Larry’s diary, Week Two Hundred And Seventy Nine

Monday

Good morning on this Bank Holiday Monday. It is nice and quiet here in Number Ten with only a small crew on. The girl who was on feeding duty this morning was not very happy to be working today even though she was on double time and a day off in lieu. I fear that Legohead will be back today as Parliament is open again tomorrow. I see he was out campaigning yesterday, but he has not been seen here. One person who will be missing is Robber Reeves who is off to the US to discuss a trade deal. Can you imagine being in talks with her?

The big news this morning is that Pope Francis has pegged it. He was 88 and had only just come out of hospital where he was said to have been suffering from pneumonia. He was seen yesterday but was in a wheelchair when he briefly met JD Vance and didn’t look too good. Now we will have a conclave and a vote by the Catholic bishops. I wonder if the Tottenham Turnip has worked out what the black or white smoke means.

I hear that the ‘Trump Tariffs’ are having an unexpected impact on the cola wars between Coke and Pepsi. Both are being affected adversely by the 25% tariff Trump has placed on aluminium, potentially increasing the price of canned drinks in the US. But Coke has come out a bit better than Pepsi in the battle of the sweeteners. The original versions made in the US no longer use sugar as a sweetener but instead use high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as a cheaper alternative to sugar. Both brands do have a US version made with sugar, so-called ‘Mexican Coke’, imported from Mexico, and ‘Pepsi Soda Shop made with real sugar’. But it is Diet Coke and Coke Zero, Pepsi Max and Diet Pepsi, that are made with artificial sweeteners that have a problem. Not so much Coke as its sweetener is made in Texas and Puerto Rico, but Pepsi, who make theirs in Ireland, where it will be subject to tariffs on import to the US. I bet both Coke and Pepsi are busy lobbying the White House.

Hershey, the biggest chocolate producer in the United States, is another US company suffering from ‘Trump Tariffs’. Of course, it must import all the cocoa that it uses as it is not possible for it to be grown in the US. So now the tariff has added 10% to the price of cocoa, but this is like nothing compared to how much its market price has gone up. In the last decade raw cocoa has gone up from £2,000 a tonne to a peak of £12,000 a tonne last year. In addition, there is said to be a worldwide shortage of 400,000 tonnes. That is why our Easter eggs were more expensive this year.

I hear of a man in Canada who purchased a second-hand Nissan Leaf for C$16,000 and was more than happy with it until last winter when the battery developed a fault. His local dealer investigated and told him the battery was useless and needed to be replaced. So, he asked for a quote and was told in writing C$85,000 without labour. He complained to Nissan, who told him that the dealer had typed in the wrong part number and the real cost was C$11,000 and for goodwill there would be no labour charge, and the battery would come with a 12-month warranty. As the car is now only worth C$10,000 and the original battery had a 7-year warranty, he is wondering if a new battery is worth it. I wonder if an EV is worth it at all.

BAE Systems has announced that following investment of £8.5 million at its shell filling plant at Glascoed, in South Wales, it will be able to expand production by 15 times. But it has also realised that having final production of 155mm shells concentrated at a single factory is not safe in time of war. Consequently, it seems that they will be investing in up to eight additional finishing plants spread around the country.

Bad news today for 1,900 people who were due to go on a 3-day shakedown cruise from Southampton this afternoon. Yesterday afternoon, less than 24 hours before the P&O Aurora was due to sail, P&O emailed all the passengers on the sold-out cruise, telling them that the refit the Aurora was undergoing hadn’t been completed and the cruise was cancelled. P&O told them that they would all be getting a 100% refund plus a 20% Future Cruise Credit for use on a future date. A bit of a disappointment at such short notice, and I wonder how many people were already in Southampton having now wasted money overnighting in a hotel, booking car parking, paying train fares or putting the cat in a cattery. Will P&O be refunding those out-of-pocket expenses?

Tuesday

Good morning everyone, and it’s a lovely morning here in London, beautifully sunny and warm. Legohead popped in last night, but he has gone off to some school this morning to push his breakfast clubs idea. Free breakfast for all kids or so he claims. But they are not really free, someone must pay and it’s the poor old taxpayer again.

