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

Monday

Good morning all, it was very wet in London when I hurried down the garden this morning. I was delighted to find Felix Chicken in my bowl when I got back. I hear that old Welsh windbag, Neil Kinnock, has suggested the introduction of a wealth tax. He suggests that anyone with over, say, £7 million in assets should pay 2% annually in wealth tax, raising £10 billion annually. A couple of things come to mind. I don’t think a wealth tax has worked in any modern nation. Many people have that in assets, say a house and a business, and would have to sell things off to pay such a large extra tax. But not least, many of those caught by such a tax have already paid higher-rate income tax on the money.

I hear that Legohead’s ridiculous ‘one in, one out’ immigrants deal with Macaroon is on the verge of collapse. There was talk that it would be agreed this week while Macaroon is over here on a state visit. Now I understand that the deal has not met with the approval of Macaroon’s EU masters and hence it is likely to be called off. Mind you, the Frogs rather shot themselves in the foot over the weekend when the froggy fuzz went into the sea and slashed an inflatable loaded with illegals. That this occurred when Macaroon is on the verge of a visit and a BBC film crew was present was, of course, a coincidence. But it proves that the froggy fuzz can enter the water if they are bothered.

Last week I predicted that Arsenal would start buying new players in July when their new financial year started. Well, over the weekend they signed Martin Zubimendi from Real Sociedad. But there is an interesting back story to this transfer. Arsenal first expressed an interest in buying Zubimendi over a year ago and apparently made an offer that was rejected. Zubimendi’s contract apparently had a clause which said if Real Sociedad got an offer of £50 million the player would be free to go. But Arsenal was reluctant to trigger this clause because under Spanish law they had to pay a 20% deposit and the full amount in cash on the transfer day. Arsenal wanted to pay in instalments over several years, so the deal collapsed. Then back in January the deal was revived, this time Arsenal offered more than the £50 million to allow for payments and a deal was agreed, but did not complete until this July as it suited both clubs to kick the deal into their next financial years.

I hear the BBC is working at shortening the delay viewers experience when watching broadcast via the internet. You probably have noticed that radio has always been slightly ahead of terrestrial TV. This is even more noticeable between radio and satellite TV where the TV signal has to go from the studio to satellite uplink to a satellite 22,000 miles above the equator and then back to your satellite dish/TV. This delay is currently about 10 seconds, according to Sky, while internet services are delayed around 40 seconds, which can be frustrating for watchers of live sport. Now I hear the BBC is running tests with iPlayer with the hope of a ‘significant’ reduction in those 40 seconds.

Once again the Mayor of London has sat before the London Assembly at Mayor’s Question Time and pulled every trick he could not to answer questions about rape gangs in the capital city. Apparently he has previously denied that London has a problem on the basis that there is ‘no data’, therefore there is no problem. Well, the Casey report said that record-keeping by the Metropolitan Police and the London Councils was awful and intimated that there were grooming gangs but no records. The leader of the Tories on the London Assembly has now tried to question Sad Dick, about grooming/rape gangs on two occasions and both times he refused to answer on the grounds that the question wasn’t clear, and he gets away with it.

It’s good news for all you Spoons lovers; Chicken Bites are back. The Spoons version of Chicken Nuggets disappeared from the menu some months ago. For some unexplained reason it has been listed as “temporarily unavailable” since April, but a Spoons spokesperson has confirmed that they are now available again in all 609 branches of Spoons.

I read that Wayne Rooney has landed a job on the Match of the Day match expert analysis panel at a mere £800,000 p.a. for the next two seasons. I find this totally amazing, having seen him in action on TV, analysing some matches. His speech is almost unintelligible, and he is inclined to mumble. On top of that I’m not sure just how much of an expert he is, having failed as a manager of four football teams. I suppose the BBC think that they have landed a huge catch, as his wife, Coleen, has signed a £10 million contract with Disney for a family documentary.

Tuesday

Good morning everyone and it’s back to warm sunshine this morning. I heard the sad news this morning that, Maggie’s right-hand man Norman ‘on yer bike’ Tebbit has died at 94. He had the reputation of being tough, but I have heard that he was actually a lovely man. I came into Downing Street long after he had gone to look after his wife who was paralysed when the IRA tried to kill Maggie in the Brighton bomb. But I have heard many tales about what a good man he was.

