Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred

Monday

Good morning, friends. Yet another beautiful, sunny autumn morning, made better by it being empty of politicians here in Number 10. Legohead and his crew have all bugged off to Liverpool for the party conference. Mind you, it doesn’t sound like a nice place to be, with factional wars going on all over the place and demonstrations outside. Legohead put in an appearance on Koonsburger yesterday morning and spent most of the time not answering questions and attacking Nigel Farage as a racist. I understand this wasn’t on the script, and Legohead went rogue in the statement and has really upset many Lieborites, especially the Home Secretary, who is going to make a speech outlining many new policies that echo Reform’s.

The rumour doing the rounds yesterday was about Legohead buying a 7-acre field at the rear of his parents’ house and giving it to his parents so that his disabled mother could see her four beloved donkeys. Apparently, the agreement was that it would revert to his ownership when the last of the pair (his father) died. He absolutely denied putting the field in a trust to avoid inheritance tax. Now here is where it gets murky, as he bought the field for £20,000 and sold it for £320,000, so it would appear that Capital Gains Tax was due as a minimum. But a lawyer on TV this morning says that if the field was given to them, then Inheritance Tax was due. But if it was loaned, then an implied trust is created and it is subject to CGT. I bet ‘Led by Donkeys’ is delighted at the publicity.

A video has been circulating on the internet of a demonstration outside the Liebore conference yesterday, with thousands of demonstrators waving Union Flags. The bit of video in question showed a 16-year-old girl standing on a picnic bench waving a Union Flag. She was approached by police, who didn’t ask her to get down, but a Police Liaison Officer, in a light blue tabard, grabbed the flag and walked away with it. I wonder if he had the right to do so. Well, another lawyer on the radio said it could be construed as theft. I do rather hope the girl or her father report the officer for theft.

The first ‘mega dinghy’ arrived over the Channel yesterday with 125 illegal immigrants on board, setting a new record number for a single boat. The previous record number was 106. The numbers for Sunday are not out yet, but on Saturday 895 arrived in 12 boats. The Home Office boasts that the number of small boat crossings is down. But there is a good reason for this. The people smugglers are so obviously putting more people in bigger boats. So far this year, over 33,000 have crossed on small boats, a record number for this time of the year.

I was reading about Delta Airlines in the States having decided to move away from blended wingtips on its planes and instead install wingtips that are called split scimitars. These are ones that go both up and down and are currently installed on some aircraft types. But why do most modern civil aircraft have wingtips that turn up in one form or another? The answer is very simple: they save fuel, and fuel is money. The idea was first proposed back in 1897, when an aerodynamicist proposed endplates on wings. The reason is the shape of the wings causes airflow over the top and underside to be at different speeds and to create lift. But at the wingtip, this breaks down and causes vortexes, which slow the plane and need more engine power (and hence fuel) to keep its speed up. There has been lots of discussion as to what sort of wingtip works best, and different plane makers and airlines have different ideas and claim between 3.5% and 5% fuel saving. Delta thinks that a split scimitar will improve fuel savings and pay for the cost of retrofitting them.

The larger of the two single-aisle aircraft being made in China, the C919, is falling well behind its intended production rate, according to the Chinese media. The 192-seat plane is supposed to rival the Boeing 737 Max and the Airbus A320 families of aircraft and has been ordered in bulk by Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines. But all have received only a fraction of the deliveries due. Air China and China Eastern have both received a single plane, despite expecting 10 each this year. China Southern is expecting 12 this year and has actually acquired 3, but these are leased from someone unknown. All three airlines expect to receive another 10 aircraft each next year and the year after. The plane is not available for export, as it is only certified in China.

I have been reading about a huge sinkhole that opened up in the middle of a street in Bangkok. It is not really known what caused the collapse, but there has been speculation that it might have been due to tunnelling for a new metro line extension. Water leaking under the twin tunnels is thought to have caused them to collapse into the hole and fracture a 1.2-metre diameter water main, which washed away more soil. But the hole is now 50 metres deep and 50 metres across. Underground, the hole has also spread under the local police station, trapping vehicles in its underground car park. Over the weekend, 1,000 cubic metres of concrete were poured into the pit, but the operation had to be halted when it was found to be leaking into the railway tunnels through a 30-metre hole. It has been decided to let the concrete set and then dump sand onto the hole. There is a 70% chance of heavy rain in Bangkok forecast today, and heavy pumps are being put in place in case the sinkhole floods.