A big MRP poll by More in Common out yesterday has Reform as the largest party on 180 seats with both Liebore and the Tories on 165 seats. This would leave Reform 146 seats short of an overall majority. This is an interesting projection and an almighty crash for Liebore with at least 10 of the current Cabinet losing their seats, including The Ginger Growler, Mrs Balls, Red Ed and Nandy Pandy. This MRP type of poll looks at individual seats rather than national voting trends and questioned over 16,000 voters. Personally, can’t see the Reform and the Tories forming a coalition but if this result came to pass, I predict the Tories would sign a Confidence and Supply Agreement, meaning a Reform Government and bye bye to the ECHR.

Network Rail has announced that it is to switch over completely to digital signalling, doing away with all the traditional traffic light signals. Of course, this is good news for regular train users as modern trains should be able to run closer together under the new system, making for more trains on the same line. But it could lead to the death of steam locomotives and older diesel trains on Network Rail lines. The old trains are not equipped for digital signalling and without the old signals they will not be able to run on the main lines. There is talk of some sort of digital box being developed for the UK’s remaining 600 steam locomotives, but at what cost. I suggest you get on that steam hauled excursion while you still can.

The Aviva Insurance Head Office in Scotland applied for and got permission to generate its own electricity from a 77-metre-high wind turbine and a solar farm. Together the two are said to be able to supply 100% of the Head Office’s electrical power. But a local resident has complained that they are suffering from ‘shadow flicker’ and the Perth and Kinross Council has ruled that Aviva has breached their planning permission. Shadow flicker is caused by the turbine blades casting moving shadows as they rotate and can be extremely annoying. Aviva has now agreed to shut down the turbine when it is causing problems with shadows, I guess that is on sunny, windy days.

A big report in the press this morning about people being fined for not having typed in their car’s full registration number when parking at car parks. The parkers are complaining that in many car parks they type in the correct number, and it is printed out incorrectly on the ticket. They have a ticket that clearly shows they have paid, but the parking companies still pursue them as if they hadn’t paid. Where machines are faulty, and this must be obvious to the companies where it happens a lot at a particular machine or car park, then charges should be dropped.

I have been reading about all the quangos we have in the country and how some people make their living by sitting on loads of different ones. It seems that one person sat on the boards of 9 different quangos and was paid £145,000 for the scheduled 65 meetings. However, even that was too much for him as he only attended 47. That’s not a bad way to earn your living, 4 times the average wage for only 47 days’ work. If you fancy a job, I understand that there are nearly 400 to be appointed to and Liebore have created 27 more since coming to power.

So, Robber Reeves has arrived in Washington just in time to learn that the International Monetary Fund has slashed its prediction for UK growth by one third. Not that the predictions for UK growth were very good in the first place, but her useless budgets haven’t done anything to help. It is now even more important that we get a trade deal with the US. It really shouldn’t be that difficult for our two countries to achieve a deal we both want, and we have been in discussions for years.

Wednesday

Hi folks, it’s a strange morning. It was quite mild when I ventured down to the bottom of the garden, but it was wet under paw, I suspect we have had a lot of overnight rain. The borrowing numbers for the year to March are out this morning and we borrowed £151.9 billion, up by a record £15.5 billion on the month and by £20 billion on the previous year.

One in the eye for Mad Red Ed Millipede. I hear that a law is to be passed to ban GB Energy from buying solar panels that have been made by slave labour or contain parts made by slave labour. That just about rules out any panels made in China and from most of the Far East. That rather buggers Red Ed and GB Energy’s plans to install solar panels on hundreds of schools. They might be able to find panels that pass the new rules, but I bet they cost a lot more, probably enough to make the whole scheme financially unviable.

Following Red Ed getting put down, this morning it’s the turn of the Tottenham Turnip. He was supposed to be holding high-level talks in London on ending the war in Ukraine this morning. But late last night the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, dropped out, swiftly followed by the Tottenham Turnip. This left the talks between ‘officials’ at a much lower level. This morning the talks have officially been ‘postponed’ or in other words cancelled. I suspect the only reason the Turnip was going to the talks was for the free lunch.

