Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Seven

Monday

Good morning my friends, dry but very chilly this morning when I popped out. The story doing the rounds here in Number 10 is that the Ginger Growler is on manoeuvres to challenge Legohead for the job of PM. It seems she has been offering Labour MPs jobs in ‘her’ cabinet. Well, she has one major problem to overcome first. She still owes HMRC £40,000 in tax from her house move, and she doesn’t have the money. If she doesn’t pay she will have broken the law and can’t stand as leader, and what lender is going to loan her the money with the prospect of her being unemployed at the next election. Of course, some super daddy might gift her the money, but that would have to be declared or be against the rules. She is in a bit of a mess.

I start the week with a couple of mad items. Firstly, there is a report in this morning’s papers that roads are to be narrowed to stop motorists from overtaking cyclists. This is absolutely mad, it means that traffic will only be able to move at the speed of the slowest cyclists, and even police cars, ambulances and fire engines will get stuck behind them. With the recent changes to the Highway Code over taking entitled cyclists has become hard enough with having to give them a mile of space when passing, allowing them to ride four abreast and giving them priority. But the cyclists still jump red lights, don’t wear helmets, don’t stop at pedestrian crossings, don’t have insurance, don’t pay road tax, and have either illegal flashing headlights or no lights at all.

The second stupid story this morning is that the UK Health Security Agency have come up with a report that says anxiety about climate change is fuelling Britain increase in illegal drug takers. What absolute poppycock, I wonder how much this mad report cost. I rather suspect the problem is more likely to be the other way around, with druggies believing that climate change is going to lead to boiling oceans cooking all the fish.

So, our Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has decided to adopt another one of Reform’s policies. This time she decided to follow up on her plan to implement Denmark’s ideas on making illegal immigrants less welcome, with a visa ban on three countries if they refuse to take their illegal immigrants back. Why just these three small countries, DRC, Namibia and Angola, where we have only 3,000 illegals in total from. The vast majority of illegals recently have come from Pakistan, so why are they not on the list. Anyway, I hear a group of back bench Liebore MPs and the Guardian are already calling her plans racist.

To change the topic completely I see that a number of footballers are in line for a major windfall. Harry Maguire, Harry Kane, Phil Foden and Katie McCabe were all early investors in Irish company SportsStats. The company were one of the first to offer GPS tracking for sportspeople. You may well have seen the little tracker boxes that the likes of professional footballers wear strapped on their backs. It seems the company has been sold to Sony for £20 million, and early backers stand to profit.

Have you seen the pictures of the huge pile of rubbish that has been illegally dumped between the River Cherwell and the A34 near Kidlington in Oxfordshire. The pile of rubbish is thirty feet deep, fifty feet wide and five hundred feet long, and estimated to weigh hundreds of tonnes. What I really can’t understand is how, what must be hundreds of lorry loads of waste, can be dumped without anyone noticing. The waste all seems to be the same, a collection of shredded plastic, wood, plastic foam and some earth, so it looks to have come from a single source. In one place the mountain of waste seems to have slipped and is within a few feet of the river and threatening a major river pollution incident. Oh, I nearly forgot this is all happening under a Green Council.

The new Liebore idea of giving the vote to sixteen-year-olds has hit a couple of problems. Perhaps the biggest one is that recent polling has revealed that the vast majority of sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds no longer support Liebore. They seem to be split between the Greens and Reform with the larger proportion going to Reform. Then there is a problem with getting them to vote, the majority say they can’t be bothered. Well, Liebore think that they have an answer to that, polling station in schools. Strangely, many schools close for election as they are already polling stations. In fact my scribe’s polling station is the local first school.

Tuesday

Hi folks, sunny, but very chilly here at Number 10 when I went out. Old Legohead is deluded, telling a paper he is going to lead the Liebore Party into the next election. The only way he could do that is if the election is in the next couple of months, before the backbenchers get organised and boot him out. He says he has full confidence that he will still be in charge. The last couple of people he had full confidence in were the Ginger Growler and Mandy Mandelson who both lasted about a week.

