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

Monday

Good morning, friends. A beautiful sunny autumn morning, but my, was it chilly when I ventured out. I’m getting more and more convinced that Legohead is either a moron, or he is doing everything possible to keep the far left of his party on side. He has chosen today, the Jewish New Year, to announce that Britain recognises the state of Palestine. A state that has no lands, has no borders, has no ports, has no airport, has no government, and is not a member of the UN. This has been done with no consultation of the public or Parliament, and defies logic in recognition of something that just doesn’t exist.

Interesting story emerging about the group set up to get Legohead elected as Liebore, and funds not declared at the time. I don’t know if it is true, but the story is that the campaign run by Morgan McSweeny took in several hundred thousand pounds that was not declared to the Electoral Commission, due to ‘human error’. In this country, electoral fraud is considered very serious. But I do wonder why this story has popped up now. Could it be someone has been briefing against McSweeny now it has been rumoured that he and Legohead have fallen out?

The government has given Gatwick permission for its second runway. It is currently one of the world’s busiest single-runway airports, handling 280,000 flights a year. With a full second runway, this would go up to an expected 395,000 annual flights. There is already a second emergency runway at Gatwick, but it is too close to the main runway and too short for them to be used in parallel. The idea is that the £2.2 billion needed to move the second runway 12 metres further away from the existing one will all be private money, and should be achieved without interrupting the use of the current main runway. The new runway will be shorter than the existing one and, consequently, will be mainly used for shorter flights to free up long-haul capacity on the existing one. Of course, the Greens aren’t happy, claiming it will hasten climate change.

For the first two weeks of next year, the West Coast Main Line between Preston and Carlisle is closed for the replacement of a bridge over the M6 near Penrith. Normally, the Avanti WCML service would have a rail replacement bus service, but this time, for the first time in 75 years, the Avanti service will run via the spectacular Settle to Carlisle line. The line passes through the Yorkshire Dales and over the famous Ribblehead Viaduct. The views are said to be fabulous, and at the moment only Northern Trains, operating between Leeds and Carlisle, use the route, so there should be lots of spare capacity.

The Brazilian airline Azul is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reorganising its business. It is cutting 50 routes and services to 15 cities, and intends to focus its business on higher-earning customers. The aim is to make savings of $2 billion to pay off its debt. The airline currently has 185 aircraft and calculates that it will not need this number in the future when the cuts are fully operational. Consequently, they are looking at returning 20 leased Embraer E195s to the giant leasing company AerCap, which they say will alone save them $1 billion. These are all older, expensive-to-operate models, and I wonder if AerCap will be happy to take them back.

Seventy years ago today was the start of commercial TV, and who remembers the very first TV advert? For those of you who don’t, the ad was for Gibbs SR toothpaste, who won a draw to be first. However, Gibbs SR is no longer available. Its makers, Unilever, merged it into another of its brands, Mentadent, and it is now sold worldwide (excluding the USA and Canada) as Mentadent SR. The brand in the USA and Canada was sold to the Church and Dwight Company, who later dropped it in favour of their own Arm and Hammer brand.

I hear that a wind turbine on RWE’s Scroby Sands wind farm burst into flames back in August. Because of the problems associated with fighting a fire on a wind turbine in the North Sea, it was allowed to burn itself out, totally destroying the generator nacelle and one of the three blades. RWE had to stop six other turbines from generating, as they were on the same electrical circuit. The burnt-out unit is now isolated, so all the others are now back working. Now I hear that the burnt-out unit is to be removed, leaving only the foundations, and will not be replaced. Pity they don’t do the same thing with all of them. It would save a fortune in ‘restraint payments’.

Tuesday

Good morning everyone. It is just like yesterday, lovely and sunny but a bit chilly. I suppose this is autumn, so I should expect it. Nigel really upset the lefties yesterday with his press conference about ‘indefinite leave to remain’. I listened to what was said, and I’m sure that a lot of what is being reported was not what he said, which was that those with ILR would have to reapply every five years. Those that failed to gain permission for another five years would be sent home. Surely this means that all those in gainful employment could stay. He also said if they applied for British citizenship, they were in a different position. This is just the normal lefties trying to stop what the vast majority of the population want.

