Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Eleven

Monday

Good morning, my friends. The cat is back with his political opinions and all the news that you might have missed. I have had a lovely rest while my scribe has been stuffing his face on a cruise ship, and Legohead has been missing at Chequers and visiting his lefty mates in Europe, where he has been promising our troops to a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. Well, I don’t think that is going to happen, as PooTin isn’t willing to give up one millimetre of the ground his forces have taken.

Over Christmas and the New Year, I heard lots of political commentators talking about how Reform had fallen in the opinion polls. Well, I had a look at what was happening and, yes, some of the polls were reporting that Reform had slipped a few points in the ‘poll of polls’ tracker. When I looked at it a bit more closely, it seemed that it was more because some of the regular weekly polls were not reporting over the holidays, and the usual YouGov poll was giving Labour a higher rating than anyone else. Now the holidays are over, Reform are back to their double-digit lead.

Another major defection to Reform this morning. Today it is former Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nadhim Zahawi. I suppose this is another of the big hitters that Reform will need when it comes to power. Someone with both business and cabinet minister experience like him is needed, but it is interesting that he was a Brexiteer. It seems he is going to support Danny Kruger in his efforts in preparing Reform for government.

I have been reading about the ECRS Mark 2 radar which the UK has developed for the RAF’s Eurofighter Typhoon. If the puff piece I read is half right, it is an interesting bit of kit. For many years we have been reliant on buying American-designed planes and radars, which the Yanks control and only allow us to buy inferior versions to those supplied to the US forces. The F-35 is one good example of this. Yanks control all its software and spare parts. Apparently, this is one of the reasons we have developed the ECRS Mk 2. We have full control of it, who we use it against and how it is maintained. I read it is not only an AESA radar with no moving parts, but it is also capable of electronic warfare and electronic attack, and in testing has proved to hugely outperform its specifications. EW and EA are something the Yanks have special aircraft for, but this is going into our Tranche 3 Typhoons as standard, and they will have a data link between planes. A decision on upgrading the Tranche 2 Typhoons is likely soon, much to the Yanks’ chagrin.

It’s nice to be able to report on a British success story, but two in one day is an exception. I hear that we have put DragonFire, our laser-directed energy weapon, into production after a series of very successful tests, where it took out swarms of drones attacking a warship. The story is it can hit a target the size of a five pence piece at several miles. Of course, it is not the most powerful laser and needs to linger for a couple of seconds on its target, for which it needs to be stabilised and steered accurately. But unlike a naval gun, it is not reliant on a magazine full of expensive airburst ammunition. It only needs a power supply from the ship’s generators and costs around £10 a shot. I hear the first ships to be fitted with DragonFire will be the Type 45 destroyers.

The uprising in Iran has got a lot worse over the weekend, with the Ayatollah’s supporters killing protesters. They had already shut down the country’s internet in a bid to stop protesters organising and getting video of protests out to the rest of the world. So the protesters have moved on to using Starlink. This morning, the Iranian government has brought in Chinese military jamming equipment and is reported to have reduced Iranian use of Starlink by 80%. I suspect that if the jamming proves to be a major problem, the Israeli Air Force will kill those jammers in minutes.

Over my holiday, it has become quite clear that the Chief Constable of West Midlands Police has been a little short with the truth on the banning of the Israeli football supporters attending that football match at Villa Park. His force invented evidence of Israeli fan violence, lied about consulting Israeli supporters and Birmingham Jews, took advice from Muslim organisations and mosques, twisted a Dutch police report and lied to a House of Commons committee. How the Chief Constable is still in his job, I really don’t know.

Tuesday

Hi folks. Today is a very special day, and it has nothing to with politics. It is my birthday, as near as Battersea could work out, and I am officially 19 years old. That equates to 92 in human years, so excuse me when I say I am feeling my age these days. I bet Legohead has no idea and has not got me a present. A packet of Dreamies would be lovely, but he is too busy threatening to ban X.

Net Zero Watch has come to the conclusion that the cost of reaching Net Zero by 2050 is not the published £4.5 trillion but double that, at £9 trillion. This is because the lower calculation seems to have been made using the most favourable numbers possible. That is a mere £160,000 per household on the lower amount, or £320,000 on the higher amount. Of course, this is on top of all the taxes you currently pay. But that is assuming that every home in the nation contributes equally to the nation’s finances. You must remember that millions do not.

