Larry’s Diary, Week Two Hundred And Eighty-Five

Monday

Good morning, my happy readers. I hope you had a lovely weekend. I did; it was another couple of nice sunny days and quiet in No. 10. However, it wasn’t quiet down on the south coast. On Saturday, Border Farce picked up 1,195 illegals in 19 boats crossing the Channel. That is a record total number in a day. Apparently, Border Farce were stretched to breaking point, with all their cutters fully employed and the fall-back RNLI so overwhelmed that a yacht taking on water in the Channel had to be rescued by fishing boats in the area that the RNLI asked to help.

The Strategic Defence Review is due to be published this morning, and it is supposed to be ‘embargoed’ until it is released. But in the new world of Liebore politics, we have been having both unofficial and official leaks for weeks now, some of which make sense but are then promptly squashed by someone else. We were told we were going to increase defence spending to 3.5%, but this morning Legohead was on the BBC refusing to give a date other than it will be in the ‘next Parliament’. On Saturday, the word was leaked that they are going to increase the number of frigates and destroyers to 24. Good news if it happens. I await more details, but what about crews? We currently have naval ships tied up because there are no crews available. Then there was an official leak embargoed until 22:30 last night, when it was announced we are going to build ‘up to’ 12 more nuclear attack submarines. But it just wasn’t clear if these boats are in addition to the Astute-class boats or are their replacements. It’s all smoke and mirrors in Legohead’s world.

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Nigel Farage’s return to lead Reform UK from his political retirement. And what an interesting year it has been, with the upsurge in the fortunes of Reform, and the initial success of Liebore at the general election only to prove to be totally incompetent. Farage has become an MP, led Reform to be the effective opposition to Liebore, stormed to huge local election success, and is leading in all the opinion polls. Happy 1st anniversary, Nigel.

Mad Red Ed Millipede wants to move green levies off electricity and add a 15% ‘climate tax’ on to gas. This is yet another one of his mad ideas to force people into using heat pumps. This is actually a tax on the poor, as they are the least likely people to be able to afford a heat pump and all that goes with its installation.

I see that Wes Streeting has had to scrap one of the NHS’s potty green schemes. It seems that they came up with the bright idea that they should get rid of all their petrol and diesel ambulances on environmental grounds and replace them with all-new electric vehicles. But like many things green, they just don’t stand up to closer inspection. Firstly, there are plenty of areas in this country where an electric ambulance would not be able to operate because they are so remote and beyond the range of an electric vehicle. Then there is a recent report that EVs could not complete an eight-hour shift in London without needing a recharge. They would have to have huge additional batteries to operate all the life support equipment ambulances carry, let alone its air conditioning. But these failures pale to nothing when you look at the main reason Streeting killed the project: electric ambulances are just cripplingly expensive.

The Rail Regulator has approved a new Lumo Open Access service between Stirling and London using the already crowded West Coast Main Line. Lumo currently plans to operate five return services a day starting next spring. The service will initially be operated by 5 × Class 222 diesel trains with six carriages, until an order for electric trains can be delivered. The train will give the Scottishland towns of Larbert, Greenfaulds, near Cumbernauld, and Whifflet, near Coatbridge, their first direct service to London. In addition, it will call at Motherwell, Lockerbie, Carlisle, Preston, Crewe, Nuneaton and Milton Keynes before terminating in Euston. I’m sure travellers on the WCML will be delighted with five additional daily services they can use.

The Government has announced another one of its schemes that, on first sight, looks extremely odd. They have classified the new East West rail line that will link Oxford and Cambridge an England and Wales project. The question is why you would designate a line that is entirely in England as an English/Welsh project. The answer is actually very simple: by doing so, Wales doesn’t get any more money under the Barnett consequentials.

Tuesday

Good morning, everyone, and it’s a wet one. Two major speeches yesterday, one by Legohead and one by Farage, and what a difference. I don’t mean in content but in the quality of the speaker. Legohead must be the world’s most boring speaker, who can hardly read what is in front of him on the autocue, often stumbling over his words. On the other hand, Farage rarely uses notes and mainly speaks from memory, with only a few headlines in front of him. One is flat and uninteresting, the other is bright and animated.