Over the Atlantic in Canada, they are planning to invest a fortune updating their military. They have already ordered 12 BAE Systems Type 26 frigates (they call them destroyers because they are big for a frigate), that will be built locally under licence. It looks like they are going to order a load of American F-35 fighters and are negotiating with the final two companies for the purchase of 12 conventional submarines. One of the companies is South Korean, Hanwha Ocean, who have just teamed up with Babcock’s Canadian subsidiary to provide in-service maintenance and repair, just as Babcock do for the British fleet and the existing Canadian submarine fleet. With any luck, this will be another big order for Britain.

I hear a rumour going round the street that mad Red Ed Millipede has had his arm twisted behind his back and is going to relax his all-out ban on issuing new oil and gas exploration licences in the North Sea. Apparently, the unions are up in arms about job losses, and Legohead is worried that the Reform policy of ‘drill baby drill’ is cutting through with the public who are fed up with high energy prices. The word is Red Ed is going to change the policy to allow the exploration of blocks close to existing infrastructure, which it believes could produce an extra 7.3 billion barrels of oil. I only hope this rumour is correct.

I read that in the US, a start-up company called Radia is planning to build a giant transport aircraft called the Windrunner. Its main purpose is to transport the huge blades of the biggest wind turbines. Its hold would be 344 feet long by 33 feet wide and 30 feet high, which is massive and much larger than anything else flying. But it could also be of interest to the USAF, as its hold is 11 times bigger than their main transport, the C-17 Globemaster. It wouldn’t be able to carry quite as much weight, but it is its ability to carry things like six Chinook helicopters without having to remove their blades, or four fighters like the F-35, that make it interesting.

When Red Bull Racing sacked their Team Principal, Christian Horner, back in July, I wonder if they thought it would cost them an arm and a leg. They had received a complaint from a female employee and investigated it twice and cleared him twice before he was sacked, rather opening themselves up to a big compensation claim for breach of contract. And that is exactly what it did, with the announcement that Horner has just received an £80 million settlement and agreement that he is now free to work in the motor racing industry again. If I were him, I wouldn’t bother to look for a new job. I’d retire to a beach somewhere nice and sunny.

A month today and it’s the Caerphilly by-election, where it looks almost certain that Liebore is going to lose the Senedd seat. Liebore have been in charge in Wales for more than 100 years and in the Senedd since it was created, so losing seats doesn’t happen to it very often. But at the moment, the opinion polls for next year’s Welsh General Election have Plaid and Reform running neck and neck, with Liebore a distant third on just 14%. If the general election were to happen next May, as the current polls are predicting, Plaid would have 38 seats, Reform 37, and Liebore just 11, with the Tories on 6. Mind you, if Reform continue to rise in the polls at their recent rate, this could easily change.

The newspapers have been speculating on something I told you weeks ago. The Franco-German sixth-generation fighter jet is in deep trouble over the work split. Apparently, the French partner, Dassault Systèmes, is demanding an 80% workshare, and the German partner, Airbus, is not happy and is ready to walk away. But the Germans still have a need for a sixth-generation fighter, and the speculation is over who they could join up with. Everyone writes off the American project, as Boeing have no need of a partner because the American government is funding their total project. The other possibilities are the Swedish project and the British, Italian, Japanese project. Most papers think that if the Germans do walk out on the French, they will approach the British, Italian, Japanese project.

Wednesday

Hi folks, well it’s dry again this morning and the weatherman on the TV says it’s going to be sunny, but it wasn’t when I popped out very early. I saw the Donald’s speech at the UN and wondered if someone was trying to sabotage it. Firstly, the escalator came to a grinding halt as he and the First Lady were going up. They were lucky to stay upright. Then the teleprompter wasn’t working, but whoever it was who didn’t want to hear the Donald failed, as he went on to make an off-the-cuff speech that was pretty good, as he even lambasted Sad Dick.