Tuesday

Good morning everyone. I’m getting used to these sunny mornings, I only hope they last. I have seen some of the Labour Conference speeches on the TV and I must say they seem to spend most of the time slagging off Reform and not telling us about what they are proposing to do. But if another speaker mentions Breakfast Clubs as one of their greatest achievements, I’ll scream.

Great British Railway has a new idea for ticketing. They want you to have an app on your phone which will track you from start to finish of your journey and work out the fare to charge you. This rather worries me, as it cuts out anyone who doesn’t have a smartphone. I understand that 95% of under sixties have a smartphone, but that number quickly drops as age goes up, with over 80s dropping to well below 50%. Then of course it will have to take in concessionary fares for children (how many six-year-olds have a smartphone?), OAPs and off-peak travel, or are all of those going to be stopped? But I find the whole idea of a tracker telling a Government Department (GBR) where I am at any time rather disturbing.

I see several companies are advertising a Personal Video Recorder from Humax that will record four channels at the same time as well as act as a Freely receiver. Although they have a price of £249 against the device, none of them have it in stock. I suspect it will not go on sale until next month, as that is when Freely say their own set-top box, made by Netgem, should be available. Freely is regularly gaining more channels, but it still doesn’t have the same offering of channels as Freeview and Freesat that it is intended to ultimately replace. It will do this soon, as those two channels are being slowly run down as the wavelengths they use are wanted for other things.

Although I don’t get on with most dogs, I can say I feel sorry for Lewis Hamilton, whose bulldog Roscoe has had to be put down. The dog never recovered from his pneumonia and his heart stopping while undergoing tests, and was apparently only surviving on life support. Although I find bulldogs rather ugly, I can understand that some people don’t. But due to the way they have been bred over the years, with a flat face, they are subject to breathing difficulties and consequently pneumonia.

It has taken some time, but the Scottishland Government has finally decided to reissue its rules on school toilet provision. The woke SNP had ruled that transgender pupils could use whatever toilets they felt most comfortable in. But all that should have changed back in April, when the Supreme Court ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law, and two months later a Scottishland judge ordered that six Scottish schools must provide single-sex toilets for pupils. It has taken until now for the Holyrood ministers to issue guidance saying that facilities must be made available on the basis of biological sex, but that schools can also provide gender-neutral toilets. Why wasn’t that done back in April, giving schools the chance to make any necessary modifications during the summer holidays?

The Ukraine Deputy Defence Minister, Lt. Gen. Ivan Havryliuk, has told the media that Ukraine is preparing for the imminent arrival of more fighter jets. He would not be drawn on how many and how soon, but he did confirm that he expected to be receiving more F-16s and, in addition, Swedish Gripens and French Mirages. There are lots of F-16s available around the world, as many air forces are retiring older versions and replacing them with more modern models, although some are being upgraded to the latest production version. The Mirage has not been in production for a few years now, and the French Air Force has recently retired its Mirage 2000C version. Although other versions remain in service, it has not been manufactured since 2007. So, it is probably these aircraft that would suddenly appear in Ukraine. As for the Gripen, its latest versions are still in production, but any that arrive any time soon are much more likely to be older versions and not the latest version that the Canadians are looking at buying as a cheaper alternative to the F-35A.

Next year will see the bulk of national train service being brought back under direct Government control. A few are now, including LNER and Southern, who were acquired by the ‘Operator of Last Resort’ when their franchisees got into trouble. Great British Railways has been set up to take over other Train Operating Companies (TOCs) as their franchises expire. C2C and SouthWestern have already been gobbled up, and Greater Anglia joins them on 12th October. Next year, it will be the turn of Govia, who run Southern, by far the biggest of all franchises, Gatwick Express, Great Northern and Thameslink. They will be followed during the year by West Midland, Chiltern and Great Western. The name Great British Railways is a little misleading, as it will not be running rail services run by Transport for London, Transport for Wales, ScotRail, Eurostar, or Merseyrail. In addition, the position of open access services from Hull Trains, Lumo and Grand Central is not at all clear.

Wednesday

Hi folks. No sun this morning, just when I was getting used to it! Legohead is still not back, but seeing him on TV, he is in no better a mood. I shall do my best to avoid him when he comes back. The latest OBR growth numbers are down for the second quarter of the year at 0.3%. This is half the first quarter. I am fed up with the Liebore line of ‘in the first quarter we had the fastest growth in the G7’ even though it was anaemic. Well, what are they going to say now?

I watched Legohead’s conference speech yesterday afternoon and, my, was it a stinker. The more I see, the more I realise he is paranoid about Nigel Farage and Reform. He hardly mentioned the Tories and the Limp Dumpsters, but it was all Farage this and Farage that. But, my, did he go on. He could easily have cut it by half.

