Monday
Good morning my happy readers, it is dry and a bit warmer this morning. The Donald isn’t messing about with the illegals in California. He hasn’t hesitated to send in the National Guard to sort out those not happy that the Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) have picked up illegals for deportation. Wouldn’t it be nice if Legohead had half as much tenacity to sort out our illegals.
News over the weekend that Zia Yusuf has done a U-turn and is not quitting Reform, returning only 2 days after he left. However, he isn’t returning as party chairman because he is apparently worn out after working 100-hour weeks for 11 months. Instead, he is going to be the head of Reform UK’s Doge. A new party chair and a deputy are expected to be announced later this week.
The Scottishland village of Glaspin in South Lanarkshire is about to lose its Freeview TV signal with its relay transmitter being shut down. The geographical location of Glaspin means that it is impossible for the village to receive the signal from the main area transmitter at Black Hill, hence the relay transmitter up in the hills picking up the Black Hill’s Freeview transmitter signal and rebroadcasting it to the village. But in recent months the signal has been suffering so much interference as to be unwatchable. The problem has been located and is a wind turbine that has been built on the direct path from the transmitter to the relay. The owners of the wind farm have set up a scheme to switch the villagers over to Freesat. However, Freesat is to be phased out by 2029. Freesat and Freeview are eventually to be replaced by Freely, which uses the internet, but the internet speed in Glaspin is too slow for Freely. What a mess.

Black Hill transmitters from the air – geograph.org.uk – 7704902,
Thomas Nugent – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
On Friday the second batch of 27 Amazon Project Kuiper satellites are due to be launched from Cape Canaveral. These are very early days for Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite constellation, which will eventually consist of 3,200 satellites and 83 launches. The Amazon satellite internet system has a different architecture to the Starlink one and requires less than half the number of Starlink ones. But it is likely to be a while before it is in operation.
The regular American Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Naples is normally operated by a Boeing 787-8 but last Monday it was swapped for ‘operational reasons’ for a 787-9. There was just one problem: the -9 is about 20 feet longer than the -8 and not cleared for landing at Naples because of its increased level of Rescue and Fire Fighting Requirements. It was only realised that there was a problem when the plane was over the Tyrrhenian Sea, 74 miles out, and it was diverted to Rome, 120 miles away. The passengers had to be bussed to Naples, a two-hour journey, and the passengers waiting for the return flight had to be bussed to Rome. Someone made a bit of an expensive mistake.
What is the matter with the doom goblin? Not content with upsetting millions with her ‘green’ antics, she has moved on to supporting Hamas. Now she’s on a small boat, heading to Gaza with a few bags of flour to save the Gazans from starvation. The stupid ex-school truant is ignoring the warnings from the Israelis not to break their blockade of Gaza. The last little boat that tried the same sort of stunt was boarded by the Israelis and eleven died. Surely the doom goblin isn’t seeking publicity.
The word is that Airbus has been negotiating several huge orders and is hoping to reveal them at the Paris Air Show next week. They include orders for India, the Middle East and China. I find the Chinese one most interesting as I understand it has been progressing since the visit of Xi Jinping over a year ago. The Chinese like to play hardball in aircraft purchases and have been playing Airbus off against Boeing. But the imposition of 145% US tariffs has handed the advantage to Airbus for an order of both single and twin-aisle planes. I hear the order is likely to be for up to 500 aircraft including options. Many of the single-aisle planes would be built on Airbus’s A320 production in Tianjin.
Tuesday
Good morning everyone, the weather is getting better by the day; I wonder how long it will last. So, The Mail and The Times say that the new Reform UK Chairman is going to be announced at a press conference this morning and it’s going to be the Talk presenter Dr David Bull, who at least is media savvy. I wonder who will be taking over his regular Saturday and Sunday morning breakfast time slot. I hope it’s Alex Phillips; she can stroke me anytime.
Robber Reeve has decided to reinstate the Winter Fuel Payment for anyone who is of state pension age with an income of £35,000 p.a. or under. According to the Robber, this will be around 9 million people who will get £300 per household. If you remember, the story at the time was that the cut was necessary ‘to stop a run on the Pound’, a crazy statement as it was only supposed to save £1.5 billion. However, it led to a rush of people to take up Pension Credit and is understood to have cost the Government far more than this. According to the Government, the reinstatement will cost £1.4 billion, so the whole exercise has cost them money and a huge loss of support. I wondered how they will work out who earns over £35,000 p.a., but it seems the idea is to give it to absolutely everyone and then recoup it from those earning over £35,000 via the tax system.