It is beginning to look like the Strategic Defence Review is all based on us spending 3% of GDP on the defence budget, and the Government can’t afford that much. So, all the planes, ships, submarines, weapons factories, and new nuclear bombs will probably not happen. I have heard raised voices recently and wondered what was going on. Now I understand Robber Reeves, who holds the purse strings, has won the argument, and Legohead is refusing to give a date for 3% spending, only that it will be by the next Parliament. But will he still be PM in 2034?

It’s not only the money that’s a problem. The ‘up to’ 12 AUKUS submarines we are supposed to be building are unlikely to be built to the SDR timetable. Back in January, the Infrastructure and Major Projects Authority (now the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority) wrote a report that said that they had no confidence that the nuclear reactors to power the subs would be anywhere near ready for the first. They gave the reactor project its lowest possible rating, saying, “There are major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be resolvable.” Is everyone ignoring this report?

On the Sunday evening news, the BBC were crowing about the pro-EU candidate for Polish President holding a narrow lead in the count. But now the results have been finalised and the BBC favourite, Rafał Trzaskowski, pal of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, got 49%, and anti-EU candidate Karol Nawrocki won with 51% of the vote. Polish politics looks to be getting interesting.

Blackburn Rovers Women’s football team came top of their league last season and won promotion to the Women’s Super League Division 2. But there are numerous rules associated with playing at this level, including having a fully professional team, a minimum size ground, and the ability to accept a minimum number of visiting supporters. Blackburn’s owners have refused promotion on the grounds that they are not able to put the money into the club to reach WSL2 standards. The problem is that they, the rules of the Women’s Football pyramid say, that if a team refuses promotion, they will re-enter the Women’s pyramid at least two levels lower than they withdrew from. At the moment, talks between the FA and Blackburn are ongoing to determine where Blackburn will play. I hear that Sheffield, who should have been relegated, have been offered the vacated place in WSL2.

More good news for Rolls-Royce and Broughton in North Wales, as Indian airline IndiGo has converted 30 of its 70 options for A350-900 planes into firm orders, bringing its total orders for the A350-900 to 60. The Trent XWB-84 engines that power the A350-900 are mostly manufactured by Rolls-Royce at its plant in Derby, although it has recently reinstated some assembly at its German plant in Dahlewitz due to the amount of work it has. The wings for all models of Airbus plane are made at the Airbus factory in Broughton.

Mondelez International, the maker of Oreo cookies, Chips Ahoy, Wheat Thins and Ritz crackers, are suing Aldi in the US for what they claim is copying their packaging in an attempt to pass off the Aldi product as the Mondelez product. I must admit that some of the Aldi packages do look remarkably like the Mondelez ones, particularly the Aldi version of Oreos. Aldi are not unfamiliar with being sued and losing in these types of case. In the UK, they have lost a case brought by the makers of Thatcher’s Cider for packaging design similarities to Thatcher’s Cloudy Lemon Cider.

Wednesday

Hi folks, it’s dry this morning but supposed to rain this afternoon. I was delighted to see the US Press Secretary ripping a new one for the BBC. She pointed out how the BBC was always reporting what Hamas said as the truth, only later to have to change the story completely. She talked about the BBC saying Israeli tanks had run over 24 children, only to have to withdraw the report as Hamas propaganda. I remember the BBC reporting an Israeli missile hitting a hospital and killing 250, which turned out to be a Hamas rocket that misfired and landed in a hospital car park. The BBC is an embarrassment.

I understand that things are at last making progress on HS2 that can be seen. Perhaps the biggest thing that is obvious is the installation of the first platforms at Old Oak Common station. The railway lines and platforms are all in a box below ground level and the station itself is at ground level with escalators down to platform level. The platforms are all made from prefabricated sections that are made off-site in a factory in the Midlands and lowered into place.

Reports say that a British Airways steward was noticed as missing when it became time to serve a meal on an A380 flight from San Francisco to London Heathrow. A search was instigated, and the steward was found in a business class toilet. Apparently, he was naked and dancing. The story I heard adds that he had been popping pills and was high as a kite. The crew found him a pair of First-Class pyjamas to wear, and he is believed to have been suspended.

