Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Ten

Monday

Good morning, my friends. It’s a bit damp and grey this morning, so I was up and down the garden very quickly before my breakfast, as I expected it to rain at any moment. I understand that Legohead is talking about bringing the Ginger Growler back to the front bench. But she is still tarnished and not popular with the general public. I wonder if this proposed return is before or after she pays the £40,000 she owes in stamp duty on her recent house move.

A bit of a problem at the weekend off the Solent. Sixteen containers full of bananas, plantains and avocados were lost overboard from a container ship near the Isle of Wight. The problem with lost containers is that many float just below the surface and are a danger to shipping. Consequently, ships sailing from Southampton were delayed, including P&O’s Iona that was off on a two-week cruise to the Canaries. I see containers have been coming ashore as far away as Selsey Bill and Bognor Regis. The coastguard has warned that it is illegal to pick up fruit from the containers, and they must be reported to the police within 30 days. I wonder how many won’t have been eaten in that time, so there is no evidence.

I think it shows how desperate the left is to dig up some dirt on Nigel Farage that some man has decided to claim he overspent on his election expenses back at the General Election nearly 18 months ago. I am sure that if something had been wrong, it would have cropped up before now. But there are some interesting things emerging about this story. Firstly, the man complaining has been slung out of Reform, apparently for his sexual behaviour with a woman. Then the law says that the complaints over expenses must be submitted to the police within six months of the election. Under some circumstances this can be extended to 12 months by a magistrate’s court. Neither of these things seems to have happened, so is the complaint out of time? Oh, one final thing. The man who complained is said to have overseen doing the election expenses!

This morning, I hear of an ex Royal Marine who was taken to court for daring to say that ‘some’ illegal immigrants committed crimes. It took a jury 17 minutes to return a not guilty verdict, which I bet included loads of the jury going for a pee and having a cup of tea. But the real point of me relating this story is that I read the man has now been banned from coaching his daughter’s girls football team on ‘safeguarding’ grounds. How totally ludicrous.

More problems with the Army’s Ajax fighting vehicles. They were used in a training exercise a couple of weeks ago, and over 30 soldiers reported ill after using them, with the main complaints being over noise and vibration. The Ajax is years behind the deployment, with over 870 vehicles ordered. I hear that soldiers complained of the terrible rough ride, and many emerged from them being sick and dizzy after being thrown around. The Army has slapped an immediate two-week ban on them being used while an inquiry takes place. When the original prototypes were tested, noise and vibration was a problem, and it is supposed to have been fixed in the production models. It would seem not.

Did you see Zarah Saltana of Your Party on the TV yesterday morning? I was not sure what to think about her. Is she mad, simple or just naive? She told Laura Kuenssberg all about her vision of a socialist society. Well, it sounded more like a communist society to me. She wants no competition for most businesses. This means just about everything would be nationalised. One electric supplier, one gas supplier, one railway company, one bus company, one mobile operator, and I suppose only one handset maker. She even suggested that corner shops should be run as a cooperative. I suppose that means a state supermarket selling state bread, meat from a state farm and light bulbs from the state factory. I have decided she’s just plain stupid.

The Indian Air Force is one of the few still flying the Jaguar fighter bomber. In fact, I understand they still operate some 6 Squadron. In the RAF, a squadron comprised 12 planes, but my understanding is that in the IAF a squadron is between 18 and 20 planes. So this means that India is still operating over 100 of these Anglo-French planes that we stopped using several years ago. This gives India a bit of a problem in that spare parts are now difficult to come by. But I read that they have had a bit of good fortune. They have just been gifted the 20-odd Jaguars that Oman took out of service in 2014 and have been in storage ever since. The future of these planes is to be broken and used as spare parts.

Tuesday

Hi folks, yet another grey day. It wasn’t actually raining when I popped out, but it looked like it was going to start at any second. I see Legohead has a new TikTok account and has posted a video of the turning on of the lights on the giant scratching pole outside the front door. But the Tories have posted their version of the same thing, with Legohead tripping over coming out of the door and talking about ‘freeing the sausages’. It is really quite funny.

Over the weekend there was a problem at a Heathrow Terminal 3 car park, where four men tried to snatch a suitcase in a lift from a woman, using a pepper spray. There have been several arrests, which is hardly surprising when you consider the huge number of CCTV cameras all around Heathrow. The attack caused armed police to descend on the car park and the terminal to go into lockdown for a while, meaning that some people missed their flights. I must say I wonder what the woman had in her suitcase that made a robbery worthwhile. Surely they can’t have been after her dirty washing.

