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

Monday

Good morning friends. The sun was peeping through the window when I woke up this morning, so I trotted down to the back door. By the time the man had opened it, the sun had gone and it looked like rain. I just got indoors, and the heavens opened. Gosh, I was lucky. I love the story in the papers this morning about the Queen hitting a groper on a train in the balls with her shoe. It all happened a long time ago when she was a teenager, but I bet she would do it again today. She has come up in my admiration, but I still like Princess Anne best.

That awful Bridget Phillipson was on the TV at the weekend, confirming that the Government think that asylum seekers have more rights in this country than its indigenous population. No wonder the lead held by Reform in the polls keeps growing. This can only make Liebore poll numbers fall even further. I see in a poll over the weekend that it was reported the Steptoe party is likely to eat into the teen vote that Liebore thought they would collar by bringing in votes at sixteen. I wonder if Legohead is having regrets.

A bit of a mini-reshuffle happening at No. 10 this morning. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, has been moved to a newly created position of Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, and the Head of Communications has ‘resigned’. Darren Jones is the idiot who was shouted down by the lefty Panorama audience when he said 80% of the people coming across the Channel in small boats were women and children, exactly the reverse of the truth. No more news as I write, but someone is going to have to replace Jones.

I see that Sky TV has signed a 3-year deal to show American football from the NFL and will be showing more live games in competition with 5. Personally, I don’t understand what’s going on when I see it on TV. I see lots of men in padded suits and helmets chasing a giant egg around a field, and every so often someone shouts ‘Touchdown’. Still, I hear it has a cult following in the UK, so good luck with the audience numbers. But I still don’t know how they can call it football when they rarely kick the giant egg.

I wonder if the people down in Devon are happy to learn that their local train operator, SouthWest Trains, is to introduce old Class 175 diesel trains that were replaced by Transport for Wales. They will be based at GWR’s Laira depot in Plymouth, where the 25-year-old trains will replace even older trains. The 26 trains look to be going to be around for some time, as SouthWest have signed an 8-year deal with Alstom to maintain the 26 trains.

Excellent news for British industry yesterday when news emerged that the Norwegian Ministry of Defence has ordered 5 × Type 26 City Class frigates with support for £10 billion. That takes the number of Type 26 frigates to be built to well over 30. When the order for the Type 26 was originally placed with BAE Systems, it was for 13 frigates, but this was later reduced to 8 to save money. The remaining ships are being built to the BAE design in Australia and Canada, with BAE design input. All 30-odd ships will be powered by a Rolls-Royce gas turbine and have four MTU (a Rolls-Royce subsidiary) diesel engines for power generation. This has been good news for the defence companies on the stock market today. BAE, Rolls and even Babcock have jumped.

The only problem with the Norwegian frigate order is that it specifies the first ship must be delivered in 2029. The ships take 66 months each to build, so that means that if we were to start building one for them today, it couldn’t be delivered in time. Now two of the type have been moved out of the fabrication shed and are being fitted out to Royal Navy specification in BAE Scotstoun. The next three ships are in various stages of fabrication in what BAE call their ‘Frigate Factory’ in their Govan fabrication yard. So, the answer seems to be that Norway will be allocated Hull 3 or Hull 4, and their other four ships will be interlaced with the RN order. Robber Reeves will be delighted, as this will push several of the RN ships back, meaning she has less money to find.

Tuesday

Good morning everyone. A better morning and bright, but it’s rain later according to the forecast. I heard a cry of ‘Oh no, not another one’ from Legohead’s office late last night. I did wonder what was going on, and then I realised he was watching a football transfer programme on the TV and his beloved Arsenal had had another busy day with players coming in and going out at the last minute before the window slammed shut. I fear that next time he goes to the Emirates, he won’t know anyone who is playing. By the way, it is Legohead’s 63rd birthday today. I wonder if he’s having a party with chicken legs to eat. I like chicken legs.

I don’t know if it is true or just the media making things up, but there have been stories in the papers and on the internet that the real reason why the Ginger Growler has bought an apartment in Hove Actually is that it is one of the few Liebore seats that is likely to remain red in the event of a Reform landslide. However, her current seat in Ashton is very likely to go to Reform. The papers speculate that the Ginger Growler is on a ‘chicken run’, in other words skipping from an unsafe seat to a safe seat. There is one major problem with that. The duplex apartment is in the constituency of Portslade and Hove, which is currently the seat of Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, and not likely to stand aside.