Rachel Reeves indoors,
70023venus2009 – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
How lovely, the Israelis have boarded the Doom Goblin’s boat and taken it into the Israeli port of Ashdod. The boat was boarded at about 1 o’clock this morning, and the video shows Israeli Forces holding all the Doom Goblin’s gang in a saloon wearing life jackets and uninjured or even handcuffed. The Doom Goblin claimed in a pre-recorded video to have been kidnapped. But how many kidnappers hand out bottles of water and pack sandwiches? Apparently, the passengers and crew are to be deported to their own countries, but not before being forced to watch film of the October 8th Hamas attacks.
The NHS in Richmond has refused to treat a schoolboy with a complex genetic problem because his parents send him to a private school. His GP sent the boy to a clinic for therapy, and during an initial assessment his mother was asked to fill in a form that included a question asking where he went to school. Subsequently, the GP received a letter from the clinic saying they wouldn’t be offering an appointment because the boy went to a private school and they only treated state school children. Is this legal? I wonder if someone will be financially backing the parents to sue the NHS.
Do you remember all the fuss over the secret software system (MCAS) that was installed on the Boeing 737 Max series that resulted in two horrendous crashes? The idea of the software was to overcome a centre of gravity problem, caused by installing new bigger diameter engines that had to be in front of the wings instead of under them in the original models. The whole idea of updating an old model aircraft was that Boeing thought it would be cheaper than building a new plane off the drawing board. This has now proved to be wrong, as the cost to date of developing the Max series is currently over $84 billion. A sum that is still increasing because two models have still to be certified. It far exceeds the $32 billion cost of developing the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from scratch.
On the subject of new aircraft, the rumours I hear are that Airbus are looking at producing a stretched Airbus A350-1000 (A350-2000?) with the new Rolls-Royce UltraFan engines. The A350-1000 is currently the biggest passenger jet aircraft in service. But it will be surpassed by the Boeing 777-9 when it is certified. A new model of the A350 would obviously be designed to beat the 777-9 by carrying more passengers, further and at a lower seat-mile cost, but what would it do to A350-1000 sales?
Apparently, BMW’s new hydrogen-powered car is pretty good, and the pilot model has been tested worldwide to much acclaim. However, it is almost certain that the promised production version won’t be coming to the UK because we simply don’t have the infrastructure. In the whole of the UK there are only three public hydrogen filling stations and there are another three in the pipeline. This is a bit of a chicken and egg situation: car makers are unwilling to sell hydrogen cars in the UK if there is nowhere to refuel them, and conversely the garages don’t want to sell hydrogen because there are no customers. At this rate we will never see hydrogen-powered cars in the UK.
Wednesday
Hi folks, it’s dry this morning and getting warmer. I rather enjoyed my stroll down the garden this morning. Apart from it being PMQs, today is the day the Government is supposed to announce the winners of the competition for building Britain’s Small Medium Reactor. The Government was originally set to announce two companies to each build four reactors, but I hear that it could be only one company as the Treasury thinks it would be cheaper. But whichever it is, two or one, Rolls-Royce will be the big winner. I might not have space for the full story later today, but I’ll be reflecting on it ASAP.
Unlike America, where when the government changes, most of the top civil servants are replaced, in the UK the new ministers in an incoming government take over the existing civil servants with all their inbuilt biases and ideas. I understand that the civil servants had long wanted to get rid of the Winter Fuel Payment, and every new Chancellor had been presented with the same idea of scrapping it. Previous Chancellors had rejected the plan as politically impossible. But Robber Reeve was so politically and financially naïve she jumped on what her civil servants insisted was an easy £1.5 billion win. Well, they were wrong.
The interim leader of Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, is currently visiting the UK to pick up an award and I hear he wants to talk to Legohead about Tulip Siddiq and the financial scandal she and her family is involved in. However, I hear that Legohead is rather worried about what Muhammad Yunus might say about his friend Tulip and is doing his best to avoid a meeting.