The most amazing thing to happen has not been Legohead’s conference speech, but the rebuttal about 15 minutes or so later by Nigel Farage, who hit back in an address to the nation, broadcast on YouTube with a live speech. Farage hit back very hard and looked to be quite the Prime Minister that Legohead didn’t. Farage must have had only minutes to come up with the response but didn’t make a personal attack like Legohead. But he did say that Liebore was inviting loonies to attack him.

In Southampton, there is a big row going on about the number of missed bin collections. In answer to an opposition question, Cllr John Savage, Labour cabinet member for the environment, told a council meeting that up to early August they had missed 15,395 bins. But a Tories opposition councillor said this was a vast understatement, as it only reported people who had bothered to phone the council to complain. But the council issued a weekly list of streets missed, and so far this year they have missed over 6,500 streets! If you were to say each street had 50 homes, you actually get a missed collection number of 325,000 homes. Savage says most of these were not missed, as they were often collected the next day. I say this is a matter of semantics.

Princess Cruises has taken delivery of its latest new cruise ship, Star Princess. The 4,300-passenger ‘Sphere’ class ship is Princess’s second of the class and 17th cruise ship, and is LNG-powered. Princess is one of the Carnival Corporation brands, along with Carnival Cruises, Cunard, AIDA, Costa, Holland America, P&O Cruises and Seaborne. Carnival operates around 100 cruise ships under its various brands and has 8 ships on order.

The American Department of War (until recently Defence) has just given an order to Lockheed Martin for 296 F-35s, which will be going to the USAF, the Navy, the Marines and international customers. The $12.5 billion order is equally between Lot 18 and Lot 19, with 148 aircraft in each. 62 Lot 18 aircraft are for international customers, and in Lot 19 it is 79. The production is also between the A (land-based), B (vertical take-off) and C (Catobar for the US Navy).

Big news for fans of The Simpsons, the family that never grows up. There is to be a sequel to the 2007 Simpsons Movie. The only thing that has been announced is the release date of the 23rd of July 2027, 20 years after the first movie. No story outline, absolutely nothing has been announced. The TV series has been on now for 37 years and has been contracted for at least 3 more seasons. The big thing of note in season 37 was that the perpetual 10-year-old Bart Simpson had a birthday and is now 11.

Thursday

Hello folks. No sun again this morning, but at least it is dry and reasonably warm outside. But there was Felix Chicken in my breakfast bowl. Legohead has decided that he no longer wants to have the aim of 50% of young people going to university. This was a Tony B Liar policy and has proved to be rather problematic in that it has devalued degrees and killed off training for skilled workers. Schools have resorted to trying to send as many pupils as possible to university, completely upsetting the system and costing the students thousands of pounds in loans and years of debt. Someone has pointed this out to Legohead, and he has now realised that the policy is ridiculous and only wants a third to go to uni and a third to be high-level apprentices. But I have a question. What about the other third? Are they to be the future labourers and dustmen?

Oh dear, the Doom Goblin has been arrested by the Israeli military once again. Her flotilla has been intercepted before it could reach Gaza and the boats boarded. I wonder if the Israelis will carry out their earlier threat of jailing her. I rather hope so. They obviously treated her too leniently on the previous occasion, when she was given a sandwich and deported to Paris. I get the impression that she is a spoiled brat, and perhaps a few months in a rodent-infested cell might get it through her thick skull that getting arrested for a third time means they might never let you out.

Lammy is an absolute moron, as previously seen on Mastermind. In an interview with the BBC, he accused Nigel Farage of flirting with the Hitler Youth as a child. As Farage was born in 1964, almost 80 years after the end of the Second World War and the end of the Third Reich, this is impossible. I’m surprised it took Lammy 20 minutes to apologise. I wonder if someone threatened to sue him. Then there has been a stream of Liebore ministers and supporters coming forward to accuse Reform of having racist policies and, by association, Reform supporters of being racist. I suspect that has added considerably to the Reform vote.

Talking of morons, Mad Red Ed Millipede made his usual bonkers speech on the last day of the Liebore conference. He hit out at Elon Musk, telling him to get out of our politics and to get out of our country. To the best of my knowledge, Musk lives in the United States and is not in Britain. Then he said that he was going to ban fracking in the UK forever, something that has not happened since 2017. Well, I’m not sure of that. No decision taken by one government can bind the next. He could implement what he calls a ‘permanent ban’, but if he doesn’t last the length of this Parliament as a minister, it is likely to be changed.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban has cut all internet access by broadband, computer and phone. The Taliban has not explained why they have done this or how long it will last, but it is suspected that they don’t like the idea of the public having too many Western influences. But the shutdown has had some unexpected effects. It has closed down internet banking and things like airline reservations, with the knock-on effect of the Afghan airline shutting down.

