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

Monday

Good morning, friends. It’s a most unusual day today, a warm and sunny Bank Holiday Monday. It usually rains on a bank holiday, but I think the weather gods have got it wrong, as the forecast is rain tomorrow. The big problem today is that it is the annual Notting Hill Carnival, and a proper carnival day today. Yesterday was supposed to be the family day, a fun day, but I hear that even so, there were 140 arrests, up 40 on the equivalent day last year, many for possession of guns and knives and attacks on the police. You can add to this the 100 arrests before it even began. I hate to think what is going to happen today, adults’ day, if the weather is good.

Compare this to the demonstrations at 27 immigrant hotels yesterday, where I hear there were no arrests at all. The number of hotels being protested is going up every day, as the local people form protest groups and see the success of the legal case against the Epping hotel. I hear the pro-immigrant mob turned up at a couple of hotels, but there are not enough of them to cover the growing number of hotels being protested.

Nigel Farage announced the Reform UK policy on immigration at the weekend. I see it is the polar opposite of Liebore. He wants to quit the ECHR and derogate from UN refugee agreements. Then introduce a UK Bill of Rights that will apply to UK citizens only. Then he will organise up to five extradition flights a day. So, let’s say that’s 250 people a plane or 1,250 a day. Seven days a week is 8,750 a week. Times 52 weeks a year is 455,000 a year. That should stop the small boats.

Interesting opinion poll out this morning saying that 71% think that the government are doing a bad job over the migrant crisis, and this includes 56% of people who voted Liebore at the last election. Only 11% thought the government was doing a good job handling the crisis. The remainder were don’t knows. Not many crossed the Channel in the last few days because there was an easterly wind. Today, the wind in the Channel is much more favourable, south-westerly, to small boat crossings, so I expect a big number in the next couple of days as the pent-up demand is released and the wind is more southerly.

What I want to know is why the Ginger Growler needs a holiday home in Hove. Her office said that she needed a place within easy reach of London, hence the £800,000 apartment on the seafront. But she already has a grace and favour residence in Admiralty Arch. Of course, she has her home in her constituency in Ashton-under-Lyne, which is worth £650,000. What I just don’t understand is when she is going to get to Hove. Surely, whenever she is not busy with matters of state, she should be in her constituency dealing with their problems. For the last year, she has been on about £159,000 per annum, and before that she was on an ordinary MP’s money. So, how could she afford this second property?

Richard Tice, the Reform UK energy spokesman, has warned the oil and gas industry to be prepared for drilling and fracking when they come to power. The idea of burning our own gas to generate electricity is, in my mind, quite sensible. We have hundreds of years of recoverable gas under our feet, meaning cheap power only if the government had the common sense and will to exploit it. Well, it seems that Reform UK do. Their party conference in early September is going to be interesting.

Legohead keeps boasting about how he has managed to get NHS hospital waiting lists down. But then I read that cancer patients have been abandoning the NHS, as waiting lists are so long, and going private for prompt treatment. Nearly 96,000 cancer patients were treated in private hospitals in the last year, an increase of 30%. So, he has made it so hard to get treatment that people have taken themselves off the waiting list to spend their own money going private. I suppose he thinks that’s working well.

Tuesday

Good morning, everyone. A bit of patchy sun when I wandered down the garden before breakfast. The final numbers for Notting Hill arrests and crimes are not out until lunchtime, but the provisional number at 8 last night was 423, with two stabbed people with life-threatening injuries. But there are always more arrests late on Monday evening. The Met used 7,000 police, at heaven knows what cost in money and crimes in the rest of London, and think they are doing a good job. I wonder how many crimes were reported and there was no one arrested.

I read that in Scottishland, police recruits have been having courses in reading and writing English. It seems the authorities are worried that the standard of recruits has slipped so badly that new recruits are having problems making themselves understood and writing reports. It rather bothers me that the police forces of these nations gave up hiring ex-soldiers as policemen and women when they introduced a minimum qualification of a university degree. This seems to have resulted in the loss of common-sense policemen and replaced them with woke graduates who can’t read or write English properly.

I was happy to see Englishman Tommy Fleetwood win his first PGA Tour event at his 164th attempt. The Tour Championship was played at the East Lake Golf Club, Atlanta. Interestingly, he won the biggest prize of his career, a mere $10,000,000. I wonder how much tax he will have to pay on that.