Today is St George’s Day and all true Englishmen should be celebrating. But I hear of a Labour town council that has warned residents that if they dare to fly a flag of St George they risk being reported to the police for a hate crime. How ludicrous, who but a Liebore council could consider flying the flag of our patron saint and England as a hate crime. I hope townspeople fly thousands of England flags today and stuff the town council.

If the Queen had not died nearly two years ago she would have had her 99th birthday earlier this week. I understand that she was never a big eater and liked certain dishes that she would stick to and hated being served fancy stuff at official dinners. I hear that her favourite lunch was a simple grilled Dover sole on a bed of wilted spinach and maybe a couple of baby new potatoes. If you gave her a grilled fillet steak for her tea that was perfect. On the other hand, Phil the Greek was a bit of a foodie and always up to try something new. I’m with the Queen, I could happily eat Felix Chicken every day.

I have been reading that nearly all wind turbine blades rotate clockwise but why they do is not really known, they just do. Apparently, windmills turn anticlockwise, again no one knows why, it just seems to be the norm. It has been suggested that wind turbines turn clockwise because aircraft propellers, ships’ propellers and most dials do, but that asks the question why they turn clockwise. I think the answer is that if the blades turned anticlockwise they would unscrew themselves and fall off.

I can’t understand the news this morning that says police chiefs have been given the ability to sack officers who fail background checks. I really don’t understand two things here. Firstly, how were people ever allowed to join the force in the first place without a background check? It is unbelievable that 300 Met officers were found to have ever done things that should have stopped them being appointed, in retrospective checks. Then here comes the rub, ‘rules’ stopped them from being sacked. Today at least that stupidity has been changed, and they can now be sacked from a job they should never have been in, in the first place.

Thursday

Hi everyone, it’s a bit dull and grey here in London this morning but the forecast for the next week is fabulous. Ursula Von Liar is due here today to talk to Legohead about us getting closer to the EU. I have been out and dipped my claws in pigeon poo as it is my intention to scratch her if I can get anywhere near her. A nice, infected scratch will go down nicely and hopefully stop her ever coming here again.

I loved PMQs yesterday, Bad Enoch absolutely mullered Legohead, and about time too. She has not been at her best at previous PMQs but it was quite different this time round. She went with all her six questions on the Supreme Court trans ruling. Well, Legohead just repeated all his scripted sound bites and didn’t answer a single question, he didn’t admit he had got it wrong when he had insisted previously that trans women in single-sex spaces ‘was the law’, he didn’t apologise to Rosie Duffield and started an answer with ‘Let’s be clear’ which is a clear indication that a load of waffle is coming.

That great thinker Red Ed Millipede has come up with another one of his brainwaves. This time he wants to introduce ‘zonal’ electricity prices. This means that he breaks the country into 12 zones and charges for electricity in each zone depending on how close it was to the source of wind power. On the map put out it shows the cheapest power in Zone One which is the North of Scotland and getting more expensive as you move down the country with the most expensive in Zone 11 (Devon and Cornwall) and Zone 12 (London, the Home Counties, Southeast and South Central). This is clearly totally unfair as the open space in the Scottish Highlands allows for the building of onshore wind farms. But the population density in the South makes this harder. But for example, the huge Rampion wind farm is off the South Coast so why don’t the people who live near that get cheap power. Even eco-loon Dale Vince says it’s a mad idea. I think the Millipede needs to think again.

For this week’s cat story, I bring you Crispy, a seven-year-old white cat who was a stray. She was taken in by Cats Protection in Wokingham and found to have cancerous growths on both her ears due to exposure to the sun. Poor Crispy has had both ears amputated to stop the cancer spreading but has been lucky enough to have been adopted and is now an indoor cat and renamed Gracie. The loss of her ears doesn’t seem to have affected her too badly as she is now healthy and a lovely playful cat.

More good news for Rolls-Royce, Airbus has signed another order with Saudi Arabia’s airline group Saudia. This time the order is for Saudia’s subsidiary airline Flyadeal and is for their first wide-body aircraft. Flyadeal has a whole raft of outstanding orders for Airbus A321s but these will be its first jets capable of long-distance travel. The order is for 10 x Airbus A330neo with options for 10 more.