On Saturday afternoon it was rather wet, and I didn’t get outside for my nap. Instead, I happened to wander into the office where the Rugby League Challenge Cup Final at Wembley was on the big TV. The favourites, Hull Kingston Rovers, were losing until the very last minute when they scored a converted try to win. But I was more interested to read that Hull Trains brought over 10,000 supporters to London on Friday and Saturday despite their train drivers officially being on strike. I wonder how many they would have managed to bring if they had been working!
The Governor General of the BBC has come up with a new idea on how to fund the BBC when the current licence agreement runs out in 2027. He says that to introduce advertising would be ‘unfair’ to ITV and he doesn’t like the idea of a subscription like Netflix. Instead, he wants to add it on to Council Tax. That way, the licence fee would be much more difficult to avoid, as nearly everyone pays their Council Tax. In addition, the licence fee would be linked to the level of Council Tax paid, the argument being that the wealthiest people live in the biggest houses and would pay the most. But what about the little old lady who is property rich but cash poor? Also, it means that every home pays the licence fee even if they don’t have a TV. Is that legal?

Camden council tax, John Clute, With a Little Help ephemera.jpg,
gruntzooki – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
The best video I have seen recently is the man being chased around the tarmac at London’s Heathrow Airport. Apparently, the man was being extradited when he escaped from the plane to India and tried to leg it, pursued by men in high-vis jackets, with huge jets whizzing past in the background. Of course, he was recaptured, but it was fun while it lasted.
There is video on the internet of a burning Russian Su-35S in a Kursk field on Saturday. The video was taken by a Russian Search and Rescue helicopter looking for the pilot. The question is how did the modern Russian jet come to crash. Of course, the Russians are saying nothing. The Ukrainian military simply says it was shot down, but not by what or by whom. Several Su-35 fighters have been lost to ground-to-air missiles, so this is a likelihood. But the German newspaper Bild says it was hit by a medium-range air-to-air missile from a Ukrainian F-16. The interesting thing is that the targeting data is claimed to have come from a Swedish-made Saab AWACS plane some 200 miles away using a data link. If this is true, it is the first case of an F-16 shooting down a Russian fighter, the job it was designed to do.
Thursday
Good morning everyone, it’s a little grey as I eat my Felix but quite mild. Not a good day in Downing Street as several sets of numbers just out don’t make for good reading. Firstly, the first quarter numbers for the increase in wages are down and the numbers for unemployment are up. Then I hear the number of people paying PAYE to HMRC fell by about 109,000 in May, the first month that Robber Reeves’ hike in National Insurance. Finally, GDP has fallen yet again. These movements will soon be translated in the unemployment numbers.
I am pleased to see that my sources were once again right, and the Rolls-Royce SMR has been named as the winner of the competition to build Britain’s Small Modular Reactors. From what I read, they have been given the go-ahead to build 3 × 470 MW units in the UK, but they are now going to have to sort out where they are going to be located. At the moment, the favourite sites are Wylfa in Anglesey and Oldbury in Worcestershire. These two sites have a huge advantage in that they are sites of existing shut-down nuclear power stations and all the connections to the grid exist. Rolls already have an agreement with the Czechs to deliver around 3 GW of nuclear power (6 SMRs?). Rolls also have Memorandums of Understanding with Estonia and Turkey, so lots of export projects.
I had a good chuckle at Legohead’s awful speech at the AI Week tech conference. Like lots of modern tech, the autocue broke down and Legohead had to wing it. Well, he muttered and stammered and talked rubbish, in a speech he appeared to make up as he went along. My, was it a terrible speech, it just did make sense, it was an utter word salad. I bet if Nigel Farage was in a similar situation, he would have made a coherent speech as he talks from headline notes and rarely uses an autocue.
The Government has come up with another spend of £14.2 billion of money it says it doesn’t have. This time, it has finally signed off on the new nuclear power station at Sizewell ‘C’ and this is its contribution to the costs. I only hope that the costs don’t escalate by the same amount as its sister station Hinkley Point ‘C’. There, they started off at £18 billion but are currently at £42 billion, and the build is running only six years late, but is expected to be 10 years late when it finally comes online.
