own fishing waters, we banned fishing for sand eels in our waters for ecological reasons. They are the main food for several seabirds, particularly puffins, and the Dutch were vacuuming up vast quantities to use as pig food. The EU invoked the dispute resolution clause in the agreement we struck when we left the EU, claiming we were causing problems to Dutch fishermen. But the dispute resolution body has ruled we can carry on with the ban. I bet the puffins are happy.

The new Mayor of Lincolnshire put the cat among the pigeons yesterday by suggesting that small boat people should be put into tents, rather than 4-star hotels with full meals, TV rooms, a GP and dentist on site, £45 a week pocket money, free driving lessons, free tickets to football matches and free bus tickets. Most of the woke media thought the suggestion was awful. But this is only what the majority of the population want. I don’t think that the suggestion is for the government to pop down to ‘outdoor living’ and buy a few camping tents, but to erect tented villages similar to refugee camps in the Middle East, and I don’t see the press objecting to them.

Today, services recommence on the Isle of Wight ‘Island Line’ after an eight-month closure of Ryde Pier. The line on the pier was shut while the track and sleepers were replaced. The track on the pier is subject to more exposure to bad weather than track on the land, so it is not surprising that it needed renewal, and I hear that the wooden sleepers have been replaced with a non-wood substitute. But all is not totally back to normal, as the service was originally designed to run at 30-minute intervals in either direction using two-car battery-operated trains. The line originally purchased 5 units, but 2 were damaged by flooding, and the remaining 3 are showing a high wear rate. Consequently, the service will now run every 40 minutes using only one train at a time.

That’s me done again for another week, and what a week. The sun has just come back out, and it’s looking like a nice afternoon. This morning started off nicely, then it clouded up, but now it is beautifully sunny and warm, so I am off to the windowsill for my afternoon snooze. The forecast now says tomorrow is going to be much cooler, so I better make the most of it while I can. Chat to you all next week.
 

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