I understand that an Israeli company wants to introduce remote control tower cranes to the British construction market. I suppose that we are used to having the crane operator climb up to a cabin swaying high in the air but with modern technology the need for the operator to be at height is unnecessary as cameras and wrap-around screens can give an operator a similar, if not better, view from an operating cabin on the ground with far less danger and no time wasted climbing into the high-level cabin. It’s also much more convenient if the operator needs the toilet!

Up in Scottishland another offshore wind farm is due to go online today. This time it’s the Moray West array in the Moray Firth and it has 60 turbines each standing 257m (843ft) above the surface of the sea rated at a total of 882MW. The Moray Firth and the area off the coast of the East Highlands is a big wind farm area. There is the 100-turbine Moray East which has been operational since 2022 and is rated at 950MW and the 2GW Caledonia development is due to come on stream in 2030. These are all owned by a company called Ocean Winds UK. Also in the Moray Firth is the name-plated 588MW wind farm Beatrice. All this power coming ashore in the same area is far more than can be used and has to enter the Grid to be transmitted south to the big population areas in England. Unfortunately, the Grid needs a major, very expensive upgrade as it wasn’t designed to take power from offshore wind farms. Rather, it was designed to deliver power from coal-fired power stations that were built on the nation’s major coalfields in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Durham, Kent and South Wales to the big cities and manufacturing areas.

Friday

Good morning happy readers and it is a lovely sunny morning here in London and was rather pleasant when I popped down the garden. I had the misfortune of seeing the Mad Red Ed Millipede Sky News interview on TV yesterday. How could he possibly believe that reducing tax on oil and gas would not reduce the price we pay. I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, the man’s a fool.

A new Find Out Now opinion poll out last evening has Reform leading Liebore by 8 points, 28% to 20%. If you plug these numbers into Electoral Calculus seat projections engine you get a Reform Government with a 30-seat majority. Liebore lose 293 seats and are down to 119. The Tories are reduced to a rump of 50 seats but intriguingly they still manage to claim a few seats currently held by Liebore including my scribe’s West Worthing. But the Limp Dumps become the 3rd party on 62 seats even though they are shown to lose 10 seats. I love looking at these predictions and laughing.

Ever since last year’s General Election YouGov has consistently come up with opinion polls that put Liebore in the lead. Other pollsters have steadily shown Reform climbing higher and higher in the polls but not YouGov. More in Common have had Reform catching Liebore poll after poll and recently drawing level with them. Techne have been reporting very similar results to More in Common while Find Out Now have consistently had Reform between 4 and 8 points ahead of Liebore. But this week, for the first time, YouGov has Reform leading Liebore by 2%. I find it interesting that all the major polling companies now have Reform in the lead.

I read that the new railway station being built at Wixams on the Midland Main Line is being looked at for expansion from a 2-platform station with 234 parking spaces, to a four-platform station because of the proposed Universal Theme Park on the old Kempston Hardwick brickworks site. The station for Wixams will also be the station for the theme park. The station was being developed to serve the growing area of Wixams south of Bedford and the station was designed to handle 774,000 annual journeys and a train every 15 minutes during peak travel hours. But Universal are predicting 8.5 million visitors in its first year. Of course, the vast majority will want to drive there, but with the imposition of EVs on the public in 2030 if only 20% of that 8.5 million choose to travel by train you can see why the station needs to be expanded and now, while only the car exists, is clearly the right time to build a bigger station as expanding it when built will be far more expensive. As an aside, Wixams would be served by Thameslink trains out of St Pancras which is also the terminal for Eurostar trains. Would it be possible to run trains directly from the Continent to Universal. We do it to Euro Disney.

The favourite biscuit, the chocolate digestive, is 100 years old today. Its predecessor, the plain digestive, had been around for eight years before someone at McVitie’s decided to cover one side with chocolate and as they say the rest is history. They are currently being knocked out at a factory in Stockport, Greater Manchester. I bet you didn’t know that a survey has revealed that the vast majority of people eat their chocolate digestives chocolate side up, but apparently that is wrong; they were originally designed to be eaten chocolate side down.