I can’t say I was surprised to see the Government launch an investigation into whether they should ban X because its AI generator, Grok, is being used to produce images of women and girls in bikinis. The Leftwaffe are going potty, saying that X should be banned because of this. This is the same lefty mob who didn’t want a child grooming enquiry. The problem here is that the left hate X on a political basis. But Grok is not the only way these images can be created, there are plenty of other AI generators and software out there that can do the same thing. But perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way. It is always people who generate the pictures, the software is just the tool.

Just before my Christmas break there was a loss of a load of containers full of bananas off the Solent that led to a lot of reports. Over the weekend, a ship from Portsmouth to Barbados lost another 17 containers off the Nab Tower, and a second ship lost another seven containers which are believed to have sunk off the south of the Isle of Wight. No stories of the 17 containers coming ashore yet, but the coastguard had an aircraft flying search patterns over the area where the containers were lost. No hard news of what the containers held, but it was coyly said to be ‘food stuff’, which could be anything from tins of baked beans to bottles of whisky. Are they not saying because it’s something worth salvaging?

The Government has announced the development of a new ballistic missile with a range of 500 km, a 200 kg warhead and a circular error of probability of 5 metres. Its specification says it will have the ability to withstand electronic warfare, and it is being designed to function even when the enemy is actively jamming GPS and other satellite signals. The surprising part about the Nightfall missile is that it is not being developed for the British Army but for the Ukrainian Army.

I read that in several Chinese cities a new type of job has emerged in the huge residential tower blocks and office blocks. Like in Britain, in recent years there has been a massive leap in people ordering meals to be delivered for lunch at work and dinner at home. However, city people in China tend to live and work in giant tower blocks, not urban semi-detached houses and low-rise offices. Consequently, when a food delivery arrives, drivers refuse to take it up to the high floors. Hence the blocks are gaining fit young people who collect the delivery in the building lobby and take it on to its destination, releasing the driver to make another delivery.

In Ireland it seems that many of the population are falling out of love with the EU, and it is all because of Qualified Majority Voting. Under the EU system at least 15 of the 27 member states must vote in favour for a resolution to pass. In addition, those 15 must represent at least 65% of the EU’s population. The problem is the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement with South America, which allows lots of cheap agricultural products into the EU, in exchange for EU industrial products being allowed into South America. The EU industrial nations like Germany were in favour and the agricultural nations like Ireland against. The problem is that under the QMV system small countries like Ireland have no chance of winning a vote. Hence lots of muttering in Ireland about how they might as well be out of the EU if their views are going to be ignored.

Wednesday

Good morning everyone from Number 10 where, overnight, there has been another U-turn by Legohead. The 13th U-turn in 18 months is to dump mandatory digital ID. Apparently digital IDs would stop illegal immigration because everyone would have to have one to work, which was never going to happen. So now we are going to spend £2 billion on a voluntary scheme which no one wants, or needs, and won’t be used. What a waste of taxpayer money.
Disobeyed by Legohead.

According to the radio, Reform are tanking in the opinion polls, with the latest YouGov poll putting them on 26%. But I have just been looking at all the other polls published this year and, of the six, YouGov is the outlier. All the others have Reform polling between 31% and 33%, and only one of those six polls has Liebore higher than the Tories, and in that they are only on 20%. But of course, it is only ‘news’ if the Reform vote is down, but intriguingly even the YouGov poll, with them on just 26%, has them up 1% on its previous poll. It looks like ‘Fake News’ to me.

I read that Russia has started using Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missiles against Ukraine. This missile is supposed to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, which made me wonder if they told the United States they were going to use it with a conventional warhead. The Yanks are certain to have picked up the launch with all their sensors. So, were their armed forces in Europe put on alert? I understand that so far Russia has launched two of these missiles, the second one hitting Lviv after travelling 1,622 km from its launch point. At the moment the Russians are believed to only have a few of this missile type, so I guess this can be considered a test flight.

The rumour going around No. 10 this week is that Northern Powerhouse Rail is the next major infrastructure to be left to wither on the vine. There will be no public announcement of it being cut. It just will not be allocated the necessary funds to build it. Small parts might be built, but only where necessary. The basic problem is that the Government just doesn’t have the money. It has spent it all on the likes of giving it to Mauritius and doctors. The Government has also announced a new railway line from Birmingham to Manchester, not a reinstatement of HS2, but not until NPR has been built, so basically never. Another manifesto commitment that is being dumped.

Another major coup for the Israeli defence contractor Israeli Aerospace Industries. They have secured a $3.1 billion follow-on order for its Arrow 3 air defence missile from Germany. Germany is already receiving the Arrow 3 system from Israel under a $3.5 billion contract. Arrow 3 is a major part of the Iron Dome air defence system that is protecting Israeli cities. Mind you, I read that it is ineffective against the Oreshnik missile mentioned earlier. I’m not sure how this is known, as the Russian missile has only been used in Ukraine.