I discovered something interesting yesterday that I had not noticed before. The pilot canopy on a F-35 hinges at the front. Every other jet fighter I can think of hinges backwards. So why is this plane different? I understand that when a pilot must eject from a plane, the canopy has to flip out of the way. With a backward-hinged canopy, it often gets hit by the ejected pilot, who is injured. Apparently, this forward-hinged design allows the canopy to fly clear of the plane and the pilot to eject cleanly. I will be intrigued to see how this works in practice.

My regular readers will probably be aware that Ryanair is an all-Boeing 737 airline and in the past it would seem that however low Airbus dropped the price of its A320 family of aircraft, the CEO, Michael O’Leary, could not be tempted to buy from them. However, there is a small twist. Ryanair owns the Austrian airline Lauda, which is an all-Airbus airline. Lauda currently flies 25 Airbus A320 aircraft. But the fleet has an average age of 18 years, and O’Leary is thinking about replacing them. But this is a problem. Both Airbus and Boeing would dearly love an order, but both have bulging order books. I hear Lauda would like to stick with Airbus. Their crews and engineers are trained on A320s and a change to Boeing would mean a lot of retraining and buying new spares and new simulators, which would not be cheap.

I have been reading about how the British, Italians and Americans have been working to integrate the MBDA Meteor air-to-air missile with the F-35 family of fighter jets. The European missile is already the standard fit on the Dassault Aviation Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon and Saab JAS 39 Gripen, and with its ramjet design it has an advantage over its American rivals. The ramjet powers the missile all the way to its target at Mach 4, while American missiles burn off their fuel accelerating to high speed on launch, and the speed then degrades all the way to the target. The British have already overseen a test launch from an F-35B, while the Italians are handling the integration on the F-35A. I suspect the Yanks are reluctant to carry out a fast integration, as without it on the F-35 we must use American-made missiles.

Last week I told you about the cancellation of the 07:00 fast Manchester train from Manchester to London Euston and the stupidity that meant that it would continue to run, just without paying passengers, as it carried essential railway workers to London. Well, I am pleased to report that the regulator has backed down, and the train will continue to carry passengers for the foreseeable future. However, the publicity the tale has generated has made the train very popular and it is now running full most mornings. I understand that there has been a small problem with the buffet car’s microwave and hot bacon rolls have been off the menu.

Speaking of rolls, I learn of problems at Morton Rolls in Scotland, where the bakery was renowned in Scotland for its crispy breakfast rolls. The company had been in financial difficulties for some years before calling in the liquidator last March, triggering the redundancy of all the remaining 110 employees. The company had been making batches of employees redundant for some time before the final collapse. About a month later the liquidator found a buyer who re-employed many of those made redundant. A row then broke out as to whom was responsible for the redundancy payments. The collapsed company had no money, so it would normally fall on the Government’s Redundancy Payments Service. But they claimed it should be the company’s buyers. A court case has put the responsibility firmly on the RPS, as the company had made the workforce redundant a month before it was purchased. But it doesn’t end there. It has now emerged that the old company had been collecting pension payments from the old employees’ wages and not paying them into the pension fund. At the moment, no one knows where the money went.

Wednesday

Good morning everyone. It was a happy Larry this morning who slowly wandered down to the bottom of the garden this morning, as for once it was dry and not terribly cold. I’m 19 next month and I’m getting too old for all this running to avoid the rain. I see Legohead has put up another ‘exciting’ TikTok video. This one shows him entering his office and hanging up his jacket. It also seems to be very old, as the conversation is about the upcoming Euros and a meeting with Tyrone Mings. Well, the Euros was last summer and Mings is currently not playing because he has a hamstring injury.

I have been watching the opinion polls on the general election quite closely. I can’t say the exact number, but I see that Reform have been in the lead for over 170 polls now. Of course, the lead varies depending on the polling company. Some have Reform leading by a much bigger percentage than others. In recent months most have been showing Reform polling around 30%, but not YouGov. They have recently consistently had Reform in the lead, but it has usually been by only a few percent over Liebore. That is until the last month, when their weekly poll has had Reform polling a percentage or two higher every week and Liebore stuck on 19%. Is this a true swing towards Reform or YouGov coming into line with everyone else?