The Royal Navy frigate HMS Somerset has become the first British warship to fire a Naval Strike Missile (NSM). Admittedly, it was not at anyone, as it was during an exercise. The intention is to equip all our Type 23 frigates and Type 45 destroyers with this cruise missile, a total of 11 ships. The ship-to-ship and ship-to-land version of the missile we are using comes in a ‘box launcher’, and I understand the intention is to reuse the missiles/launchers on new-build warships when the Type 23s and Type 45s are retired, as this is a rather expensive system requiring linking into the ships’ radar and control systems. Apart from that, each missile is reported to cost $2.1 million. There are several versions of the missile available: the naval one as used by the Royal Navy, America, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway and Poland, and the coastal defence version. There is an air-launched version known as the Joint Strike Missile (JSM) that can be launched from the F-35, F-15, F-16, F-18 and the Eurofighter Typhoon. It is also being developed to be launched from the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System, which is becoming standard for Western warships and is being installed on both our new Type 26 and Type 32 frigates.

The Japanese destroyer JS Chokai is on its way to the United States for a year-long deployment, during which it will be fitted out to take American Tomahawk cruise missiles. In 2024, the USA agreed to sell Japan 400 of the missiles, which have a range of up to 1,000 miles. The idea is it would allow Japan to hit back at China or North Korea in the event of Japan being attacked. Of course, China doesn’t like it, as they claim Tomahawks are offensive weapons.

Friday

Hi everyone. A grotty, grey and damp morning here in London. At least I managed to get out between showers. I read that we have spent over £1 billion so far this year in so-called ‘restraint payments’. That is when we pay the owners of wind turbines not to generate electricity because the grid can’t handle it. The National Grid was built to transport power generated at coal-fired power stations built on coalfields. All the big stations like Drax, Ferrybridge, Thorpe Marsh and Ratcliffe fell into this category, and the grid was designed to move the power to the factories and cities of Great Britain. The problem with wind turbines is that they are located offshore, so the power is landed around the coast, mainly where there are no big centres of power use. So it needs to be moved to where it is needed, and the grid just isn’t there to move it in the quantities being generated on windy days. So, the answer is to turn them off.

I was disgusted to hear of the attack yesterday on the synagogue in Manchester and the death of two worshippers on the biggest Jewish day of the year, perhaps the equivalent of Christmas Day or Easter to a Christian. I hope Legohead realises that his recognition of a Palestinian state has only encouraged the murderous attack, and his weasel words don’t cut the mustard. But the attacker must have been completely stupid, as wearing a fake suicide belt guaranteed his being shot by the police. In fact, I’d go further. It virtually guaranteed his own death, as the police marksman would go for a headshot, as a body shot might either explode the ‘bomb’ or possibly allow an injured man to press a button and blow himself up.

The US Secretary for War, Pete Hegseth, has just made an interesting announcement to a meeting of high-up military officers. He wants to clean up the image of the military, so is to ban facial hair and what he described as ‘men in dresses’. But the bit I found most compelling was a ban on fat soldiers. To impose this, all troops will be weighed twice a year. Why can’t we do something similar here in the UK?

I read that Taiwan is seriously looking at replacing its fleet of Mirage 2000-5 fighter aircraft. It is currently adding 66 Block 70 F-16s, the latest version of the plane, to add to the 140 older F-16s it already owns and is upgrading. Taiwan originally acquired 60 Mirage 2000s, but this has dropped to 56 due to attrition, and apparently they only have a 60% availability rate. In addition, it was recently said in the French Parliament that it was taking two years to deliver spare parts. So, it is hardly surprising to hear Taiwan is shopping for a replacement. The current favourite is the Dassault Rafale, which has been selling well recently. I wonder if an order from Taiwan would make Dassault push up the production rate.

I see YouTube has settled a case out of court for $24.5 million. The Donald was suing them for wrongly suspending his channel after the Capitol riots back in 2021. YouTube have now joined Facebook, who settled a similar case back in January for $25 million, and X, who settled in February for $10 million. The Donald says he is going to put the money towards the new White House ballroom.

Yet another new skyscraper office block has received planning permission in the City of London. This one will be 34 storeys high and built at 130 Fenchurch Street, requiring the demolition of Fountain House, a 16-storey block that currently occupies the site and was built on a WW2 bomb site. The new building will have 58,000 sq. m of office space, a floor dedicated to exhibitions, and 4,000 sq. ft of retail space.