Since Liebore came to power the number of illegal immigrants is 62,219, that is up some 55%. So far this year alone it is over 32,000. What I don’t understand is why are the gangs not being smashed, as we were promised at the General Election. This Government has been in power for over sixteen months, surely this is long enough to at least start reducing the flow, but instead it is increasing. This cat is certain that smashing the gang is absolutely pointless, it is stopping the pull factors that will stop illegal immigration.

The latest opinion poll that was out over the weekend has put Reform UK into its biggest ever lead of 16%. Reform is up to 33%, but their lead is over the Greens in second place on 17%, the Tories on 16%, Liebore on 15% and Limp Dumps on 11%. According to Electoral Calculus if this was repeated at a General Election Reform UK would have 445 seats, the Greens 52, the Tories 13, Liebore 23 and the Limp Dumps 40. As a little reminder there are 650 seats in the Commons, so 326 seats gives you an outright majority.

The news of the first Rolls-Royce SMR site being Wylfa in North Wales frees up Rolls to announce its plans for its assembly factory. Rolls reasonably don’t want to commit to a huge investment without a clear way forward. For some time they have had a shortlist of sites for their first factory for pressure vessels which include Deeside, Richmond, Sunderland, Ferrybridge, Lincolnshire and Carlisle. I have no idea if there is a favourite amongst this six. But I see they have signed agreements with BWHT in Canada to build the heat exchangers, and with Skoda in Czechia to manufacture some of the heavy components. However, Rolls say they will need two more component factories in the U.K., and they will come from that shortlist.

The EU has done it again, produced a bit of legislation that is so poorly worded that it is having unexpected effects. The EU wanted to stop veggie burgers being sold as steaks, and they have produced legislation that says that only meat can be referred to as steak. The word ‘steak’ has been translated into various EU languages, and in the Spanish version of the legislation the word used is “filete,” a word often used for fish steaks. Consequently, there is chaos in Spain. Thank goodness we are outside this rubbish, as I have often seen the term a fish steak being used to describe a cut across a fish, while a fillet tends to be reserved for a cut along the body of a fish.

Up in Warrington the council have just refused a planning permission application for a 7.5-metre-high flagpole to be sited in the front garden of a five-bedroom detached house. The notes with the application said the applicant’s intention was to fly a Union Flag, with a width of 1.83m and a height of 0.91m. The official grounds for rejection were the council’s concerns over the flag ‘not making a positive contribution to local character’. Interestingly, flying the Union Flag is exempt from planning permission, it is only the pole that needed permission. However, it is within the law to install a flagpole that is 4.6 metres high without planning permission, provided you are not in a conservation area, and that is exactly what I would do.

Last week I told you that Jet 2 has decided to start flying out of Gatwick in March next year. Today I have learned that they are not alone, three more airlines have announced they are to start flying out of Gatwick. Condor, Qanot Sharq and Isles of Scilly Skybus. Condor will fly three times daily to Frankfurt. Qanot Sharq will fly twice weekly to Tashkent, and Isles of Scilly Skybus is to take over the Public Service Obligation service from Newquay that was operated by the now defunct Eastern Airways.

Wednesday

Good morning everyone, what a horrible morning when I went out for my trip down to the bottom of the garden. It was freezing cold and raining. This is not Larry weather. So, the inflation rate has fallen fractionally this morning to 3.6%. I bet Legohead can’t wait to crow about it in PMQs, but it is still nearly double the 2% target.

A little story on the BBC website caught my attention, it tells me that a Liebore councillor on West Northamptonshire Council has defected to the Limp Dumps. About a third of the way into the story it says the council is now made up of 41 Reform UK councillors, 8 Liebore and 7 Limp Dumps, so it makes little difference. But is this really news, councillors on councils all over the country are switching party every day, and most of them are joining Reform. But that is not news as far as the Biased Broadcaster Company is concerned.

I have been reading a puff piece on Portland Port, and I must admit that it is a lot busier cruise ship stop than I realised. The 64th and last cruise ship to visit this summer has just left for the Canary Islands. The cruise ship MB Amadea, full with 620 Germans, stopped in on its way from Hamburg. It will be visiting Portsmouth on its way home in December. This summer the town of Portland is said to have benefitted by over £10 million from cruise ship visits.