Russia has just rolled out the fifth prototype of its MC-21-310 single-aisle jet. This is a ‘Russianised’ version of the plane, almost totally replacing western components with Russian-made parts. I am led to believe that this has increased the weight of the aircraft by over six tonnes, as some of the composite structures have had to be replaced and the Russian jet engines are heavier. The original version had Pratt & Whitney PW1000G engines, but these are no longer available due to sanctions. The major problem now is that, however nice the cabin looks to passengers, the plane cannot now meet the specifications it was sold to, mainly because the Russian-built Aviadvigatel PD-14 turbofan is heavier than, and not as powerful as, the P&W geared turbofan it is replacing. Aeroflot is the lead customer with over 100 aircraft on order, and I wonder how happy they are that the MC-21-310 will not have the range, fuel consumption or height capability of the aircraft they originally ordered.

The government has warned hotels housing asylum seekers that they must be prepared to house criminals, including sex criminals and arsonists. These include those on remand and those who have arrived on small boats, and we don’t know if they have records. I wonder why the warning. Is it because they need to warn the hotels about the criminals to ensure that their insurance cover is correct? Thinking about insurance, I wonder if the hotels housing migrants are violating their insurance by letting their accommodation to the government rather than the public.

I was intrigued to read that the Reform UK Party Conference is to have two hosts at the NEC in Birmingham on the 5th and 6th of September. I wasn’t surprised to learn that one was going to be Dr David Bull. He was brought into the party’s structure just for this sort of thing and is a polished performer on the public stage. But it is the second host that came as a bit of a surprise. They have employed Jeremy Kyle. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, because whenever I have seen him on Talk recently, it has been clear that he has become a Reform supporter.

The British marine design group BMT has unveiled its latest design, the Ellida Strike concept. The idea is a Multi-Role Strike Ship that has a loading well for landing craft and a flat deck that is capable of taking two Chinook helicopters at the same time. In addition, it is capable of carrying the stores necessary for a naval action. From that description, I’m sure you have worked out that it’s a big ship, 213 metres long by 13 metres wide. It has a huge vehicle deck with a mezzanine over some of it, so it can accommodate both low and high vehicles. As designed, its main armaments are for self-defence and include 2 x Bofors 40mm Mk 4 cannons, 2 x Dragon Fire-type LDEW mounts and 2 x Ancilia airborne decoy launchers. But forward of the bridge is a large area which could easily accommodate offensive weapons, like the NATO standard VLS or a large gun, depending on a customer’s situation. Somehow, I doubt the government is interested in building such a ship. They have no imagination.

Wednesday

Hi folks, the weather seems to be on the change. The clouds are building up as the remnants of an Atlantic hurricane move over us. Yesterday, I forgot to tell you that Legohead was back from Scottishland and is not very happy. It seems that he came back to yet more bad news. The number not in employment or work went up yet again in July. The number crossing the Channel in small boats started to increase on Saturday, changes in direction of the wind. I haven’t seen yesterday’s Notting Hill final arrest number yet, but the last I saw was over 650 for the weekend, including the bank holiday.

Down in Australia, I read that Babcock Australia is working to recover reusable equipment from HMAS Anzac. Anzac was the first of eight Anzac-class frigates to be built and the first to be decommissioned. So far, I hear Babcock have removed the vertical launch missile system, propulsion diesel engines, propellers, drive train components and other platform and combat systems, which are now available as spares for the remaining seven ships of the class. We don’t seem to do the same thing in the UK. We sell off our old ships to third-world nations, who are quick to buy them because we maintain them so well.

The organisation ‘Sex Matters’ is taking the Corporation of the City of London to the High Court over stopping them from letting Trans men use the women’s swimming pond at Hampstead Heath. There are three swimming ponds, and they were designated ‘Men’, ‘Women’ and ‘Mixed’. However, the City of London Council put up notices saying the women’s pool was for women and transgender women. Sex Matters has asked the Council to return the pool to women only, in line with the recent Supreme Court ruling, but to no avail. Hence the court case to get them to enforce the law.

Just before the Cricket One Day Cup competition got underway, Yorkshire were landed with a problem when Indian opener Ruturaj Gaikwad withdrew from the team for personal family reasons. Yorkshire scrabbled around for a replacement and signed Pakistan’s top-order batter, Imam-ul-Haq. And aren’t they glad they did. He has now played in five matches and scored over 500 runs, including 3 centuries and 10 sixes. Yorkshire are now top of their division, having won six of their seven matches. Whatever they are paying him, it’s a bargain.