Great British Railways have announced their livery, branding and logo, which should start appearing on trains in the spring. The red, white and blue colour scheme is currently on display at London Bridge Station, but not on a real train. You can see it on a Hornby toy train set and in a virtual version in the Train Sim World 6 game. The logo seems to be the Network Rail double arrow, and the wording Great Britain Railways is in the ‘Rail’ font used for all station signage. Seven of the country’s rail operators are back in nationalised ownership, and the majority of the remainder will be by the end of 2027 as their contracts expire. I hope the new livery will only start to appear on new trains and on those that need to be repainted, as I bet it is not cheap to apply.

Earlier this week two Afghan illegal immigrants were found guilty of the rape of a 15 year old girl. Today I learn of another Afghan being charged with the rape of a young girl. This got me thinking, are Afghans more likely to rape girls than other nationals? Well, the numbers are well hidden, but it certainly seems that the number of rapes per 100,000 people is 50 per cent higher for Afghans than Brits.

This Sandie Peggie Employment Tribunal in Scottishland seems to have come to some odd conclusions. It has found for Peggie, in that she was discriminated against by the Health Board, but seems to have ruled in a 300 page judgement that there was no problem with a trans man using the women’s changing rooms because he, she, it had been given permission. So that was OK until someone complained. But didn’t the Supreme Court rule that single sex spaces were for people of the sex they were born with? So the man should never have been there in the first place. I feel an appeal case coming on.

In New Addington, in the London Borough of Croydon, a man came home from his holidays only to find that there were four tickets on his car for illegally parking in a disabled bay outside his home. However, when he went on holiday he had parked there perfectly legally, as the disabled bay didn’t exist. It was painted around his car while he was away. The man’s CCTV footage was uploaded to social media, showing a workman carefully measuring the bay and painting it around the car. The man said that he checked his CCTV while he was away because it was covering his car and could see what was happening but could do nothing about it. Apparently a neighbour had requested a disabled bay, and the council had put it in without any notification. Croydon has cancelled the tickets.

It’s a bit of an old story, but I have only just heard it. I bring you the tale of an Estonian pilot who flew passenger jets for 13 years without a pilot’s licence. It seems that as a young man he gained a private pilot’s licence but could not afford the cost of training for an airline pilot’s licence. Instead, he blagged time on an airline’s simulator and studied manuals and procedures in his spare time. He eventually applied for a First Officer post at an Italian start-up airline, who hired him after checking him out on a simulator but never checked his licence. He flew with them for many years and was even promoted to full pilot. But it wasn’t until he moved to a Spanish airline that he was arrested, fined $2,000 and banned from flying for a year.

Thursday

Hello folks, another bright morning and not too chilly. I have been looking at the proposals for Peers that emerged yesterday. I know we have a Liebore Government who are outnumbered by Tories in the Lords, but to propose another 25 Liebore Peers and six for their left-wing Limp Dump colleagues, while only proposing three Tories and no Reform Peers, is pure politics. Twenty-four of those 25 Liebore nominees come from the London area, which shows where Liebore’s support lies. I can’t wait for a general election.

I start today with a story from Portsmouth. The Limp Dump minority-led City Council has just written to a tenant in a council block demanding that they remove a small Christmas wreath from their front door. The letter says they can put up Christmas decorations inside their flat, but not in hallways and staircases, as they are common areas and they must be left undecorated because of health and safety concerns. I could see that lots of paper chains in the common areas might be a fire risk and a huge Christmas tree outside a flat might be a health and safety risk, blocking access ways in the event of an emergency. But banning hanging a small wreath on your front door is surely taking things too far.

I read that the Government has decided to spend £1 billion on contracts for the two detention centres for deporting illegals at Heathrow. These contracts will last ten years, which tells me that the Government has given up on ‘smashing the gangs’ and instead is looking at what to do with the 60,000 illegal immigrants who have arrived in the country since Liebore came to power.

In France, Jordan Bardella, the National Rally leader, is tipped to be the next president. In an interview he has just said that as President he will join with Reform and stop the illegal immigrant boats. From now I am a National Rally supporting cat.

I had to laugh at the Donald’s attack on Sad Dick and describing him as a ‘horrible little man’ and responsible for ruining London. The Donald thinks that Sad Dick is supported by Muslims and derives his majority from them, so is happy to see more illegal immigrants arrive in London, as he thinks they will vote for him. This cat thinks that London got Sad Dick as Mayor because only 30% of the London electorate could be bothered to turn out and vote.