In another attempt to balance the books, it looks like the Government is likely to scrap the SEND system of funding children with special school needs. The SEND system currently costs approximately £12 billion a year in payments and should probably cost more if all those currently being assessed are granted SEND status. I suspect that this is the Government’s latest attempt to save money following the climbdown on the Benefits Bill. Fortunately, I suspect the Liebore backbenchers will not stand for this, just as they wouldn’t stand for the Benefits cuts.

This morning, I hear that the Scottish ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne has a problem with yet another of its ships. This time it’s the 32-year-old ‘Caledonian Isles’, the ship it normally uses on the run to Arran. The problems started back in January 2024 when the ship was undergoing its annual maintenance. It was found that the ship’s steelwork was suffering from extensive corrosion, and a £5 million repair contract was placed with Cammell Laird in Birkenhead, for the first phase of the necessary works. Apparently, this involved dry docking and removing the engines to give access to some areas. This work entailed supporting the hull on chocks. The ship was returned to CalMac in September and immediately problems were found, including steel shards in a gearbox. A major survey revealed that the hull was distorted with 8 frames bent. Some 18 months after the corrosion was first detected, the ship is still not back in service and CalMac have announced they are suing Cammell Laird to recover the £10.8 million cost of repairing the deformation.

For years now, South Africa have been short of electricity during their winter. Eskom, the state-owned electricity generator and supplier, has struggled under black rule, with poor management and a shortage of money to invest in new generating plant. Consequently, customers have got used to a programme of rolling blackouts for many years. Four years ago, they suffered a major setback when they lost 800 MW of capacity when the Medupi coal-fired power station suffered an explosion to its Number 4 Generator Stator that totally wrecked the part. To get the unit back online, they ‘borrowed’ a stator from a station still under construction. The unit is now back online and building up to full capacity. With another 800 MW unit being commissioned at Kusile Unit No 6 (coal) and 900 MW from Koeberg Unit 2 (nuclear), there is hope that load shedding this winter might just be avoided.

I’m not quite sure that I fully understand things, but I’ll give it a go. The Defence Ministers of Britain, Japan and Italy had a meeting yesterday and announced that they were happy with progress on the GCAP project and that it was running to schedule. Then they announced that 3 national aerospace companies collaborating on the project, to build the 6th generation fighter, have set up a new joint venture company, Edgewing, that will be based in Reading and that the consortium is online to get a contract to build the plane by the end of the year. I thought they were already building a prototype!

The heatwave in Europe this week has led to several French and Swiss nuclear power stations having to shut down. In mainland Europe, the cooling water for the reactors is often drawn from rivers, unlike the U.K. where we normally use seawater. The problem in Europe is that the cooling water discharge has been too warm for the wildlife in the rivers. So, the reactors have been shut down or run on reduced power. I suppose it is fortunate that this is a problem that only occurs in summer when power demand is low.

I must admit I love a good conspiracy theory. Back last year, a satellite known as MethaneSat was launched by NASA with the sole purpose of measuring and pinpointing methane emissions from space. It was geostationary and reported on the US and East Asia with what I understand was remarkable detail for over a year, leading to much embarrassment for some nations. Two weeks ago, NASA lost all contact with the satellite and yesterday they said it seems to be dead. Now I wonder what country has the most to gain by killing the satellite and do they have the ability to do it?

Wednesday

Hi folks, another nice morning weather-wise, but not so good politics-wise. We have more than enough illegal immigrants coming over from Frog land in small boats when the weather is good, so expect more today. I see the little Froggy boss Macaroon is over here on a State Visit, odious little man. Mind you, he has got it right on one thing, we make it too easy for them here. We should cart them off to an uninhabited island in the Shetland Islands and house them in Nissen huts.

I understand that the Scottish MP Hamza Useless has opened his mouth and put his foot in it. He was being interviewed by the Muslim media when he told the interviewer that Elon Musk was a ‘White Supremacist’ and he used his billions to support other white supremacists. Well, I can see Musk’s lawyers rubbing their hands together at the thought of all the fees they are going to earn when they sue Useless for slander.

It seems that the Muslim Council of Britain has a subgroup, known as the Centre for Media Monitoring, who seem to solely look at the bad press coverage Islam gets. A report from the Policy Exchange has revealed that, not content with rebuking attacks on Islam, they are now inventing them. They tell of a criticism of GB News’ Patrick Christys, their evening presenter, who the Centre for Media Monitoring put out a supposed anti-Islamic quote from on a particular date. The only problem was the quote was made up, as Christys was not working that day, nor was he even in the country.