American forces stationed in Europe are often allowed to bring their American cars with them and drive them on European (including British) roads, even if the vehicle is not normally available for purchase in Europe. American vehicle standards are aimed at protecting the occupants, while European standards aim to protect both the occupants and others, such as pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. Most American vehicles come close to meeting the European standards, and hence those used by military personnel often receive a special exemption. But there is one major exception, the Tesla Cybertruck. It fails to meet the standard in so many ways that it is totally banned from being imported into Europe (and Britain). It fails on things like sharp edges and the rigidity of body panels so badly that, despite being asked several times, authorities in Europe continue to refuse to allow it on Europe’s roads. The problems are fundamental to the Cybertruck design and, consequently, it is unlikely it will ever be available to buy in Europe. American servicemen and women don’t like the ruling but are just having to put up with it.

Saturday

Good morning, people. The rain has stopped at the moment, but it was very windy when I ventured out before breakfast. I see the latest poll for General Election voting had Reform 16% ahead. This was reflected in two ways yesterday. The Tottenham Turnip got roundly barracked and booed when speaking in Manchester. Then Reform won six of the seven local council by-elections. The one they didn’t win was interesting in that they fielded a ‘paper’ candidate in a seat they didn’t stand a chance of winning, where they didn’t campaign, but came within 63 votes of winning.

A lovely story has emerged from the ashes of the Donald’s state visit. It seems that the huge Stars and Stripes flags that alternated with Union Flags all the way up the Mall were made with the wrong shade of red in the stripes. This was pointed out by the Trump team and, despite the Donald not going up the Mall during his visit, the flags were all replaced at a cost of £50,000. I bet no heads will roll over that cock-up, as it was only taxpayer money being spent.

The new Tube trains for the Piccadilly Line have started to be tested on the line. The 94 new trains, assembled at Siemens’ train factory in Goole, Yorkshire, were meant to be entering service right now, but are now expected to be a year late. So far, four trains have arrived in London and three are being used for testing and driver familiarisation. The fourth train is described as a prototype and is being returned to the factory to be brought up to production standard. The trains being replaced are over 50 years old, so I hope they can last another year before being replaced.

To match with this week’s 60th anniversary of Thunderbirds, the children’s puppet adventure series, I bring you news of a giant Thunderbirds 3 rocket on display at Humberside Airport. The story of how the 60-foot-high model got there is interesting. The son of one of the owners of an airline based at the airport put a bid in for a ‘replica’ Thunderbirds 3, thinking he was bidding for a model he could display in his office. When his bid won, he dispatched one of his employees in a Land Rover to Blackpool to collect it.
The first question he was asked on arrival was, ‘Where is your lorry?’ He had to return to the airport to get a lorry and more people to help move it. It has been on display at the airport ever since.

It’s not just the West that is suffering falling car sales. In Russia, according to the Moscow Times, the country’s largest car factory, AvtoVAZ, is suffering. In the first 8 months of the year, sales of the Lada produced at the factory fell by 25% to 211,300 vehicles. The factory agreed with the union to reduce the working week to 4 days until the end of the year. The workers expected this to reduce the 100,000 to 120,000 roubles being earned by 20%, but it hasn’t worked like that. The workers also lost all bonuses and overtime, resulting in their wages being reduced to between 45,000 and 50,000 roubles. The consequence has been mass resignations, as workers move to better-paying jobs.

The first of the new Docklands Light Railway’s new trains went into service this week. The trains have been sitting in sidings for a while, waiting for modifications to allow them to be used. The new trains are, like many of the new trains popping up on the various networks, air-conditioned, have walk-through carriages, more standing room, USB charging ports and in-carriage destination boards. I only hope that they don’t have the rotten hard seats that the new Thameslink train passengers have to suffer.

Shell has started producing gas from its Victory Gas Field in the North Sea near the Shetlands. At its peak, it should be capable of producing 150 million cubic feet of gas a day. This is reckoned to be the equivalent of 25,000 barrels of oil a day. The gas will be extracted via a single well and use mainly existing infrastructure to land the gas at the Shetland Gas Plant, thus keeping the costs to a minimum. This is an example of the easy wins that Red Ed Millipede doesn’t want. He would rather buy in the gas.

Well, that’s me done for the week, and it’s bright here in London at the moment, but gosh is it windy and chilly. So, I refuse to go out, as I hate having my fur blown all over the place. In my old age, I’m becoming more of an indoor cat, so it’s no windowsill for me this afternoon.
 

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