It’s busy days at Babcock Rosyth. The first Type 31 frigate, HMS Ventura, is in Dry Dock No.3. A nuclear-powered submarine is being decommissioned in Dry Dock No.2. Dry Dock No.1 has just seen HMS Queen Elizabeth in for scheduled routine maintenance, including being repainted. The next two Type 31s are under construction under cover in the Ventura building. Ventura has just had her main mast installed and is being fitted with her radar and communication equipment. It’s nice to see a busy dockyard.

Just north of Hendon Station on the Thameslink Line, there is a strip of land that used to be a goods yard. The strip is sandwiched between the railway line and the M1 and varies between 13 metres and 26 metres wide but is 900 metres long. A planning application has just gone in to develop the site, and it is an interesting idea. The application shows a two-storey podium that runs virtually the full length of the site. On the podium, the plan calls for a string of six towers varying in height from 19 to 29 storeys. The finished development would deliver 368 homes, a 243-bed hotel and a 246-bed student block. The massive project is planned to take nine years to complete and would be built in phases, starting with site clearance and driving piles to support the podium, which would take two years. Next would come the podium and then the first of the towers, and then never more than work on three towers at once. Each tower would be expected to take three years to build, and the whole job to be completed by 2034 and employ 500 people while being built. No mention of cost, but a job like that isn’t going to be cheap.

The news on new coal-fired power plants coming out of China is interesting. Despite the promise to reduce the use of fossil fuels and to switch to renewable energy, it seems they commissioned 21 GWs of coal-fired plant in the first six months of this year. But this is nothing when compared to the 80 GWs that are due to be commissioned in the whole of 2025. Just how many power stations this represents is questionable, as the current world’s largest power station, Tuoketuo Power Station in China, has 2 x 300 MWs, 10 x 600 MWs and 2 x 660 MWs units. Newer stations are being built with 1,000 MW units, so if China were to employ units that size, that would be 80 new units or 40 power stations with, say, four units each. In the UK, we have an installed grid capacity of around 100 GWs, and Hinkley Point C will add 1.72 GWs when it comes online. By comparison, Chinese coal-fired development is mad. By the way, Tuoketuo PS produces 29.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Thursday

Hello folks, well it was nice and bright when I woke up this morning, but it was pouring down only seconds after I got back indoors. Interesting news out this morning, a report says that the Government’s subsidies on wind farms have led to electricity bills going up. Of course, a Government spokesman has just been on the radio denying this, but I must say his arguments were not convincing in the slightest.

A new YouGov opinion poll out has Liebore down on 20%, the lowest they have been since coming to power. Reform UK are on 28%, and if that were to be repeated in a general election, it would be a Reform Government. My guess is that people saw the Reform press conference yesterday and loads jumped from Liebore to Reform.

Last week, Arsenal bought Eberechi Eze from Crystal Palace for a mere £68 million. How much he is being paid is anyone’s guess, but I bet you it is tens of thousands of pounds a week. On Sunday, he was introduced to the crowd at the Emirates Stadium. He walked onto the pitch wearing an Arsenal shirt and a pair of jeans, but what intrigued me was that he was wearing a £19.99 wristwatch from Argos. Most footballers would have on a thousand-pound watch. I must say I like the idea of him wearing a cheap watch. No one is going to mug him for that.

After Tuesday’s Reform press conference on immigration and Farage’s excellent performance, I see he was in Scottishland yesterday holding another press conference. This time he was announcing a Scottish Tory quitting the party and joining Reform. What I found amazing was that he took a mere 37 questions from the press without any notification. He did a similar thing on Tuesday. I find his ability to answer questions off the cuff most impressive.

I find it interesting that Liebore have been changing their stance on immigration bit by bit. When Farage said he would negotiate to return people to Iran and Afghanistan, some in the Liebore hierarchy were highly critical of Reform even contemplating a deal with the Taliban. But this morning, Legohead said he would negotiate with the Taliban! But it’s not just Legohead, several of the old hierarchy have come around to leaving the ECHR.

I see that SpaceX has finally had a successful launching of its Starship, the world’s biggest space rocket. The Starship is going to be used by NASA for the return to the Moon. So far, four launches have all failed, including one that blew up on the launch pad. This time, the rocket even succeeded in doing a controlled descent into the sea. One huge step remains. The Starship needs to be refuelled in space by a tanker version of Starship to get it to the Moon and back.