So, the papers are speculating that Robber Reeves is going to put 2p on income tax in the Budget, breaking her self-imposed fiscal rules. The suggestion is that she will offset this by taking 2p off Employers’ National Insurance. This would admit that last year’s increase in Employers’ NI was a big mistake and has cost jobs. But 2p on income tax would raise a lot more money, as income tax is paid by many more, as it doesn’t just affect the employed, it affects lots of pensioners and those on many other sorts of income. The Robber has a huge problem in that her policies have created a massive black hole which is getting bigger every day, and the only way to raise enough money to start to fill it is by pulling the NI, VAT or income tax lever, so she has little choice.

This year’s Large Railway Station of the Year is Hull Paragon Interchange. The station was built in Italian style and opened in 1847, and the adjacent bus station was added in the 1930s. The two were integrated in 2007 and the whole was renamed Hull Paragon Interchange. I have never been there, but I know my scribe has done so many times because he has mentioned it in some of his articles. I understand it has a magnificent roof over the train shed that leaks in heavy rain because the designer didn’t include access to clear the gutters in the original design. There are numerous flower troughs and hanging baskets and the old ticket office is being converted into a bar. I fancy a visit.

Jaguar Land Rover has once again put off the resumption of manufacturing following a cyber-attack. JLR normally employs 30,000 people directly in its three British factories. It has been estimated that the announced stoppage of production, until next month at the earliest, will cost the company £2 billion in turnover and nearly £300 million in profits. The problem at JLR is that their production lines are highly automated and employ numerous networked computers, and the attack is understood to have infiltrated this robot network. Mind you, as a cat I am not sure why a robot network would have access from the internet. I could understand it if it was a purchasing system or an ordering system, but not a manufacturing system.

The Donald really put the cat among the pigeons with his announcement on Tylenol (the American name for branded paracetamol) causing autism. He talked about reports linking increased cases of autism occurring when pregnant women took Tylenol. This morning, the government have had the Health Secretary and doctors out on the radio and TV to poo-poo the Donald. I don’t know who is right, and as a male cat with a totally different metabolism, I don’t think it really matters to me.

I see a 14-year-old boy is off to university shortly to study Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College after gaining four A-levels this summer, three at A* and one at A, to add to his eight GCSEs. The boy, of Chinese heritage, lives in London and seems to come from a family of high achievers who have been home educated. His nine-year-old sister will be taking GCSEs this coming summer, and his two older sisters are both doing PhDs at the same university as the boy will be attending, and will accompany him on his daily trip across London to uni.

I read of a court case in the United States where American Airlines have been ordered to pay a passenger $11 million in compensation after he had a stroke mid-Atlantic on a flight from Miami to Madrid. The court heard that before the flight pushed back from the gate at Miami, the man’s wife called the crew’s attention to her husband, who had suddenly lost the ability to speak and to use his mobile phone. The crew dismissed the problems without following the company procedure of using a company medical hotline and asking if there was a doctor on board. Instead, the plane took off and the man then had a major stroke mid-Atlantic. The man spent three weeks in hospital in Spain before being returned to the States on a medical flight. He now can’t speak or write and needs full-time support. The jury made an award of $13.28 million for American’s negligence, but this was reduced by 27.5% for the plaintiff’s actions. However, with interest, the award came to $11.06 million.

Thursday

Hello folks, the fourth day running I have woken up to a dry, sunny morning that is a little chilly. I see Legohead is keeping his head down and has not ventured out much for these last few days. Is it because of the current fuss over the £739,432 that Morgan McSweeny, when he ran Liebore Together, ‘forgot’ to declare to the Electoral Commission? The question seems to have moved on from the £14,000 LT got fined for an accidental late declaration to accusations of a deliberate cover-up. A paper says the Electoral Commission seem to have a note of a phone conversation with McSweeny where he was asking if donations had to be declared, as he thought they didn’t, but he was told they did, as LT was a Liebore ‘Members’ Association’. They were then told the same in writing and told to declare donations within 30 days of registering them. When, two years later, they told the Commission they had undeclared donations, they were told to make a declaration with a letter explaining why it was late. That’s when they took legal advice which suggested they should say they forgot. This is all very interesting.