The news coming out of the Dubai Airshow is interesting. On Monday Boeing was crowing about a $38 billion order from Emirates Airlines for 65 x 777-9, a plane still to be certified and currently some 6 years behind schedule and rumoured to be likely to be put back again soon. But still, it is a big order. Then on Tuesday Etihad Airways announced an order for 7 x Airbus A350-1000, 3 x A350F freighters and 6 x A330-900neo. At the same time they announced another 9 x A330-900neo to be leased, so not as good an order as Boeing’s, it wasn’t bad. But Airbus wasn’t finished there, as they then announced an MoU from FlyDubai to buy 150 x Airbus A321neo for about $24 billion. They have also got options on another 100 x A321. Now I hear that Air Europa have signed an MoU for 40 x A350-900. It looks like it’s an Airbus day and good news for the North Wales wing factory and Rolls Royce Aero Engines. I’m looking out for today’s announcements.

At the moment if a financial institution, like your bank, goes bust the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) will pay out a maximum of £85,000, no matter how many different accounts you have with your bank. The figure has been fixed at £85,000 for a long time. Now I hear that the maximum payout is to go up to £120,000, but it is still per person and per institution.

I read that a special rule has been put in place for the forthcoming Qatar F1 Grand Prix on Sunday the 30th of November. The track at the Lusail International Circuit has been notorious for its very high tyre wear since it opened 5 years ago. The track surface is said to be extremely abrasive, and the organisers are anxious not to have any tyres wearing down so much they explode. Consequently, the new rule is that no tyre will be allowed to be used for more than 25 laps in any of the practice or qualifying sessions or in the actual race. As it is a 57-lap race that means that every team will have to make 2 pit stops.

I ventured into the office last night and I saw they had the football on the TV. So, I stopped to watch. I was a little surprised to see Scottishland take the lead and then fall back on desperate defence. It only looked to be a matter of time before Denmark scored to get qualification for the next World Cup in the States and send Scottishland to the qualifiers. Well eventually Denmark did score, but then they had a player sent off and the Scots landed up winning. I somehow suspect that the Yanks have no idea what they have coming next summer.

Thursday

Hello folks, the sun was out this morning but gosh is it cold again, I hate winter. I can hardly believe it, but Legohead went off abroad again just when there was a row in Parliament over the supposed crackdown on illegal immigrants. He seems to go abroad every time something gets a bit uncomfortable in the country. This time ‘never here Keir’ chose to go off to Berlin to meet the German Chancellor on his 25th overseas trip since becoming PM, but don’t worry he will be back for PMQs.

I expect that Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary is not a happy man at the moment. His airline has been stripped of two of its landing slots at Eindhoven Airport in an unusual penalty. It seems that their Monday evening arrival from the Bulgarian capital Sofia, and Thursday evening flight from Pisa in Italy, have regularly been arriving late. The Netherlands’ airport coordinator, ACNL, found the Irish airline’s flights from those destinations were behind schedule by an average of an hour or more on a regular basis, so they have decided to punish Ryanair with forfeiture of the slots, something I have never heard of happening before. Ryanair were given a warning about the late arrivals back in the summer but chose to ignore the warning with flights still arriving late. When the forfeiture was announced, Ryanair took ACNL to court but lost the case.

I see the English Constitution Party’s Graham Moore, who received the fewest votes of the 15 candidates who stood in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, has lost his legal case against the result. You probably remember this was the by-election won by Reform’s Sarah Pochin by just six votes. Moore received only 50 votes and finished bottom of the poll. Moore’s complaint revolved around the fact that he had got the same number of votes when standing in a previous by-election, which he claimed couldn’t happen statistically. Moore was ordered to pay both Pochin and the Returning Officer’s costs.

I told you all about the sale of Eurofighters to Turkey last week, now I have been reading a discussion about the official cost that was announced being about double the cost of the planes announced by British Aerospace. So what of the difference? The speculation is that it is made up by a deal on armaments, and it has been announced that the planes will be armed with MBDA Meteor air to air missiles. But even this doesn’t make up the huge difference in the Government cost and the BAE cost. The speculation I hear is that we have also sold them the Storm Shadow cruise missile, but the Government is trying to keep it quiet as we don’t want to upset the Greeks any more than we have already done.