I have been reading about the RAF F35B that is stranded in the Indian state of Kerala. The plane was on an exercise from the carrier HMS Prince of Wales when it developed a fault and made an emergency landing back in mid-June. The fault is such that the plane was beyond repair by local engineers from the Indian Air Force. The £85 million plane had become a tourist attraction at Thiruvananthapuram International Airport but has now been moved into an IAF maintenance hangar where it was under repair by RN engineers from the PoW. It then suffered a second hydraulic failure. Finally, I hear an RAF recovery team has been despatched on board an RAF A400 Atlas with the right equipment and parts. Hopefully, the plane will be back flying soon.

The Underground trains on the London Bakerloo line are 53 years old and, according to Sad Dick, should have been replaced 20 years ago but haven’t been because of the cost. The trains are what is known as deep tube stock, smaller than the trains on the shallow lines like the Metropolitan. However, they are similar to those on the Piccadilly Line, and a factory for their production now exists in Goole, Yorkshire. TfL are reported as saying that the replacement trains will be ordered in the next couple of months and will start to be delivered in 2030. In the meantime, TfL say they need to start upgrading the track infrastructure.

HMS Astute, the nuclear-powered attack submarine, has arrived in Devonport Dockyard for its mid-life maintenance and upgrade. Babcock, who run this dockyard, as well as the Rosyth facility, will be carrying out the work in the newly upgraded facilities. Astute is the first of the Royal Navy’s A Class hunter-killer submarines to become old enough for a mid-life refit, having been launched in 2007. In recent years, Babcock has started submarine refits with the boat still in the water, later moving them to a dry dock. The Astute Class boats have a sealed-for-life Core-H reactor, which means they do not need refuelling. However, we will now be down to one, or perhaps two, Astute Class boats at sea until the sixth of the series, HMS Armageddon, is commissioned later this autumn. The final Astute Class boat, HMS Achilles (originally Agincourt but renamed so as not to annoy the Frogs), is still under construction, having been delayed by a major fire in the building hall.

London St Pancras and Eurostar have issued a letter of intent, revealing their plan to more than triple the number of passengers that can use the international section of the station. The scheme is in 3 phases, with phase one starting almost immediately and aimed at improving the security and border checks to increase the number of passengers the system can handle from 1,800 an hour to 2,700 an hour. Phase two entails improving the international area and its connections to the main concourse, thus helping the passenger flow. The aim is to complete phase 2 by 2030. The third phase is a major rebuild with a redesign of the ground floor to more than double the station’s capacity from 11 million a year to 35 million a year.

Thursday

Hello folks, it’s warmer still this morning, this is really the sort of weather I like, it’s Larry weather. Legohead is not a happy bunny, the latest numbers are terrible. Reform is still leading the polls despite him badmouthing them at every opportunity. His government has dropped to the lowest approval rating on record. His personal ratings are now terrible, with even Bad Enoch preferred to him, and he has no idea what to do about it.

Speaking of numbers, the latest Office of Budget Responsibility report says our economy is so finely balanced that even a tiny fiscal event could push us over the edge, no wonder Robber Reeves was crying. But I see tucked away, unseen by most, is the note that the cost of Net Zero policies is going to be £800 billion by 2050, when we are supposed to be carbon neutral. This is an absolute fortune, and a heavy tax burden on the population. Reform wants to scrap all this green rubbish; this would give a future Reform government lots of spending room. Add in exploiting our own oil and gas and not only will we generate thousands of jobs, but we will also be saving billions in imported energy costs.

Having failed to get his benefits bill through without making amendments that rendered it useless, the government has turned its hand to the Football Regulation Bill, where they think they know better than FIFA and UEFA. I see one huge problem with this Bill; the football authorities have a rule that bans political interference with football regulation. Well, that is exactly what the government are doing. So, we now are moving to a position where we could find UK clubs and national teams being banned from playing in Europe or world competitions. Liebore have ruined just about everything they have touched in the last year; it looks like football is the next thing on the list.

The preliminary report into the Post Office scandal has not minced any words. Although at this stage it has not yet blamed individuals, it has been scathing about organisations. The Post Office, Fujitsu, governments and the organisation set up to compensate sub-postmasters got both barrels in the 160 pages. I expect Legohead will say that ‘lessons have been learned’ and do nothing.