In the past, I have told you about the electricity supply problems of Cuba. The current problems seem to be insurmountable. They are short of generating capacity, and what they do have is very outdated. In addition, the grid cannot cope with the peak warm weather demand. On top of that, they have been suffering with low-quality fuel oil supplies from Venezuela and have had to go to China and Mexico for better quality supplies. In the last eight months, there have been eight nationwide blackouts. In May, electricity demand rose to 3.05 GW when the maximum available was just 1.9 GW. At the moment, the power needs of Cuba are about half its capacity. I read that it will take five years and something like $8 billion to put right. In the meantime, China is building 92 solar parks, which they say will generate 2 GW. I wonder how they will get by on warm tropical nights when there is no sun but huge demand for air conditioning.

Two police firearms officers who had the temerity to ask a star for a photo with them while on duty were stripped of their firearms status and suspended. However, I see that they appealed and yesterday won it. They are now reinstated and returned to firearms duty. A few years ago, a sergeant would have taken them on one side and said, “Lads, this doesn’t look very good. Don’t do it again.” But today it’s straight to suspension. I wonder which method works best.

The Government is desperately trying to encourage people to buy electric vehicles. Its latest idea is to make it easier for people to charge an EV at home by removing the need for planning permission for a charger if you have a drive or live on a private road. They have already made chargers compulsory on new houses. I wonder how many people who move into a new house have an EV. Still, I suppose it means that the number of installed chargers is made to look better.

I hear the Government Car Service and the Metropolitan Police Close Protection Squad have determined that they can’t replace the existing Range Rovers they currently use to transport the likes of Legohead and his ministers with the new electric version. Apparently, there are two reasons. It is already very heavy, but by the time all the required armour and reinforcements for bomb-proofing are added, it is too heavy. Then there are worries that it doesn’t have the range to make many of the trips they need to make without frequent recharging.

Yesterday, Mrs Balls told Parliament a load of waffle about immigrants and how wonderfully the Government was doing handling the problems. Apparently, they will now be starting deportations later this month. Since the ‘one in, one out’ agreement was signed, it’s been 3,567 in and none out.

Wednesday

Hi folks. The weather was just a little wet this morning when I headed down the garden. I got a little damp, but when I was in the middle of my Felix, the heavens opened. I hear that the Ginger Growler is going to make an announcement this morning about her not paying the correct amount of stamp duty. I hear on the grapevine that she has taken advice from a barrister, and he has advised her she hasn’t paid the correct stamp duty. This rather makes all those Liebore people who said she had done nothing wrong look a bit stupid.

The press like to get a story and then, over the next few days, run with it and investigate it. The story of the Ginger Growler’s homes seems to be the gift that goes on giving. It now transpires that she says she has been gagged from explaining more under a court case. Of course, that will set the press off trying to find out what the case they know nothing about is about.

I see the press is already twisting the press announcement that Reform’s Richard Tice made on Monday. He explained how, in the 13 Reform-run councils, they had discovered that they were nearly all paying more than expected for commissions on pension fund investments. He said that by paying only the average commission, the overpaid amount came to around £350 per council taxpayer and this would give councils enough to run world-class social services. The lefty papers say Reform promised everyone will pay £350 less on council tax. No, they didn’t.

I have heard loads of reasons why illegal immigrants can’t be deported, ranging from chicken nuggets, ‘my husband can’t take the Caribbean heat’, ‘my children will miss me’ to ‘I have a pet cat’ and ‘I can’t be sent to Pakistan because I’m an alcoholic’. Yesterday, I heard that a woman couldn’t be sent back to Sri Lanka because she is too depressed to fly. Why can’t we send her by land or boat?

I read that the National Trust and the Environment Agency have got together to try to reintroduce the water vole to the upper reaches of the River Wey, where they are locally extinct. Yesterday, they released 200 water voles with the hope that they can re-establish themselves. I suspect that the barn owls and otters that caused them to disappear in the first place are delighted to find dinner has been delivered to them.