Yesterday I told you about more containers being lost from ships in the Channel. Today I see pictures of wrecked containers and what I assume is their contents coming ashore on the beach at Seaford. All along the high-water line there are tins of powdered baby milk, those little individual serving containers of long-life milk you get in hotels, and plastic sleeves filled with paper cups. With the cost of baby milk being so vast these days, I would expect the owner of the local corner shop would have it on the shelf for sale in the coming days.

In the WSL things go from bad to worse for West Ham United Ladies. They are struggling in the league and are next to bottom, with only Liverpool one point below them. At the weekend they wanted to bring on substitute, Estelle Cascarino, only for the officials to say she couldn’t enter the field of play unless she removed an earring. It seems the 28-year-old French international, on loan from Juventus, was unaware of this year’s change to playing rules that bans all jewellery from the field of play. Under the old rules a stud in the ear could be hidden under a bit of sticking plaster, but not this year. Apparently this earring is such that it needs to be removed by a doctor, so if Estelle wants to play in the UK she better make an appointment with the club doctor.

Thursday

Hello folks, another horrible wet morning. At least it is not as cold as it was. News this morning that so far 23 councils have opted to cancel next year’s council elections. All but four are held by Labour, and most, if not all, would have fallen to Reform if the elections had gone ahead. This is gerrymandering on an epic scale.

The news has broken that the Chief Constable of the West Midlands has written to the Home Affairs Committee admitting that the football match between West Ham and Maccabi Tel Aviv, which he said was violent and was used to ban Maccabi fans from the game against Aston Villa, was never played. In fact, he tells the Committee that the game was invented by AI. How can a police force rely on AI without fact-checking everything in a report? How can Chief Constable Craig Guildford still be in a job after this admission?

Back in 2018 Coca-Cola paid £3.9 billion to buy the UK brand Costa Coffee from its previous owner, Whitbread. Despite having sales of £1.4 billion in 2024, Costa has continually lost money under the Coke ownership. Hence Coke’s attempt to sell off the brand to anyone who would be mug enough to buy it. They have apparently been talking to a number of interested parties, including TDR Capital, the owners of ASDA, Pizza Express and Gail’s Bakery. Now I hear that Coke has pulled out of the sale, as none of the bidders has reached the £2 billion asking price that Coke has set as the minimum it is willing to take for the chain. What is Coke going to do with the 2,700 outlets it owns, will it undertake a drastic pruning?

The Government has struck a deal with SSE to build a giant wind farm off the east coast of Scotland and claims that it will be among the biggest wind farms in the world. But as usual this is the Government putting a spin on the deal. The wind farm has only got the go-ahead for the first phase of the project, and that is only about a quarter of the 4.2 gigawatts that the Government claims to be the wind farm’s size. The farm is also subject to a Contract for Difference, which is another way to pay subsidies. If wind farms weren’t subsidised they would never be built.

When the United States raided Venezuela and arrested President Nicolás Maduro, not a single US aircraft was damaged, let alone lost. How could this happen when Venezuela was reputed to have advanced air defence weapons, mainly Russian-supplied S-300 missile and radar systems? Well, I read that the US sent in its electronic warfare aircraft first and completely negated the air defence system. By all accounts the system was totally useless. Radar didn’t work, communications were jammed and not even one of the attack wave aircraft was detected. I suppose that Russia will be changing its operating software right now.

I have learnt that earlier this week a 25-year-old Israeli student was arrested at the border between Lithuania and Russia because, while in Russia, he had purchased a samovar and was guilty of trying to bring it into the EU. For some reason the EU has placed the traditional Russian hot water boiler on the list of sanctioned products. The report doesn’t say what happened to either the Israeli or the samovar, but he was obviously in hot water.

In 1986 someone at Royal Caribbean International Cruises had the bright idea of leasing a beach area on the north coast of Haiti and using it as a private destination for their cruise ships. At first it was just a beach stop with barbecues, but over the years, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, it has become a true destination with pools, restaurants, bars, golf courses, even zip wire rides and a pier capable of handling two ships at a time. Then a civil war broke out in Haiti, half of the island of Hispaniola, and RCI stopped sending its Caribbean cruises there, costing them millions of dollars. RCI has just announced that none of their ships will be stopping there this year, 2026, meaning that just about every RCI Caribbean cruise this year will have its itinerary adjusted.