Next year’s World Cup is taking place in the USA, Canada and Mexico, and the draw was made for who plays in the various groups last weekend. Then on Monday and Tuesday, who was playing when was worked out. Group G is to have some of its matches played in Seattle, and locals have pre-designated the match to be played there on June the 27th as the ‘Pride’ match, as it takes place in the city’s Pride month. Fate is a strange thing, and the four teams drawn to be in Group G are Belgium, New Zealand, Egypt and Iran, and the match to be played on that day in Seattle is between Egypt and Iran. You couldn’t make it up.

I hear of another win for the Eurofighter Typhoon, with the Bangladesh Air Force signing a Letter of Intent with the Italian member of the consortium that builds the plane, Leonardo. Although any resulting order is likely to be finally assembled in the Leonardo plant in Turin, it is good news for BAE, who build a large percentage of the aircraft as sub-assemblies, and Rolls-Royce, who is a major participant in the plane’s EJ200 jet engine. No confirmation on how big the order would be, but rumours say probably 20, and that it would replace the BAF’s very old Chengdu J-7s, a MiG-21 derivative, and its MiG-29s.

Friday

Hi everyone, no sun this morning, but not cold, so I didn’t have to rush down the garden. I wonder if I will ever be reporting good news for Legohead. Today it’s the economy shrinking by 0.1% in October, and this before the latest budget kicks in. The joke is that all the experts were expecting the economy to grow by 0.1%. We have only just missed the magic three negative months in a row that signals a recession. The economy has been saved from recession by one month in the last four being flat. There was nothing in the budget to help growth, so I wonder what they will do.

Late last week French President Macaroon was in China and, according to the French press, he confirmed the Chinese order for 150 Airbus planes that is already on the order book. However, there was nothing reported about the additional 500-plane order that the two countries have been talking about for several years. It seems that Airbus and France are in a good position for two major reasons. Airbus has a manufacturing plant and a final assembly line in China, so are looked on favourably and, of course, they are not from America. France is seen as an independent country. Still, a 500-plane order is not to be sniffed at.

I have previously told you about the United States cancelling four of the six Constellation Class frigates on order. I now hear that the US Government is looking at what will replace them, and it is reported that the Navy Secretary, John Phelan, has told a private dinner that the next frigate is on the brink of ordering a modified version of the National Security Cutter currently being built by HII (Huntington Ingalls Industries), the huge American warship builder. What is odd about this story is that in the original tendering competition for the Constellation Class frigates, HII offered a modified version of the National Security Cutter and it was rejected.

The battle between France and Germany over their joint development of a new fighter jet has taken an interesting new turn. The giant and influential German union IG Metall has called on the French company Dassault Aviation to leave the project, saying they can’t work with them. They say they are happy to work with other French companies on the project, just not Dassault. But I don’t think there is another French maker of warplanes, so is this just a coded message to the German Government to quit the FCAS programme.

News of another ex-Tory MP defecting to Reform UK. Ben Bradley was the MP for Mansfield and a previous leader of Nottinghamshire County Council. For a short time, he was also Conservative Party Vice Chair. I hear he is to join the team looking at saving money in Reform-led councils.

I am delighted that the Chief Constable of the West Midlands, Craig Guildford, has been recalled by a parliamentary committee because the evidence he gave to them has been shown to be ‘unreliable’, at the least. This was all to do with the banning of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending a match at Aston Villa. The Chief Constable said the Dutch police had reported the Jewish club’s supporters had initiated violence in Amsterdam, throwing locals in a canal. The only person thrown in a canal was a Tel Aviv supporter. He also talked about violence at a match between West Ham and Tel Aviv, but this was made up. West Ham have never played Tel Aviv. He also claimed that Jewish people in Birmingham supported the ban, despite there being no evidence to back this up. How can a Chief Constable who lies to a Commons Committee retain his job?

I read of a new attack drone being produced in Ukraine that is a bit different in that it is plastic. It is somewhat similar to the Shahed drone used by Russia in that it is a small delta-wing drone with a pusher motor. But it is made with a polyurethane one-piece reinforced body. This means that it is considerably cheaper and lighter than a metal-bodied drone. It is also much quicker to produce. The manufacturer claims that with just three sets of dies they can manufacture 700 Cooper drones a month at about one third of the cost of a metal equivalent. Now why aren’t we doing something similar?