There seems to be a bit of difficulty over the French, German and Spanish Future Combat Air System (FCAS), a sixth-generation fighter aircraft. Right from the beginning of the project, there were rows over the split of the €100 billion tri-nation project. Who amongst Dassault, Airbus and Spanish company Indra was to build what, who was to lead on design, who was to design the systems and who was to lead on the unmanned drones that are supposed to support the jet. Well, it seems development has come to a virtual standstill because Dassault are blocking negotiations over the plane. I hear the Germans are threatening to pull out of the project. I wonder if they are thinking of joining the Tempest project, which seems to be progressing nicely.

It appears that Nigel Farage is getting fed up with Legohead either ignoring him or being rude to him. In a public statement, he said that as a party leader he had not been invited to the President Trump lunch, a man he has been a friend of for years. Again, as a party leader he is entitled to nominate peers but is being ignored. Legohead is often rude and dismissive of him in the Commons. Jokingly, Farage said he got rid of Cameron, Boris and May, so Legohead better watch out.

Thursday

Hello folks. Another rather nasty morning with heavy showers for me to dodge. The more I hear about the Ginger Growler, the deeper in the mire she seems to be. Now the press is saying that she sold her quarter share in the house in her constituency that used to be her marital home to the trust set up to look after her disabled son. Apparently, the trust was set up by the NHS to look after the compensation paid when her son was damaged during birth, and she is a trustee. I wonder why the trust thinks the Ginger Growler’s son needs three-quarters of a house instead of half a house, with the other half owned equally by his mother and father. Can the Ginger Growler keep her jobs?

Reform-led West Northamptonshire Council is serving Planning Contravention Notices to the owners of three migrant hotels. They give the hotel owners 21 days to respond to the Notices. It looks like Reform have learnt from the Tories over the Epping hotel and are bending over backwards to do things by the book. They also have the advantage of being fresh administrations and can legitimately say that they weren’t responsible for the actions of the previous administration.

The Doom Goblin doesn’t learn from her experiences. She has just set off from Barcelona in a small boat to take relief to Gaza and expose the murderous Israelis. You may remember that she pulled the same stunt earlier this year and was arrested by the Israelis. Because she is in the public eye, she was treated gently. They gave her a turkey sandwich, tried to show her a documentary about the 7th of October massacre (which she refused to watch), and put her on a plane to Paris (sat next to the toilet). This time the Israelis say they will not be so nice. They will treat her as a terrorist and put her in a cell. Maybe she will learn something this time, but she is so stupid I doubt it.

I hear that Arsenal has an innovative clause in two of their loan contracts this year. They have loaned out Jacob Kiwior to Portuguese club Porto and loaned in Piero Hincapié from Bayer Leverkusen. All the clubs wanted to include options to buy the players in a year’s time, but this created a problem in that if they did, the transfer rules say the deal must be included in this year’s accounts, and that wasn’t what anyone wanted. So, these contracts include a ‘Put’ option allowing the selling club to activate the purchase next year. In this case, it suits everyone as both Bayern and Arsenal were bumping up against the total amount of spend this season they can make under the regulations. Porto are happy not to spend Kiwior’s purchase price until next year, and the deals are virtually guaranteed to go through.

Up at Babcock’s Rosyth Dockyard, they are, as I mentioned before, busy dismantling nuclear-powered submarine HMS Swiftsure. There are numerous other nuclear submarines waiting to be dismantled in both Rosyth and Devonport, but it is a slow process and must be done carefully because of the radioactivity. The Government has just announced that it is to spend £340 million on the infrastructure at Rosyth to support dismantling. But it will also go towards creating an alternative dock for HMS Dreadnought and her fellow submarines in the class.

Workers at Aldi have this week been awarded a surprise 2p-an-hour wage increase on top of the wage increase that took their absolute minimum wage to £13.00 an hour. They have always prided themselves on paying above the national minimum wage of £12.21 and being the best payer among the major supermarkets. Aldi’s big rival Lidl have recently increased their minimum wage to £13.00 to match Aldi. So, this is the new response from Aldi — an increase of 2p an hour to £13.02. I hope those working a 40-hour week are happy with their extra 80p a week (less deductions) and don’t spend it all at once.