It looks like the French Government is about to collapse. This would cause a bit of a problem over the ‘one in, one out’ agreement. It seems that the French were supposed to have accepted the first batch of our immigrants yesterday. Under the agreement, the French had until midnight last night to accept or reject them. However, they seem to have defaulted on the agreement and neither accepted nor rejected the names on the list we gave them. Could it be the potential collapse of the French Government that has caused the problem?

Friday

Hi everyone, what a horrible morning. Torrential rain woke me up several times during the night, battering the window. When I finally woke up properly, when it was light, it had eased a little, so I sprinted down the garden. I don’t think I have ever told you that a man has to let me out of the back door as well as the front door. There are no cat flaps at No. 10 because the door blast-proof integrity would be breached.

The news came out late last night that the Ginger Growler has swapped her principal residence to her new flat in Hove Actually, and in doing so has saved £40,000 in Stamp Duty. She has not done anything illegal, but for the Government Minister in charge of Housing it is not a very good look. But as an aside, only a few days ago a spokesman for the Ginger Growler said that her property in her constituency was her principal residence and would remain so. Now it seems her name was taken off the constituency house several weeks before she bought the property in Hove Actually. Has someone been trying to mislead us?

Is satellite TV coming to an end in the UK? The three Astra satellites that broadcast Sky and Freesat to the UK are coming to the end of their life in 2027, 2028 and 2029. Freesat is already shutting down stations, and its owners have started to switch to the internet-based service Freely. You might ask why they are not switching to Freeview. Well, it is going too. The licence for the wavelengths used by the HD channel expires in November next year, but the SD channel will follow them in 2034.

Sky has a big decision to make. Are they going to launch costly new satellites? The latest Astra satellite that broadcasts to mainland Europe cost $52 million and many millions more to operate the uplinks. Sky, by their actions, seem to be indicating they too are moving their business to internet-based services, having introduced Sky Glass TVs, Sky Stream set-top devices, and stopped advertising Sky Q, their satellite system. I think that we are soon going to see the end of satellite TV.

The price of energy is going up again in the autumn. In the run-up to the General Election last July, Ed Millipede promised our energy bills would be reduced by £300 per household (and an owl). Instead of coming down, the bill seems to have already gone up £180 a household.

Now I read that the life expectancy of a wind farm is between 20 and 25 years. This means that many wind farms are now close to becoming time-expired. I hear the blades can’t be recycled, and even with anti-rust paint the main bodies of the turbines are rusting, especially those at sea. I am waiting to hear anyone talking about dismantling costs.

Boeing and Pratt & Whitney have a bit of a problem. The FAA has set a deadline of 4th March 2028 by which 777s with PW4000-112 engines must have design changes. This is because 777s with these engines have suffered a string of turbine blade failures and even a fire. No such requirements apply to 777s powered by GE Aerospace GE90 or Rolls-Royce Trent turbofans, as the fault is limited to the Pratt & Whitney engine.

The problem seems to be that Boeing and Pratt are struggling to get a design fix and are asking the FAA for regulatory exemption to a specific blade-out testing rule. I’m afraid I can’t understand the logic of this. If the blades are exempted, they will just carry on using faulty blades and sooner or later there is going to be a crash.

The Ministry of Defence has announced a new project called Project Nightfall. The project is to develop a new ground-launched tactical ballistic missile. The Single Statement of User Need says, “The User requires a cost-effective, tactical (>500km) ballistic missile, capable of being safely ground launched from a mobile platform in a high-threat tactical environment, navigating to and accurately striking a user-programmed co-ordinate.”

The document goes on to state the range must be a minimum of 500 km, the warhead a minimum of 200 kg of high explosive, an accuracy of circular error of probability of 5 metres, to be able to hit a target within ten minutes of launch, to fire two rockets from a launcher within ten minutes, and to supply a minimum of ten a month. Companies have until 18th September to respond and nine months to prove a successful launch from the placement of a contract. I wonder how many companies will respond.

It appears that the Government is about to do a U-turn on free TV licences for pensioners. The word I hear is that as of 1st January 2026, if you are over 65 you will be entitled to a free licence. There are a few other provisos. They must be retired, be receiving a state or private pension, and live alone or with a partner of a similar age. If you have paid for a licence that runs past 1st January, I understand you will get a pro-rata refund. I hope the story is right. My scribe can put the money towards his next cruise.