Last year the Welsh Liebore government announced that in an effort to reduce waiting lists in Wales, patients would be sent over the border to England to be treated. At this week’s Welsh PMQs, the PM Eluned Morgan was asked by the Plaid Cymru leader just how many people had been treated by this method. Apparently, Plaid believe that this practice has just not been happening and it is all hot air from Welsh Liebore. Morgan said she would write to him with the numbers. I will not be holding my breath until it happens.

The story released yesterday was that City Thameslink was the worst station in London for train cancellations. But thinking about it, I’m not sure why this station should be worst. I suppose it’s because the Thameslink core tunnel under the City is being pushed to its maximum, and as it’s not a terminal like Blackfriars or served by more than one line like Farringdon, the stations either side, which obviously suffer exactly the same train cancellations, its numbers are not diluted. This is the stupidity of the way the number of cancellations is presented, by percentage and not the total number of services cancelled.

A company based in Crawley, called PTS-247, is suing Clearspring, the supplier of accommodation for asylum seekers, for £2.75 million in unpaid invoices. The ‘On Demand Transport Company’ say they have supplied taxis to Clearspring to move asylum seekers to the likes of doctors and dentist appointments on account, but when the invoices have been submitted they have not been paid. I have no idea why the invoices are not being paid. Is it because they are being disputed as too high or not occurring? I suppose we will have to wait for the court case to hear the defence.

As a little bit further to my last story, I have been listening to the radio where lots of taxi drivers have been ringing in talking about the ridiculous journeys they have taken asylum seekers on. One told of a trip from Folkestone to Scotland that cost £800. Another in Northern Ireland told of taking asylum seekers from the hotel they were in, to a mosque and waiting to take them back. A man told of landing at John Lennon Airport in Liverpool and calling an Uber. The driver told him he was based in Kent and had just delivered a couple from the Manston Detention Centre to a Liverpool hotel and happened to be near Liverpool Airport when the call came in, so he took it. I wonder how much is wasted on these taxis each year.

Which British political party has the worst leader? Most of them are useless, but personally I think that Ed Davey takes a lot of beating. The man is a total clown. Look at his stunts at the last General Election when he did things like paddle boarding when he fell in the water, went on a rollercoaster, and went on a wet assault course. Last weekend was the Limp Dumps’ conference weekend and he turned up with a marching band. But it was his conference speech that really showed him up. He spent most of the time attacking Nigel Farage, mentioning his name just 30 times, when he could have been attacking our rubbish government. It is quite apparent that he is more worried about Nigel becoming PM than promoting his own party.

Now here’s an interesting bit of news. Bentley, the Crewe-based luxury car maker, has announced that it doesn’t believe that the demand for electric vehicles is strong enough for it to bring out an EV. Consequently, its next three models will all be supplied with only petrol engines. These models were all, until recently, going to be hybrids or EVs when they were due to come out in 2026. The plan is now to offer EVs from 2030 and hybrids from 2035. Both Porsche and Audi have changed their plans and won’t be launching EVs until 2033. Are we seeing the beginning of the motor industry kicking back against EVs?

Friday

Hi everyone, the sun has disappeared this morning but at least it’s not raining. There was a bit of a loud discussion going on in Legohead’s office late yesterday. He and that bloke whose name sounds like a pirate, Morgan McSweeny, were clearly not happy and I kept hearing them talking about the ‘King of the North’ plotting a take-over. Well, I lay down in a chair and pretended to be napping, but I kept listening and it all seems a bit complicated. This KofTN is a mayor somewhere and he wants to oust Legohead, but first he needs to become an MP, so he is trying to get an MP to resign so there is a by-election. Then he must be elected, but I wonder if he could beat a Reform candidate before the backbenchers force a leadership election. It all sounds very contrived to me, but Legohead and the Pirate seem bothered.