I see that Mrs Balls has a cunning plan to get students to go home at the end of their courses, instead of being visa overstayers. The problem in the UK is that the number of visa overstayers is enormous. I just heard someone on the radio saying there were in the region of 1.3 million in the UK right now. So, what is her wonderful plan? She wants to send them a text at the end of their course to remind them to go home. This cat says that will make a fat lot of difference.

Friday

Hi everyone. Wow, it was sunny this morning when I woke up. A pleasant trip down to the bottom of the garden, but it could have been a bit warmer. Is today the day the report on the Ginger Growler’s housing debacle is published? Rumours say it could be. If the report is bad for her, will she resign or will she be sacked? Because the position of Deputy Leader of the Liebore Party is elected by the Liebore Party members, Legohead cannot sack her from that, but she can be sacked from all her other positions and left a lame duck.

The police have once again shown themselves up. This time, five armed officers turned up at Heathrow Airport to arrest Irish comedian and comedy writer Graham Linehan (Father Ted and The IT Crowd) as he stepped off the plane. The police then took him to an interview room and questioned him for hours over three tweets he posted while in Arizona about trans women. He was later released on police bail, who set the condition that he couldn’t use X (Twitter). The police also kept his digital devices. I understand the case has been taken up by the Free Speech Union, who have a reputation for taking on such cases and winning substantial damages.

The Kindle rival, Kobo Reader, has been boasting about its latest software upgrade and how it has given its devices many things that don’t exist on a Kindle. The only thing is that the software upgrade was sent out over the internet to every Kobo device, new and old. While it seems to work well on all the new devices, it has caused problems on many of the older devices. Old devices get stuck in a ‘boot loop’, continually trying to restart, running the new software and failing, rendering the device totally useless. Kobo have pulled the software update so that if you haven’t installed the update, you are OK. However, if you have installed the software and your Kobo is stuck in a ‘boot loop’, it seems the only solution that is currently on offer is to reset the device. But this will wipe out all settings and books on the reader, turning it back to how it would be when factory fresh.

Following on from the Norwegian order for five Type 26 Frigates, I hear that discussions are taking place with both Denmark and Sweden for the sale to them of frigates, but this time it would be for the Type 31s built by Babcock at Rosyth. From what I hear, Denmark is looking to order 3 x Type 31 Frigates as early as this month and is negotiating to build more in Denmark under licence. Sweden is looking to order 4 x Type 31 Frigates built at Rosyth, with the order hopefully to be placed before the year end. I also hear that Babcock are in talks with Saab to build Luleå-class corvettes at Rosyth for use by the Swedish Navy and possible export. I hear that if the multiple contracts come good, Babcock would have to expand its shipbuilding facilities at Rosyth and a second indoor building facility would be constructed.

I hear that a Somalian asylum seeker has decided that he has had enough being stuck in ‘unsafe’ Nuneaton, where he has lived for two decades, and has approached the Home Office to self-deport him back to safer Mogadishu under a scheme introduced by Liebore. The only problem is, he first requested to be assisted in returning to Somalia over five months ago and to date he has heard nothing back from the Home Office. You would have thought they would have been bending over backwards to send as many back to their homeland as possible, but apparently they can’t be bothered.

I have always thought that the Green Party tended to collect weirdos, and with the landslide election of Zack Polanski as their new leader, they have done nothing to disprove my belief. In his winner’s acceptance speech, he confirmed that he was going to run the party with a mixture of far-left, Gaza-loving, asylum seeker-loving, trans-loving, woke, and oddball policies. In the past, Polanski has been a Limp Dump and a hypnotist. He even told people that women could enlarge their breasts by thought. His politics are rather similar to those of the new Steptoe party, whatever it decides to call itself. I see he wants 30 seats in the next parliament. Are there enough people on the far left of politics to elect that many Greens?

I learn that Iran Air has retired the world’s oldest A300 at the grand old age of 41. It was manufactured and first flew in 1984 and has been in continuous service since then, first for carriers in Finland, Turkey, and the UK before joining Iran Air in 2009. The Airbus A300B4 was the world’s first type of twin-engine widebody jet, which was very different at the time but very common today. By the early 2000s, the world’s airlines were moving on from the A300, and the likes of the A330 and the B767 were all the rage. But Iran was, and still is, under sanctions and had to take whatever planes it could get its hands on. Iran Air still operates several of the newer A300-600R models (on average only 32 years old) and has more recently managed to smuggle in five ex-Singapore Airways Boeing 777-200s, by a circuitous route, at a time when many world airlines are disposing of them.