I caught a clip on the internet of Alex Phillips, the Talk presenter and ex-UKIP MEP, being baptised. But what was so different was that it was happening in the sea off the south coast resort of Eastbourne, and it was not one of these events where the clergyman wets his finger and makes the sign of the cross on the forehead. No, this was a full dunking in waist-deep water with the vicar in all his robes, Phillips was in what looked to be her gym kit, and the helper in a wetsuit. Now that’s not something you will see every day on a walk along the promenade.

With a spending review nearly on top of us, I hear that three of the big ministries are still to agree their budgets with the Chancellor. From what I hear, it is Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper; the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband; and the Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner, holding out. Of course, these are the three departments that have massive spending commitments, with the Home Office stuck with thousands of illegal immigrants, Energy’s Net Stupid Zero, and the Ginger Growler’s three million houses. I don’t see them succeeding with their current budgets, let alone the reduced ones wanted by Robber Reeves.

In the Strategic Defence Review, it talked about spending more on laser defence for our warships. The current direction we are heading is Dragonfire, a directed energy weapon which is supposed to be so accurate it can hit a pound coin at four kilometres. I recently heard a scientist saying that this is not as simple as it seems, because the missile you are aiming at is doing supersonic speed and the ship you are shooting from is moving up and down on the ocean. He compared the problem to running up and down the goal line on a football pitch and trying to use a laser pen to hit a wasp flying around in the opposing goalmouth. Intriguingly, this is the sort of accuracy Dragonfire already has.

Lumo has wasted no time preparing for its new Stirling/London service I told you about on Monday. They have signed agreements with Eversholt Rail to supply the trains and with Alstom to stable, maintain and clean the trains for five years. But the contract also includes preparing the trains for service, and this includes installing new seats, Wi-Fi, repainting and generally upgrading the Class 222 trains to Lumo’s standards. They have nearly a year to get the work done before the service is due to start.

Thursday

Good morning everyone, it’s rather damp and it’s not a very nice forecast for the next few days. Although from next Sunday it’s going to get better and will be rather warm and sunny by Wednesday. PMQs was interesting yesterday, Bad Enoch was much improved and had Legohead not only refusing to answer questions but stuttering and stammering. There was a lot of noise from the Tory benches when Legohead gave his answer, and the Speaker called for order, saying that people should be able to hear the PM’s answer even if they didn’t believe they were getting one.

At the weekend, Real Madrid paid Liverpool £8 million to obtain the services of Trent Alexander-Arnold from Liverpool. They could have waited another couple of weeks and got him for nothing when his contract expired, but they want to be able to play him in the Club World Cup, and if they waited until he was free it would be too late. However, I hear that he has been banned from driving his £250,000 top-of-the-range Range Rover Discovery to the training ground or the stadium. Real Madrid has an agreement with BMW, who supply a loan electric car to all Real Madrid players, both male and female, and then replace them and sell them on the second-hand market.

I hear that electrical generation company Orstead is in a row with EdF and Iberdrola over the wake effects of wind farms. Apparently, when an existing wind farm has a new wind farm built upwind of it, the wind wake caused by the new farm can adversely affect the existing one, reducing its output. This seems to be the case with the Orstead wind farms in the Irish Sea and new wind farms that have been granted permission by Ed Millipede. It seems the Department of Energy is in so much of a rush to grant permission for new wind farms, they have failed to look at the effect on the existing ones.

The new head of the RAF has been announced to replace the previous one who has been promoted to the head of the armed forces. But what is a little disconcerting is that the new man has never been a pilot. In fact, he has come from the engineering side of the Air Force. Perhaps that’s acceptable in the RAF, but I can’t see the head of the Navy never having captained a ship or the head of the Army never led men.

The recent Ukrainian drone attack on several Russian airbases seems to slowly be being validated by satellite photos as having taken out a large number of Russian bombers. But what I find interesting is that the bombers they have wrecked cannot be replaced. The Tu-95 and the Tu-22 haven’t been produced for 30 years, since the Soviet Union fell apart. The problem is equally bad with repairing damaged planes; there simply aren’t the spare parts. There are lots of satellite photos about of Russian bombers missing one or two engines that have been cannibalised for spare parts, and even one with a missing wing. In addition, the latest video released by Ukraine shows two A-50U AWAC planes being wrecked, with drones landing on their radomes and exploding. This could have even worse consequences for the Russians than the destruction of the bombers.