The Limp Dumps have come up with a decent policy for once and for once it wasn’t suggested while falling off a paddle board or coming down a water slide. They want to introduce fines for people playing loud music on public transport and get people to use earphones instead. Not that it bothers me as I don’t go on public transport. If I ever travel away from the street it is in a travel basket in the back of a car when visiting the hated vet. But I can imagine how annoying it must be if someone in your railway carriage or on the top deck of your bus is playing loud music on their phone. It might be awful stuff like Doris Day or Frank Ifield. So, what the Limp Dumps want are to start with low fines for a first offence increasing to £1,000 for several offences. If someone can find £500 for a phone they can afford £10 or £20 for earphones.

The Post Office has renewed its licence for the discredited Fujitsu Horizon software system for another year at the cost of £68 million and admits that they will probably have to extend the licence still further. The problem is that the Post Office didn’t, until very recently, own the source code. They tried some software from IBM as a replacement, but it didn’t come up to scratch as IBM were trying to replicate the Horizon code without access to the source. The Post Office say they are working towards replacing Horizon, but it may still be some years before it can be replaced.

Saturday

Good morning everyone, I am delighted to see the weather in London this morning is far better than original forecast and is dry rather than wet as was being forecast. Legohead has gone off to Rome to attend the Pope’s funeral. So, I’m looking forward to a nice day in Number Ten.

I hear that the Vatican has announced that guests at the Pope’s funeral will be seated in alphabetical order by the country’s name, but not any old alphabet, but the French alphabet. So, what is different about the French alphabet? Well, as far as I know, it is exactly the same as the English alphabet with the same 26 letters in the same order. I think the real reason is that the Italian alphabet only has 21 letters, and it might be a bit difficult for the leaders of people from countries starting with those five missing letters. Anyway, that puts the Don (United States) in row three, for which I hear he is not terribly happy.

The media is speculating that the next move in energy prices, as set by OFGEM, will be down. The price of oil and gas on the open market has fallen recently and the speculation is that the domestic prices could fall by as much as 9%. That would be welcome after 3 consecutive increases. OFGEM reviews the fuel prices every three months and the next adjustment is set for July, forecast to be down to £1,683. The price cap often falls in the summer when unsurprisingly the consumption of domestic fuel invariably falls.

I have just caught a video on the news where the Headmaster of a Catholic school uses a pipe wrench to attack his Deputy. It seems that the married Headmaster had been having an affair with a female member of staff and believed that his Deputy had started a relationship with the same woman. The Headmaster was filmed on CCTV attacking his Deputy from behind by hitting him over the head with the wrench.

News as to where the new Type 26 and Type 31 Frigates are to be based. Rather unsurprisingly the two types will be based in different ports, the Type 26 Frigates will all be based in Devonport while the Type 31s will be based in Portsmouth. I guess it makes sense to split the new ships between the two ports and keep as many employed as possible.

A big announcement from the Home Office, they have returned another 43 people to Nigeria and Ghana on a charter flight. It is made up of 15 failed asylum seekers, 11 criminals who had served their sentences and 7 voluntary returnees. Why do we give free travel to those who want to go home? But it gets worse, we hand these volunteers thousands of pounds in resettlement grants. The Government boasts they have now returned just 24,000 so far this year which they say is a record. But if you take out all those they are paying to go home I suspect it will fall below the 21,800 returned in the same period last year under a Tory government.

Serco are to hold an event at a four-star hotel in the Malvern Hills to try to sign up landlords to rent them accommodation for illegal boat people. Apparently, the deal is they will offer 5-year contracts and guarantee they pay the rent monthly, they will pay all maintenance, repair and damage, utility bills, council tax and management charges. It seems that the Government have realised that having over 200 hotels filled with illegal immigrants is unacceptable; it is driving up hotel costs around the country. So, what is the effect on the British people who want to rent? Apparently, councils have run out of properties because they have filled them with illegal immigrants, so they were having to put people into private rents, but these are being forced out as landlords are getting fabulous deals from the likes of Serco (and the three other companies doing the same job). So where are the homeless being put? Well, it seems they are going into hotels. What an absolutely crazy situation.

That’s me done again for another week and unlike this morning’s weather which wasn’t wonderful it is now beautifully sunny and warm, so I am off to the windowsill for my afternoon snooze. The forecast now says tomorrow is going to be warm and sunny in London and it is going to be hot and sunny for the rest of the week. I’m quite looking forward to spending loads of time outside. Chat to you all next week.
 

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