Over the last couple of years, I have read numerous stories about people coming off the trains at Stansted Airport and being fined for not paying the correct fare. The problem has been that you can join the train at London’s Liverpool Street station using the contactless ticketing system by waving a credit card over a reader. But you can’t wave it over a reader at Stansted Airport as it is not within the ticketless system. Because the train stops at stations within the system you can use it to get on, but only if you get off at one of those stations, but this has never been made clear to those travelling to Stansted. Well, I have good news for you as from 15th of December the contactless tap in, tap out scheme is extended to Stansted and 50 other additional stations. The bad news is it only works for bank cards and not your Oyster card.

The rumour emerging from the Dubai Airshow is that Airbus is considering a stretched version of the A350. It seems that a number of the operators of the biggest version, the A350-1000, have approached Airbus asking for a larger capacity version. Tentatively referred to as the A350-2000 not very much is known about the plane, only that it would carry more passengers than the -1000’s 440. Just how many passengers it could carry, what its range would be, even what engines it would have are all unknowns. The only thing that is known is that Airbus’s CEO, Christian Scherer, has confirmed that discussions are happening.

Rumours reach me that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and his ex-wife Fergie are no longer on speaking terms. Apparently Fergie is livid with him over his lies about Epstein and not offering her a place in his new Sandringham home. It seems that they are living separately in opposite wings of their current home, only meeting for lunch and dinner, and then they don’t speak to each other.

Friday

Hi everyone, cold and frosty but sunny when I popped out this morning. I hear that the regulator is putting the price of energy up again in January even though the wholesale price has been falling recently. OK it’s only going up by 0.2% which really isn’t a huge amount, but that isn’t the point. The real question is why the retail cost of gas and electricity is going up when the wholesale price is coming down.

I forgot to mention it yesterday, but I had to laugh at the latest YouGov poll that reports that zero percent of those polled thought that the economy was in a ‘very good state’ and only four percent thought it was in a ‘fairly good’ condition. At the other end of the scale 44% think the economy is ‘fairly bad’ and 35% think it is ‘very bad’. If that is what people think before the budget, I wonder what they will think after the budget.

Another new report out from a pro net zero lot says that your power bills will be going up by another £150 pa to pay for Mad Red Ed Millipede’s net zero dream. I’m sure he sees himself as a gallant knight on a white horse saving the world from climate change, while all the public see is the great pile of horse sh1t in his wake.

A bit back I told you about the Boeing 747 freighter accident at Hong Kong Airport where it veered off the runway, hit an airport van and pushed it through the perimeter wall, and both landed in the sea killing the two in the van. Well, I have been reading the preliminary report, and it makes grim reading. It seems the plane was sent off with a fault on its number four (starboard outboard) engine, its thrust reverser was inoperable. So, when the plane landed the crew only used reverse thrust on engines 2 and 3 (inner port and starboard) to keep things balanced. But engine 4 somehow went to full take-off thrust causing the plane to veer to port. So now we know what happened, but not why it happened.

More news leaked out yesterday telling us that nearly 500 illegal immigrants a day are signing up for the benefits system. The Liebore Party says that it’s not a problem because they only get a very small amount. But what do they consider a small amount? £10 a week, £50 a week. Say that’s £10 a week. That quickly adds up to a lot of money. 500 a day, 7 days is 3,500 signing up a week. That’s £35,000 a week, but that doubles in week 2 and goes up by £35,000 every week. By the end of a year, you are at £1.82 million, but I bet they are getting a lot more than £10 a week.

So Red Ed Millipede is still wittering on about ‘decarbonising the grid’ and his latest plans seem to be adding more costs to domestic bills to make power cheaper for industrial users. I really can’t see how this is getting us any nearer to net zero. The simple answer is we aren’t getting cheaper energy, we are just spreading the cost in a different way. What we really need is cheaper energy for everyone, whether it comes from the North Sea, fracking or even coal mines. We have the resources, but Liebore hasn’t got the will to use them, they would rather de-industrialise the country.