There is a by-election in Hamilton tomorrow for the Scottishland Parliament, and there are six candidates. On Monday evening, STV invited all six candidates to a six-way discussion programme. But only two could be bothered to turn up, the candidates for the SNP and for Reform UK. I suppose that as the seat looks to be a straight fight between those two parties, the other four just didn’t think it was worthwhile turning up. In fact, the Scottish Labour Party said their candidate was not a very good performer on the media.

It seems that despite being under the same sanctions as Russia, Belarus airline Belavia has managed to acquire three rather old Airbus A330-200 planes. The planes are about 23 years old and said to be in very poor physical condition. The story starts back in 2020: a Jordanian businessman purchased the three planes from the bankrupt Turkish airline Onur Air. The businessman started an airline called Magic Air Gambia, and the planes were placed on the Gambian registry. However, Magic Air was a shell company and never operated the planes or carried any passengers. Last year the planes were removed from the Gambian register, and they were apparently sold to a buyer from the UAE, but they never made it there, instead turning up in Minsk, Belarus. Of course, Belavia will have to be very careful where they fly the planes, as if they land in a Western nation they are likely to be detained.

Friday

Hi everyone, another damp morning when I went down the garden before my breakfast, Felix. I forgot to mention how nasty and belittling Legohead was at PMQs to the new Reform MP Sarah Pochin. She asked a question on banning the burqa, which as usual he refused to answer, instead insulting her Tory roots and talking about the Reform financial policy. Another failure by Legohead and more proof of his inability to talk to women.

I read of a bit of a cock-up in Finnish ladies’ football for the recent Women’s Nations League match against Serbia. The manager called up a player called Stina Ruuskanen instead of 23-year-old defender Nanne Ruuskanen. Unfortunately, Stina is 51 and long retired from playing. However, the error on the squad sheet submitted to the authorities wasn’t spotted until after the deadline for changes, so Nanne had to miss the game, as did Stina.

There is one rather bizarre recommendation in the Strategic Defence Review. That is that the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers should be equipped with deck-mounted long-range attack missiles. I am unaware of any other carrier in the world so equipped, and it is not clear just where or how such a weapon could be installed. The long-range attack capability of an aircraft carrier is its aircraft, which could perhaps be further enhanced by equipping them with long-range stand-off missiles. It is a carrier’s escorts that normally have the long-range attack missiles. It would make a lot more sense to equip the carriers with some sort of air defence missiles, carefully positioned not to obstruct the flight deck.

My scribe tells me of upcoming parking problems in his hometown of Worthing. The seafront multi-storey Grafton Street car park was closed a few weeks ago when it was discovered that some of its concrete construction is in poor condition, and people who use it were told to use the town’s other multi-storey car park in the High Street. But the High Street and surrounding area are badly affected by the installation of what is called ‘a local heat network’. Council buildings, offices and some homes are to be supplied with heating generated by a giant set of heat pumps, and the work to install the pipes etc., is progressing in the streets around the car park, making access difficult. Now comes news that these works are going to close the High Street car park for two weeks from June 23rd. As you might have guessed, many town centre traders and businesses are up in arms. Many are struggling to make a profit as it is, and some say this is the last straw and they don’t think they will be able to survive the inevitable drop in footfall.

Today there is a report that warns women taking the slimming drug Ozempic may find themselves pregnant. The drug was originally developed for treatment of people with Type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney problems, and/or heart disease, for which it was found to be very effective. But it was found to be an excellent appetite suppressant, so is more widely used as a slimming drug. Like all drugs, there are side effects that may bother the taker, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, stomach pain and constipation. But it has now been realised that it can also counter-effect the birth control pill. In addition, the drug’s effect on unborn babies is unknown.

Lambeth Council have just lost in court over the imposition of a Low Traffic Neighbourhood in West Dulwich and told it must be removed immediately as it was installed illegally and have been told they can’t appeal. The West Dulwich Action Group, who won the action, were awarded £35,000 costs to be paid by the council. It appears that the council was supposed to have consulted before the LTN’s implementation, but it just ignored the result and went ahead with its imposition. The council has already fined motorists over £1 million for entering the LTN, and the WDAG is now asking Lambeth when they are going to give the fines back.