Only a year after getting a 22.3% backdated wage increase, junior doctors yesterday voted for another strike in their pursuit of a mere 29% wage increase. The government says they just don’t have that sort of money and have offered them 5.4%, which is calculated as a 4% wage increase and a £750 ‘consolidation payment’, whatever that is. Of course, junior doctors get rather more than the basic wage they all quote, as they get a number of extras, like for working unsocial hours or shifts, adding up to between 25% and 30%. It was obvious when the government caved in so easily when they came to power last year, that the doctors would be back for more. I wonder where the government will find the money to pay them this time. Perhaps they could scrap Net Zero!

I read that on Monday, 60 pupils and 7 staff at a school in Patcham near Brighton had their 5-day football tour to the Netherlands cancelled at the last minute. The children gathered at the school waiting for their coach to arrive, with loads of parents to wave them off. But when the coach arrived, it crashed into the school’s metal railings, and the door of the luggage compartment was ripped off! I understand that attempts to find an alternative coach proved impossible, and the trip was cancelled, much to the disappointment of the kids.

The chairman of the infected blood investigation has been reported as saying that government has caused more harm to victims by dragging its feet over compensation. This is all down to Liebore as the report only came when they had reached power. The problem seems to be that individual victims are being assessed, and it is taking a long time to talk to everyone. It has been suggested that everyone should get a fixed lump sum, which could then be deducted from their final awards. Such a scheme seems to be beyond the ability of the government to implement.

Friday

Hi everyone, sunny again and getting warmer. I have been listening to some of the stories from the Southport enquiry, and it is so sad. Many of the little girls who survived the attack are still suffering, many from the injuries they received, but many from survivor’s guilt. One little girl who was stabbed 33 times trying to protect others continually asks her parents why she is alive. Another girl needs to sit with a clear view of her classroom door, as she has to see who is coming in the door.

Nigel Farage had a question this week at PMQs, but it was almost impossible to hear what he said because of the heckling from other MPs. Why this is allowed to happen every time he gets to his feet is interesting. The Liebore MPs can’t see that he is a legitimate MP from a party that is actually more popular with the public than their own, and shouting and screaming at him makes Reform stronger and them weaker. But there are a couple of questions that need answering. When someone asks a question, only the microphone nearest them is supposed to be switched on, all the others are turned off. This didn’t seem to occur this time round, and all you could hear was the MP for Gaza, the one who wanted to marry his cousin, wittering on. Then why didn’t the Squeaker intervene? He is quick enough to tell MPs to shut up when any other party leader is being barracked.

I see more Tories are jumping ship this week and joining Reform. Admittedly, they all seem to be either leading Tory supporters or MPs who lost their seats at the last election and not current MPs, but I suspect it is only a matter of time until one does. The latest crossover is the ex-Tory Party Chairman, Sir Jake Berry, and I can hardly say I was surprised. A few months ago, I heard him being asked if he was going to switch parties, as his political position was much nearer Reform than the Tories, and he didn’t give an answer. That set my whiskers twitching. I wonder who will be next.

Fifteen months ago, I seem to remember Reform’s Richard Tice saying that Net Zero was costing the country £30 billion a year and the ‘Powers That Be’ laughed at him. Now the OBR has reported that this is exactly what it is costing us. Intriguingly, I hear that Net Zero is falling apart and two major projects to upgrade the National Grid to allow the Liebore Party’s 2030 aim don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of being ready. Then I hear that rather than the £300 reduction in energy bills, promised by Ed Millipede, the bills are about to go up by another £50.

Interesting bit of news coming out of Greece. They have announced that any illegal immigrants landing in Greece will be immediately arrested and shipped to a detention camp they are building prior to being returned to their own country. No pocket money, no hotel accommodation, no free meals, no chance of a black job delivering pizza or burgers, no free medical attention, no free driving lessons, no free trips to a Premier League match, no free gym, in fact just detention until they beg to go home. Sounds like a plan to me.

In 1994, Kansai International Airport opened on an artificial island in Osaka Bay, Japan. It had taken 20 years to plan and 7 years to build and is now sinking into the sea! The 1,347-acre island has apparently already sunk over 12.5 feet because it was built on soft clay without sufficient foundations. But worse still is a second island built more recently for an airport expansion project; it has sunk a mere 57 feet. I wonder how long it is before it becomes the world’s first underwater airport.

Can someone please explain to me what we get out of the proposed ‘one in, one out’ scheme with the Frogs? I hear that it is supposed to be limited to a maximum of 50 persons a week. These are illegal immigrants who have come from Frog land to Britain on small boats, and the idea is that 50 a week who fail to be granted refugee status will be accepted back by France, who will replace them with 50 ‘genuine’ asylum seekers who have been pre-checked and have relatives already here. So that means we are no better off; we have exactly the same number of immigrants in the country. On top of that, those 50 will be able to bring in their relatives, making us much worse off, and Legohead thinks this is a winning scheme. Even I can see that is total rubbish.