I see the Ministry of Defence is seeking bids for a ‘rapid launching of multiple fixed-wing Uncrewed Air Vehicles (UAV)’ system. It wants to launch 5 × 125 kg drones in 4 minutes from a transit-type van. The rules say it should work in temperatures down to -20°, by day and night, and by operators wearing gloves and night vision goggles. The whole system is aimed at launching a volley of UAVs to overwhelm defenders, with the first units due to be in service by 1st January 2026. I wonder if our snivel serpents can move that fast.
I was delighted to see pictures of the Doom Goblin on a plane being thrown out of Israel. The Israelis haven’t been messing around with the ship of fools, grabbing them at sea and taking them to Ashdod and then imprisoning them overnight. I hear that the Doom Goblin refused to watch the video of the Hamas atrocities, sticking her fingers in her ears and going la, la, la. But she was quickly put on a plane to France, sat at the back of the economy cabin by the toilets. She is Swedish and lives in Britain on the Jurassic Coast, so why is she being sent to France? What have they done?
Marks & Spencer have announced that they have finally reopened their website after the cyberattack and not before time. I hate to think how much it has cost them as a high percentage of their sales are now online. I know they had cyber insurance, but it can never be enough to cover all their losses. It must be two or three months since they were attacked, and I understand that some items in the store are still in short supply. Interestingly, I hear that Tesco have been helping them out with some stock.
Friday
Hi everyone, another nice warm sunny morning. Can you believe it, but Legohead’s ridiculous deal with Mauritius over the Chagos Islands is being lauded by Mauritian people as reports say it will allow them to reduce income tax to zero for 81% of the population. I wonder how many British taxpayers are happy that their taxes are being used to allow Mauritians not to pay tax.
Down in Weymouth, repairs and essential works on two of the crumbling harbour walls have been delayed because of seahorses. Work was supposed to have started last winter but was postponed when the seahorse problem was identified. Now we are in the seahorse breeding season, so work can’t start until the autumn. Apparently, the seahorses have moved into the shallow water close to the sea wall where there is a lot of seagrass where they like to raise their young. The work is due to start when the seahorses move back into deeper water in the autumn.

Seahorse Biology and Facts,
moonjazz – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
Back on Monday, I told you I was hearing rumours that Airbus was holding back several enormous orders for announcements at the Paris Airshow. There were three airlines I heard about, each of whom were expected to order between 100 and 200 aircraft. However, today I heard of two other airlines that are set to join in. From what I hear, both AirAsia and VietJet will be placing orders for about 100 planes each. I suspect Airbus intends to announce one big order a day over the length of the show. As a little tidbit, I hear Royal Air Maroc, a mostly Boeing operator, is going to announce an order for additional Boeing 737s and 787s at the show but will also order 20 × Airbus A220s because Boeing can’t compete with this size plane.
The FIFA Club World Cup is on at the moment in the USA. 32 of the supposed top clubs from around the world are taking part. But several of the biggest European club sides have missed out, including Barcelona, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Milan, who have the biggest support, are not there. I hear that for the next iteration of the competition in 2029 it is likely to be a 48-team competition, with more top European teams being involved and the winning team earning £90 million.
Last year, Rolls-Royce Motor sold 5,712 cars and made a decent profit, prompting them to announce they are going to spend $370 million enlarging the factory in Goodwood, West Sussex. But they don’t intend to use the expansion to build more cars. Instead, they intend to use the enlarged factory to build more bespoke models, which make them a lot more money than the standard production models. If you are super-rich, a bog-standard Roller is not good enough; you want to customise the car. Unlike other makers, Rolls do not plaster their logo all over their cars, but whether it’s super plush carpets or the most powerful stereo, if you’re super-rich and spending $500,000 on a Phantom, another $100,000 on customisation is small change but highly profitable to Rolls-Royce.
I was pleased to read that the BBC are to make the seventh book in the Cormoran Strike series into a serial. They have already televised books one to six and they have been big hits. Unusually, the adaptations have stuck closely to the books by Robert Galbraith, a pen name of J.K. Rowling. Apparently, Rowling was worried that she would not be accepted as a thriller writer after becoming so well known for the Harry Potter stories. She need not have worried, as I understand the Strike series has sold over 20 million books, from which she has done very nicely, thank you.