We managed to get another illegal immigrant back to France on Wednesday, meaning we have now sent a grand total of four to France since the programme began. In the same period, we have had over 5,000 in on small boats. However, one illegal immigrant who was down to go has now had his deportation blocked by the High Court. On the ‘in’ side of the ‘one out, one in’ equation, I hear that a couple with a young child have come the other way, but all details about them, including where they are living, are being kept secret.

Has anyone else noticed the change of name of the stadium where the Women’s Rugby World Cup is being played this weekend? For many years the stadium was known as Twickenham and was the home to the England Rugby team. Recently, it got a major naming sponsorship and became the Allianz Stadium. But the organisers of the WRWC have strict sponsorship rules and Allianz are not one of their sponsors, so Allianz must not be mentioned. Consequently, for this weekend it will resort to its previous name of Twickenham. But it is not only this competition that has this rule. The same thing happens in the Champions League. The Emirates Stadium becomes the Arsenal Stadium for each home game and the Etihad Stadium becomes the Manchester City Stadium.

The Sun has a story about an Afghan asylum seeker, who came over the Channel in a small boat, who was granted refugee status after he claimed it was unsafe for him to be in his hometown of Kabul. He has posted video on the internet of him in Hungary and France before also posting video of his ‘rescue’ in the Channel by the RNLI. As a refugee with settled status, he can apply for a settled status travel card that acts like a passport, but with two important conditions: you can’t use it to return to your home country, and you can’t use it to travel to the country you claimed asylum from. But this man seems to have posted video on the internet of his eight-week holiday in Afghanistan. I assume he is under investigation by the authorities.

The London Midland Railway has at long last been able to put its first two Class 810 Aurora trains into service. The trains, built at Hitachi’s factory in County Durham, were expected to be delivered in 2022. But the fleet of 33 five-car trains was discovered to have problems on delivery and during testing and driver training. The bi-modal trains are similar to those already in operation on the East Coast Main Line and Great Western. LMR now hopes to have all the trains in use by March 2026. Why can’t we build anything correctly in this country, and why does it take four years to put things right?

I read that one of the car parking services at Southampton, Southampton Cruise Parking Limited, has had 17 cars stolen from its compound on First Avenue by Dock 20. The company claims to have 24-hour security including CCTV, but clearly something has gone wrong. This is one of the cheaper ‘on-site’ parking companies and no matter which of the five cruise terminals you use, you drive your car to their compound, and they deliver you to your terminal in a minibus. How 17 cars were stolen in one go is astonishing. That means that 17 drivers had to turn up, obtain the keys, and drive off. Surely this would show up on CCTV. My scribe uses a different company that works with the cruise line. With them, you drive to the terminal where they check your car in. You unload your baggage at the terminal, and they give you a receipt for the car key, and they drive it the short distance to their local compound. On return, you get your car back in exchange for the receipt. I understand that six of the cars have been recovered.

Are you a Greggs Sausage Roll or a Steak Bake lover? Would you like a pint while eating one for your lunch? I hear that from Saturday, you can do just that for the next five months, as Greggs are to open a pub inside the Newcastle branch of Fenwick’s. The pub, to be called the Golden Flake Tavern, will be open until February next year. They will be offering an exclusive beer, Pink Jammie Pale Ale, as well as several other local beers and some Greggs-inspired cocktails. As far as food is concerned, among other things there will be Chicken Bake Parvo, Steak Bake Mixed Grill, Sausage Roll and Mash, and a ‘Greggs’ Ploughman’s. For dessert you can have Yum Yum Bread and Butter Pudding, Pink Jammie Trifle, and Doughnut Bits in Jelly with Custard. On Sundays there will be a carvery, with either a Steak Bake, a Chicken Bake or a Cheese and Onion Bake with vegetables, roast potatoes and a Yorkshire Pudding. I don’t think Spoons have anything to worry about.