Saturday

Good morning, people. Another lovely sunny morning and a bit warmer than yesterday. A lovely day yesterday with the Reform UK conference and lots of interesting speeches. But it was the Ginger Growler’s downfall and the subsequent cabinet reshuffle I liked. Legohead has simply rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic, all the same people in different departments. The best bit was that Ian Murray got the big E. He’s the bloke from Scottishland who called me ‘a little shit’, but I’m still in place at Number 10 and he’s gone. The message is clear, don’t mess with The Cat.

The new Women’s Super League kicks off this weekend and I hear that Nike have signed a new sponsorship deal. In a new move, they will be giving all the players in WSL 1 and WSL 2 free football boots. In addition, goalkeepers will get free gloves, and Nike will also be supplying footballs for all matches in the WSL, WSL 2 and the Women’s League Cup. I wonder how this affects players who have agreements with other companies like Puma and Adidas to wear their boots. I hear that some players are paid up to £80,000 a year for wearing certain boots and there are bonuses for being in the team that wins the Women’s World Cup or the Women’s European Cup.

Like many councils, New Forest has brought in wheelie bins for rubbish collections and they introduced similar rules to other councils, demanding that bins be placed at the edge of the property for easy access by the refuse crews. But they didn’t foresee a problem unique to the area. It seems that the New Forest ponies and donkeys have quickly learnt to knock over the bin and rummage through the contents for food. The council has decided to change the rules on rural rounds and people will be allowed to leave their bin inside the garden gate. Hard luck if your garden isn’t fenced.

I have been reading claims that from the 18th of September, if you withdraw more than £200 in a week from your bank account, the bank must send the details to the UK’s Financial Intelligence Unit. But this is apparently not true. Banks set their own limits on how much can be withdrawn from an account and they vary depending on the sort of account you hold and how much you have in it. However, banks have to watch out for money laundering and have to report suspicious transactions to the authorities.

Back in 2015, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway helped engineer a new company that included Heinz, Jell-O and Philadelphia. At the same time, Kraft spun off its snack division that became Mondelez International and started to look for a partner. Hence the current company, Kraft Heinz. Now, major shareholder Berkshire Hathaway has let it be known that they are not happy with Kraft Heinz profits, and it looks like they are going to split into two companies — one making sauces and spreads and the other making groceries. Will the Heinz soups stay with the tomato sauce or go with the grocery company? Can two products called Heinz be sold by two separate companies?

I reported a bit back that the public access train service Lumo had been granted the rights to run a service to Glasgow via the East Coast Main Line from King’s Cross. Lumo has now announced that on weekdays it will run two northbound services from King’s Cross to Glasgow and one from Glasgow to London. At the weekend there is to be only one service in each direction. I wonder what will happen to that weekday train to Glasgow that doesn’t run a service back to London. Will it come back empty or will it pop over empty to Edinburgh to run a southbound service?

I hear that the people of Newcastle, Gateshead and the surrounding area are not very happy with their train service and the way it is going to change when the new December timetable comes in. A while ago, the service between two of the north’s biggest cities, Newcastle and Manchester, was cut to one an hour. There was a hope that an extra train an hour would be added in December, but the Office of the Rail Regulator has announced this is not going to happen until track improvements between Northallerton and Newcastle, at Darlington Station and around York are carried out, and there is no money in the next four years for that. But that is not the only problem. LNER have been allocated an additional hourly path between Newcastle and London, taking them to three an hour. But this has only been made possible by cutting local services, with fewer trains stopping at stations including Darlington, Durham, Morpeth and Berwick. I suspect there is more money to be made on the fast service to London.

Well, that’s me done for the week and it’s nap time. The sun’s out, so it’s a windowsill nap for me this afternoon. I do enjoy my afternoon snooze in the fresh air, and I will miss being outdoors soon when winter arrives. I must make the most of a sunny afternoon while I still can. Chat to you all next week.
 

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