I hear that Qantas has ordered another 20 A321XLR planes to add to the 27 it had already ordered. The new planes will be fitted with 16 lie-flat seats in business class. This may help to solve a little problem I hear the XLR has. It is designed to operate on long routes, and because of its long range it can be in the air for over 11 hours.

On flights this long, the wide-body jets like the A350 and the Boeing 777 have crew rest areas where a pilot can get a few hours’ sleep. But this doesn’t exist on the A321XLR because it wasn’t originally designed for such long flights. Pilots and crew on a rest break have been having to sit in normal rows of seats. But could a lie-flat seat be the answer to this little problem?

Saturday

Good morning people, another showery morning, but I managed to not get wet when I nipped out. I don’t know which is the bigger story this morning — the Ginger Growler switching her main residence to save Stamp Duty or the three judges with Liebore connections finding for the Government in the Epping Asylum Hotel case. Whichever it is, Legohead is not a happy bunny and was stomping around before her departed to Chequers.

I read that this summer has been a bumper one for British vineyards, with grapes ripening early this summer and, with the large amount of sunshine, the sugar content is high and particularly good for making still wine. Last year, vineyards added 1,000 hectares of vines, taking the area in production to 4,841, from 3,763 hectares the year before. The only problem with this additional amount is that it takes several years for a grape vine to become established. In their first year, they may produce some grapes, but not enough to make wine commercially. Next autumn, provided the weather is decent, there should be enough grapes to make wine, but probably not a huge amount. It is not until the third crop that the grower will know if they have a successful crop, both in quality and quantity.

At the Tower of London, a team from Historic Royal Palaces is undertaking an archaeological dig. It is concentrating on the Tower’s church, the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula, the burial place for Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Sir Thomas More. The current building dates from 1500 but is based on much older foundations. So far, the archaeologists have gone deeper than ever before and have found over 50 bodies, rare artefacts and indications of Tudor-era and medieval chapels. They have recently found what is believed to be a burial pit for sufferers of the Black Death. I hope it doesn’t release it into the atmosphere.

This week’s Find Out Now opinion poll puts Reform UK on a highest ever 34%, with Liebore on 18%, the Tories on 15%, and the Limp Dumps on 13%. This makes the Reform lead a mere 16%. The Reform vote is more than the combined vote of Liebore and the Tories. According to Election Maps, this would mean a Reform government with 407 seats. Liebore would fall to 68 seats, the Tories would be reduced to just 14 seats, and the Limp Dumps would be the official opposition with 72 seats.

One of the companies planning to run train services to the Continent in opposition to Eurostar, start-up company Gemini, has joined up with Uber Trains. They plan not to run their services out of St. Pancras, but to start and stop their services at Stratford International, a station that Eurostar trains currently run straight through. When the station was rebuilt and enlarged at the time of the London Olympics, all the infrastructure for customs, immigration and tracks was installed, but has never been used.

Gemini plan to initially run services to Paris and Brussels, but to later expand services to Cologne, from where you can switch to the German high-speed train network. They have also suggested they would like to expand their services to several UK cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow.

A year or so ago, a man won a High Court case against Transport for London over the expanded Congestion Charge zone. He had been issued with a fine for driving in the zone and not paying the charge, but he proved in court that the TfL Congestion Charge signage did not comply with the very specific rules for road signage laid down by the Department for Transport. As part of the judgement, TfL were required to refund anyone who had been fined in the expanded zone up to the day of judgement.

Of course, Sad Dicks’ TfL has done no such thing, has not altered the signage, and has continued to issue fines to motorists. I see a new case is now about to come to court to enforce the judgement and, if TfL loses, it will literally cost them many millions. This might be interesting.

I read that the beautiful island of Dominica, in the Caribbean Lesser Antilles, is building a new international airport in the hope of attracting more tourists. At the moment, it is a bit of a faff getting there, as you must fly to one of the bigger islands, or even Miami, where there is an international airport, and then make the final leg either by small plane to one of the two small airports or even take a ferry. The island’s tourism is so small that they only get around 200,000 people a year, and many of those visit on the occasional cruise ship stop at Roseau, the capital and biggest city. The new airport will have a runway and facilities capable of taking big jets flying direct from Europe. I only hope that they have also built the hotels to go along with it.

Well, that’s me done for the week and it’s nap time. I’m afraid it’s a little wet outside, so it’s no windowsill nap for me this afternoon. I do enjoy my afternoon snooze in the fresh air, so I will miss being outdoors, but I do hate getting my fur wet. Chat to you all next week.
 

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