Saturday

Good morning, my happy readers, it was still sunny and warm when I popped down to the bottom of the garden, definitely a Larry day. I see the junior doctors have immediately escalated their wage dispute to strike action and announced the dates later this month of a six-day strike because they say the Government is refusing to negotiate with them. Now I hear that the doctors are saying that their 29% wage increase demand is ‘non-negotiable’. So effectively we have a standoff where both doctors and Government have decided not to talk and have dug their heels in. It’s last year all over again.

An odd little story about the Ginger Growler in the paper. It seems that she has managed to upset Unite the Union in a row over the bin strike in Birmingham. The strike has been going on for months now after the council got themselves into a mess over equal wages. The courts ruled that the council had discriminated against dinner ladies by paying certain bin men more than dinner ladies, cleaners and care workers, that the court said did equal jobs. The council decided to pay the bin men, in particular the more highly paid drivers, less, rather than the thousands of bin ladies more. Of course, the bin men are represented by Unite while the other workers are members of the GMB and Unison. Unite are not happy that the Ginger Growler has been urging them to settle with the council and say they have expelled her from the union. She says she is no longer a member of Unite, so they can’t expel her!

In Stoke-on-Trent it is currently ‘Potters’ Fortnight’, which means that pottery makers close their factories for two weeks and workers must take two weeks’ annual holiday. But this leaves a problem for workers with school-age children. If parents want to take them away, they must take them out of school and risk a fine from Staffordshire County Council for the children having an unauthorised absence. If a child has two such absences, they are dealt with by fines, but a third absence is subject to a court appearance. I really can’t understand why the Council, the Pottery Manufacturers and the Unions can’t get together and sort something out.

Arsenal Women have just broken the world record for a women’s transfer by paying £1 million for a 20-year-old who might not even get into the starting eleven. That is not because the youngster is not good, it’s because Arsenal Women already have a high-quality team. So how have Arsenal managed to afford to spend so much money on what appears to be a substitute and a player for the future? The answer is that last season they played a lot of games at the Emirates Stadium to full or nearly full houses and had the 17th best attendance in British football, that’s both men’s and women’s football. They appeared on TV a lot and won the Women’s Champions League, which alone earnt them over the £1 million they have reinvested.

The residents of Stoney Heath, near Baughurst, Hampshire, are a little upset with Thames Water. The villagers all get their water from Southern Water and have no problem with that. But there is no mains drainage in the village, so every single home has a septic tank for their wastewater and sewage, which on average they pay a contractor to empty every 18 months. So, you can imagine the surprise when every home in the village got a bill from Thames Water for wastewater removal. The bills all seemed to be for around £150. Villagers tried to contact Thames Water, but Thames just weren’t talking, so villagers went to the media, who had more success, and Thames cancelled the bills and closed the accounts. But that wasn’t the end of it, as villagers got a computer-generated letter saying how sorry Thames were to lose them as customers and asking them to fill in a customer satisfaction survey!

When President Macaroon was over here visiting Legohead, he made a great virtue of loaning us the Bayeux Tapestry this autumn, boasting about how it has not been out of France for 900 years. But I understand this generosity is not everything it seems. The Tapestry is normally on show in a special museum in Bayeux, Normandy. But by an odd coincidence, the museum is to be closed for refurbishment in mid-September, exactly when it will go on display in the British Museum.

I see Thames Water has jumped on the latest trend and announced they are to introduce ‘surge pricing’ to customers when water demand is high, like now when the temperature is up. Of course, they need water meters to be able to control this. No wonder they have been installing meters left, right and centre. The rules on water meters are that they are not compulsory, although the water companies can make an excuse to install them that basically means they will enforce installation. They have the right to install a meter in new houses, when someone moves home, when a home has a big water user (like a swimming pool), or if you live in a ‘water stress area’. So basically, all the water companies need to do is declare you live in a water stress area, and they can enforce a meter installation.

Well, that’s me done for the week, and I’m off to the windowsill for a snooze in the sun. Saturdays aren’t so busy as weekdays here in Downing Street, but I do like to be up high so I can see what is going on and who is coming and going, even if it’s only the armed policemen wandering around. Chat to you all next week.
 

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