Madam Tussaud’s has said that it is not planning to add a waxwork of Legohead because they don’t know how long he will be relevant for. There are lots of waxworks of recent British PMs including Cameron, May and Johnson, so it’s a bit of an insult not having one of Legohead. Madam Tussaud say that they are not currently considering making a model of him due to the fast-moving nature of politics, and that consequently there isn’t a model of Liz Truss. I sometimes wonder if he has already been replaced by a waxwork, he is so wooden.

Saturday

Good morning, my happy readers, and it’s still wet and cold this morning, and the forecast is wetter with downpours and possibly thunderstorms. I heard a strange rumour this morning, that Zia Yusuf is reconsidering leaving Reform and may be coming back. We shall see.

The Donald has been watching the immigration problems in Europe and, having already successfully cracked down on illegal immigrants crossing the border from Mexico, he has decided to ban people from some countries. He has announced a ban on people coming to the US from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Although there will be a few exceptions, like for athletes and diplomats. He has also announced tighter restrictions on Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. Of that lot, not all of them seem to come to the UK, but why can’t we do something similar and add in the likes of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq and Vietnam.

I see the Reform task force looking at waste in Kent County Council has already identified issues representing £2.8 million. Since Monday, they have identified £190,000 stolen on a council credit card, £150,000 claimed on fake grants, £30,000 fraudulently paid to fake carers, and £63,000 paid to a care home for someone who was dead. Another thing they have found is that the council spends £87.5 million a year on advertising jobs and interviewing candidates. Kent has an annual £2 billion budget, I wonder how much more they will find.

The Czech state power company EDU II has wasted no time in signing the $18 billion contract with Korean company KHNP to build two nuclear power stations. The French company, EdF, who were the losing bidders in the competition to build the power stations, had obtained a last-minute injunction to stop the order being placed, arguing that the bidding process had been unfair. The Czech Supreme Court cast aside the injunction obtained by EdF in a lower court, saying it was illegal. EDU II and KHNP signed off the deal on the same day as the injunction was cancelled.

Babcock International have just received a £114 million contract to defuel three old Trafalgar Class submarines in storage at Devonport Dockyard. There are currently 11 old nuclear submarines stored at Devonport and Rosyth that have been defuelled and another 12 that still need to be defuelled. At Rosyth, Babcock are currently dismantling HMS Swiftsure, which is one of the defuelled boats. Its fin was removed this week, and its full dismantling should be completed next year, making it the first nuclear-powered submarine in the world to be fully dismantled. The hull of Swiftsure is 54 years old and it was decommissioned in 1991. Elsewhere, like in the United States, reactors have been removed and buried and the boats kept in long-term storage.

For this week’s cat story, I bring you a small house hotel in Blackpool that advertises itself as a cat hotel and a gaming hotel. The public rooms all have game consoles, games machines, even VR headsets, gaming PC and 300 hundred retro games. But it also has 16 cats who wander around, sleep wherever they want, and will often plonk themselves down on your lap while playing. The cats are all very friendly and wander in and out of the hotel whenever they want. Sounds like a nice place to live.

I don’t know if you are aware that members of the EU must sign up to the ECHR. This is why Italy, Denmark and others are not looking at leaving the ECHR, as they would have to leave the EU to do so. Intriguingly, Italy is looking at not leaving, just passing a law that says its courts must ignore rulings under Article 8. The idea is that EU members will just ignore rulings that they don’t like. Of course, this is just what Legohead is proposing, I wonder where he got the idea. But we are not in the EU, so we can leave the ECHR. We might have to introduce our own Bill of Rights, but at least we are not tied down by EU rules.

That’s me done, and the weather is not very nice this afternoon, with very heavy rain. So, it’s not my favourite windowsill for my afternoon snooze. I am off to wander the house to find somewhere I can enjoy my little snooze uninterrupted. By the time you read this, my scribe will be off on the high seas. But as he doesn’t go until next weekend, I think we will try to produce another diary before we have a fortnight off. So, I will probably chat to you all next week, but it might not include Saturday.
 

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