Saturday

Good morning, people. Another pleasant morning and a touch warmer. I have heard of rats deserting a sinking ship, but things are getting bad here in No. 10. Following on from Paul Ovenden, Legohead’s Director of Political Strategy, and James Lyons, Director for Communications for Political Strategy, quitting, the latest to up and go is Steph Driver, his Head of Communications. I’m sorry to see her go. She was quite nice and always spoke to me, unlike most of the political appointees here. The workers in the office are OK, but they are mostly very junior civil servants.

Yesterday’s announcement of digital IDs for anyone working in the UK has me a little worried. I am a working cat, so I suppose I need one. But I don’t have a smartphone. In fact, I don’t have any sort of phone, so what am I, or everyone else who doesn’t have a smartphone, expected to do? I suppose, as I am a very old cat (I’m 19 in January), I might very well not be around to worry about it.

The media is reporting that Russia has announced that it has stopped all exports of petrol, diesel and fuel oil until at least the New Year. It seems that in recent weeks Ukraine has taken to attacking oil refineries, military fuel dumps and oil tanker trains with drones and rockets. The Ukrainians have claimed some successes, and there have been pictures of burning refineries on the internet. Russia has said that shortages at filling stations across Russia are due to ‘logistical difficulties’ and will be corrected in a week or so. Tass, the official Russian news agency, has reported that there is ‘a slight shortage of petrol and diesel’, while the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestiya said that filling stations in several areas were limiting how much petrol and diesel could be purchased. But it is Crimea that seems worst hit, with Kommersant reporting that half the area’s filling stations have nothing to sell and the price of petrol has gone up by a third in a month. The report adds that the price of horses and donkeys is stable and there is plenty of hay available.

According to the ONS, there are now 69.3 million people in the UK, up 755,254 in a year. That’s the second-largest yearly jump since the Second World War. The most important thing is 738,718 were immigrants of one kind or another. Of course, this huge number has happened under a Liebore government who were highly critical of the numbers that came in under the Tories. Liebore, whose big promise was to ‘Stop the Boats’, have done no such thing. The ONS say that the majority of these incomers have taken up residence in England and the fewest in Northern Ireland. I am saying nothing.

I hear that Lewis Hamilton was due to take part in a tyre test for Ferrari yesterday but withdrew to be with his bulldog, Roscoe. The dog is suffering from pneumonia and is in a coma. Apparently, the 12-year-old dog was sedated so that tests could be carried out and his heart stopped. It seems the vets managed to restart Roscoe’s heart, but he slipped into a coma from which no one knows if he will recover.

The announcement of the first stage of Northern Powerhouse Rail, a high-speed link between Liverpool and Manchester, has long been expected to be announced in Legohead’s speech at the upcoming Liebore Party Conference. But I hear it is not going to happen, as the government simply doesn’t have the estimated £12 billion that it will cost. Of course, they have found the money for its ridiculous digital ID scheme, but I suspect this could be a big nothing burger, as millions have already signed a petition on the government’s petitions website against it.

I read of an odd accident at East Midlands Airport. A dispatcher and a trainee dispatcher were sorting out the paperwork with a stewardess in the doorway of a TUI flight to Lanzarote. The trainee disembarked the flight, and when she reached the bottom of the portable air stairs, the ground crew assumed that the paperwork was complete and the dispatcher had left the plane, so started to move the stairs away. The stewardess fell out of the plane door and through the gap between the plane and the steps, breaking multiple bones when she hit the tarmac. Apparently, she had one foot on the top landing of the steps, ready to close the door, while the dispatcher managed to cling on to the door.

Well, that’s me done for the week, and it’s sunny enough for a windowsill nap, but I think I might go and watch the Women’s Rugby World Cup Final, and if they aren’t winning, I can always use the windowsill as my backup plan. The sun was out earlier but now it’s raining, so it’s no windowsill for me this afternoon. Chat to you all next week.
 

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