Ryanair’s plan to do away completely with paper boarding passes seems to be falling apart already. In the UK they have had to announce that if someone has checked in online and comes to the airport without a digital pass in a mobile phone’s wallet they will print off a paper boarding pass for them free of charge. Now the Portuguese National Civil Aviation Authority (ANAC) has instructed Ryanair to continue accepting printed travel documents from passengers. They have also mandated that Ryanair must waive any reissue fees for paper passes and ensure no passenger is denied boarding due to smartphone issues such as a flat battery. Furthermore, they have told Ryanair that they can’t prevent passengers who have checked in from travelling if they don’t have a digital pass, nor can they charge a fee for providing a boarding pass. How long before other countries follow suit.

Saturday

Good morning peeps, not so cold this morning but rather grey when I trotted down the garden. I thought Legohead had gone off to his usual weekend in the country, but I hear he has actually gone off on another one of his overseas jaunts. This time he has flown off to the G20 meeting in South Africa. The best thing is that it is being ignored this time around by the leaders of the United States, Russia, China, Argentina and Mexico, but it means getting away from the disastrous Liebore government for a couple of days so never here Keir has to be there.

I am delighted to read that the BBC has signed up to another series of Line of Duty with the same 3 leading actors. It’s been 5 years since the last series and I did wonder if it would ever return. This will be the 7th series but it’s a long way away as the BBC aren’t to start making it in Belfast until March next year. I enjoy watching the programme even if it is not always easy to follow, but I rather like the series as it is full of action.

Early this week the Donald had talks with the Saudis and agreed to sell them the F-35A. However, there was no mention of how many or the cost, just a general agreement to make the plane available. But interestingly the Israelis are not very happy as they are the only country in the region to operate such an advanced plane, and they don’t want anyone else to be their military equal. Even if the Saudis do eventually purchase the plane it will almost certainly be inferior to the Israeli version. As I told you recently uniquely among F-35 operators only the Israelis have permission to fiddle with them, to add their own radar, electronics and long-range fuel tanks. The Israelis have been operating the plane for over 8 years now and have never lost one in battle. It is certain that the version the Saudis get will not be as good as the one Israel has or even the version we have and certainly not as good as the ones the USAF, Marines and Navy operate.

I have just heard someone on the radio saying that Red Ed Millipede’s mouth looks just like Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. Well now I have heard that and pictured it in my mind with his gums wrapped around a bacon butty, I just can’t un-see it. I think he is made from Plasticine. It explains his lack of brains.

Prince William and Princess Catherine rather disappointed me when they met Paddington Bear at this week’s Royal Variety Show. They both shook his paw and chatted to him amicably, but neither of them took the marmalade sandwich he offered them. I would have loved to have seen pictures of them sitting in the Royal Box, watching the show and munching on marmalade sandwiches.

Another problem at the COP 30 in Brazil, this time a huge fire has broken out in a stand in one of the pavilions. The video I saw showed hundreds of people panicking and rushing to get out. I hear that much of the venue has been built from wood, a material that burns easily. Apparently people were hanging about outside in the open air and complaining about the heat outside the air-conditioned venue.

Last week I told you that the American Federal Aviation Administration had grounded all MD11F’s from flying after the port engine fell off during take-off. At the time it only affected 3 American package carriers as they were the only operators of the MD11F. I understand the FAA has now extended the grounding to all the passenger versions of the plane (MD11) and its predecessors (MD10 and DC10) worldwide. This sounds pretty drastic, but I understand this is only 10 aircraft worldwide. It could have been worse as the USAF used to operate a version as an airborne refuelling tanker but the last was retired about a year ago. The few airworthy aircraft of all types are now grounded indefinitely.

That’s me finished for yet another week and it’s still grotty here in London this afternoon and pouring with rain. It is definitely not an afternoon for the windowsill, so I must decide where to nap. I had a nice snooze on Legohead’s bed last week and as he is away again, I can curl up in peace. Chat to you all next week.
 

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