So, Mastermind failure, the Tottenham Turnip, has given away the control of the Gibraltar border with Spain to the Spanish in a deal that was slipped out while the Chancellor was making her Strategic Spending Review speech, in a “good day to announce bad news” announcement. Under the agreed scheme, Spanish and Gibraltarians will be able to cross the border between the two countries without passport checks. So where does this leave a Briton who flies to Gibraltar for a holiday? It seems he will have his passport checked at Gibraltar Airport, a British Overseas Territory, by Pedro the Spanish Passport Control Officer. So now we will only be allowed to visit part of Britain if allowed to by the Spanish. The Tottenham Turnip has created another fine mess.
Saturday
Good morning, my happy readers, so as to get this diary to you I am having to write it early, so I will not start in my traditional way. I really don’t remember never seeing a time when all the media (perhaps with the exception of Jobby) is saying that the Strategic Spending Review is a total disaster. It must really be bad when The Guardian and the Daily Mirror turn on Liebore.
Here’s an interesting point on the Spending Review that has crept out. Robber Reeves has claimed that Defence Spending has gone up to the promised 2.5% of GDP, but this has been achieved by a couple of spending financial fiddles. The increase in spending was made by including the huge, front-loaded payments to Mauritius for the Chagos Islands and the total cost of MI6. By the way, NATO rules say you can only include Intelligence Organisations in your defence spending if they are all military trained. Without these two additions, the Defence Budget went down! I hope all the Secretaries and Clark know they are now soldiers.
An interesting report relates the increasing number of children being killed by cars to the height of cars growing. The number of accidents hasn’t increased, it’s the numbers killed that have increased. What seems to have happened is that with the increase in car height, particularly with SUVs, the height above the ground of a car bumper has gone up. It used to hit the legs of children, and they would suffer broken legs. Now they are hitting torsos, where vital organs are, or heads, so it’s hardly surprising more are being killed.

Hummer limousine,
Franco Folini – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
That was a very nasty plane accident in Ahmedabad, in western India. The plane had taken off only seconds before from Ahmedabad International Airport on its flight to Gatwick. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner had 242 people on board, including 53 British. The plane crashed into a residential block, believed to be a medical school hostel, killing absolutely heaven knows how many on the ground. Video shows the plane coming down slowly with its wheels down and a vast explosion. As the plane would be full of fuel, needed for its flight to London, a big explosion and fire is hardly a shock.
The Reform Doge in Kent is apparently turning up some very interesting results detailing money that is being wasted. Like continuing to pay dead employees. This is something I could accept if it were for a month or two while the paperwork is done, but not for years. Then there is a family with 3 SEND children who are entitled to be taken to school every day by taxi. They all go to the same school, but they each get a separate taxi (from the same company) to take them to school every day. Oh, I nearly forgot, how about the £6 million SEND taxi contracts that only had one bidder.
My cat story this week is about Spot, a cat from Aberdeen. Spot strayed from her home a couple of years ago, and despite a wide search she was not found. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, and a couple walking in the countryside found a cat with an injured rear leg. They called the Scottish SPCA helpline, and they came to collect the cat, which they found was microchipped, and hence Spot was returned to his delighted family. Unfortunately, one of Spot’s hind legs was so badly damaged that it had to be amputated. I hear Spot is now enjoying life as a pampered house cat.
I have learnt of a 30-year-old block of flats that had its sewage system discharging into the surface water drains. The surface water then discharges directly into a chalk stream, which is quite acceptable for a surface drain, but not for sewage. But how could this have gone on for 30 years without anyone spotting the problem until this week? I hate to think how much raw sewage had gone into that chalk stream. Of course, those residents have been paying the water companies for 30 years to treat their sewage; I bet they don’t get a rebate.
That’s me done, and as I’m writing this on Friday, I have no idea whether I will be able to get onto my favourite snoozing windowsill on Saturday afternoon. So, it might not be my favourite windowsill for afternoon snooze. As I hope you know, my Scribe is on yet another cruise, and I’m sure you will be able to read his cruise diary pretty soon. So, I will not be chatting to you all next week, instead I will be taking a couple of weeks off. Chat to you soon.
© WorthingGooner 2025