Saturday

Morning, my friends. It was quite pleasant when I popped out this morning and I was delighted to find Felix chicken in my bowl when I got back. Today’s bad news for Legohead is doubly bad. It seems like Liebore have been replaced as the biggest political party in the UK by Reform. It’s not just that Reform has been adding members, their membership ticker has hit over 268,000, but Liebore membership has dropped and is now down to under 250,000. Secondly is that of the nine council seat by-elections on Thursday, they couldn’t win a single one. Reform gained four, Plaid held one, the Limp Dumps gained two and the Tories held two. One of those Reform gains was taken from Liebore in Scottishland.

November was a strange month for Boeing. They took in a lot of orders thanks to the Dubai Airshow, but the number of aircraft produced fell badly. However, the company also suffered the cancellation of 65 wide-body jets, including 15 x 777X and seven x 787 by Etihad Airways. In the same period Etihad placed a big order with Airbus for its A350-1000. Why the swap to a different supplier? I don’t really know, but I can guess. The 777X is long delayed and has not yet been certified, while the A350-1000 is in service and it is reported to be very popular with customers.

I have told you previously about Babcock’s hope of selling its Arrowhead 140 frigate design for export. I hear that earlier this week there was a Scottlishland meeting at which Babcock talked a little about the prospect of sales to Denmark and Sweden. The placement of an order with somebody from Denmark seems to be a bit closer than Sweden. The negotiations with a couple of companies, including Babcock, are progressing and someone is expected to get an order before spring 26. Sweden is a little further away and although Babcock are still in the running, in this case Sweden want to assemble the chosen frigate in its own shipyards.

In the US a woman is suing Royal Caribbean Cruises over the death of her fiancée. The woman alleges that on a cruise from San Francisco to Mexico and back the man was served with 33 alcoholic drinks. When he became aggressive he was sprayed with pepper spray and a crew member stood on him to restrain him. According to the medical examiner the man died from the combined effects of mechanical asphyxia, which is when force or an object blocks breathing, obesity, an enlarged heart and alcohol intoxication. I would like to be a fly on the wall of that court case.

In the USA, back in September ICE looked at setting up its own airline to carry all the people they were deporting. The idea was to purchase ten second-hand Boeing 737s from Spirit Airlines, who had gone bankrupt. However, the plan was put on the back burner when it was realised that the ten planes were leased and not for sale and, in any case, they didn’t have jet engines. Now I hear that ICE is looking at six Boeing 737s from Daedalus Aviation. It is not clear whether this would be a purchase or a contract. But the current Trump repatriation programme is generating an enormous number of flights, with some 1,700 flights to 77 countries operating up to the end of October. Someone has been making a lot of money out of those charter flights.

The final take-over of Spirit AeroSystems has happened this week, with the maker of plane fuselages and wings being acquired mostly by Boeing but partly by Airbus. The company was originally part of Boeing but was sold off some years ago, but Boeing wanted to bring the production of 737 fully back in house. But here the problems started, as while it was independent Spirit had started manufacturing chunks of planes for Airbus. So the bit of Spirit has been sold off to Airbus. In Northern Ireland what was Spirit AeroSystems’ operation will become an independent subsidiary of Boeing called ‘Short Brothers’, which is a return to its old name. As for Airbus, the production of A220 wings and A220 mid-fuselage in Belfast, Northern Ireland, is becoming Airbus Belfast, and the production of wing components for A320 and A350 in Prestwick, Scotland, becoming an affiliate named Prestwick AeroSystems.

For my final story of the week, I bring you news of a 38-year-old Ghanaian immigrant on the run in Italy for assaulting a policeman and trying to avoid a nine-month prison sentence. He was being chased through the streets of the southern town of Galatone when he spotted a life-size nativity scene and tried to hide in it as an additional character. Whether he was pretending to be a shepherd or a villager is not known. But he definitely was not a Wise Man, as he was caught.

That’s me finished for the week and I’m ready for my snooze. I might try under the new scratching post outside the front door. All those lights on it keep it warm and it is dry underneath. I won’t be chatting to you all next week as my scribe is on his Christmas and New Year cruise. I’m sure he will be writing a cruise diary to keep you all entertained. Happy Christmas to you all. I wonder if I can snaffle a bit of Legohead’s turkey.
 

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