Friday

Hi everyone, well it is wet in London again this morning, and I was as quick as my old bones would allow me to be when I went out this morning. Yesterday Farage said that at his regular Tuesday morning press conference next week he will be revealing a defector from Labour. Gosh, has that thrown a cat amongst the pigeons in Number 10 this morning. No one knows who it is, but it has caused a huge panic.

The big news of yesterday was the sacking of Robert Jenrick as a Tory shadow cabinet member, had the party Whip removed, and had his membership of the Conservative Party terminated by Kemi Bad Enoch. The claim was she had irrefutable evidence that Jenrick was planning to defect. The word is that a Kemi supporter found a copy of his resignation speech that was left lying around, and that he was going to submit it within the next 24 hours. She didn’t say to whom he was planning to defect, but I can’t think he would have been planning to join anyone other than Reform. I suspect this is just the sort of big-hitter politician that Reform needs. P.S. Jenrick was announced as a member of Reform late afternoon.

I read that Eurostar has announced that they carried an additional 500,000 passengers last year compared to the previous year. But the more I read the more confused I am. Apparently the number was actually down on 2024, but that was an Olympic year and Eurostar carried an additional 850,000 people between London and Paris because of people travelling to Paris in the summer. So if you discount this exception you get the 500,000 increase. I smell a fiddle.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has issued an Air Directive for work on Pratt and Whitney aero engines following fires in PW1100G-powered jets. There are currently 586 PW1100Gs on US-registered jets and owners have 30 days to remove and replace certain specified fuel line clamps and fittings. This will be an annoyance to most operators, but they should be able to carry out the work during normal maintenance, instead of having to take aircraft out of service.

Back in 1970, just before the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty became active, it was signed by Japan, the only country on earth to have suffered a nuclear attack. Now I hear a rumour that Japan has been secretly working on building its own nuclear weapons. Why would Japan take such drastic action? Well, from what I hear it was because they felt threatened by North Korea and the Republic of China, and didn’t feel that Sleepy Joe Biden would protect them. Of course, Sleepy Joe is long gone and Japan feels safer under the current President, but having progressed so far down the road it is easier to go forward rather than back.

I have previously told you about Canada considering buying the Saab Gripen. I now hear that Saab has submitted a proposal to Canada that involves the manufacture of 72 Gripen and six Global Eye surveillance planes in Canada, creating 12,600 jobs in Canada. The Gripen is an interesting plane, in that it is designed to operate in the frozen north of Sweden with an absolute minimum of maintenance, to operate from highways. This makes it far more suitable for Canada than the maintenance-intensive, very expensive F-35A that Canada is having second thoughts about. The existing Canadian order for 88 F-35A is believed to be worth about US$27 billion at current costs.

During 2026 there are 104 coal-fired power stations worldwide due to open, while there are 439 units under construction, the majority of which are in China. In China today there are 264 GW of power under construction and 212 GW of it are coal-fired units generated by 85 coal-fired power stations. The other major constructors of coal-fired power stations are India, Vietnam and Indonesia, with India alone building 25 GW.

Saturday

Morning, my friends, dry but colder this morning. I was reluctant to go out this morning, but my bladder finally won. I have been watching the TV and listening to the radio, and there seems to have been an endless stream of Tories on slagging off Robert Jenrick. I suspect they are putting on a brave face, and his defection has hit them harder than they will care to admit.

I have never heard of Crown Royal whisky, but I understand it is a Canadian brand owned by British company Diagio. It is currently distilled in the town of Gimli, Manitoba, and bottled in Amherstburg, Ontario. Recently Diagio announced that it would be moving the bottling to a plant in Quebec. This has upset the Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, who recently poured a bottle of Crown Royal on the ground while threatening to ban the sale of the whisky in Ontario. This is something he can do because in Ontario all liquor shops are controlled by the province. Of course, this has caused ill feeling in Manitoba where numerous jobs depend on the distillery. At the moment no one in the row is backing down.

Orders for Airbus A320neo family planes for China keep growing. Just before Christmas Air China placed a big order that I have already told you about. Now China Aircraft Leasing Corporation has placed an order for 30 x A320neo family aircraft and 30 options. This is an interesting order, as it is flexible and can be adjusted to just about any of the A320 family of aircraft. In effect it is simply reserving places in the manufacturing queue for planes to be made in the early 2030s, something that a leasing company can afford to do, but an airline cannot so far in advance.

If you ever fancied owning your own cruise ship, I understand that a small one is up for auction at the end of this month. Exploris One, the 144-passenger luxury mini cruise ship, is being sold because its owner and operator, Exploris Cruises, has gone bust. It is to be auctioned in the south of France with a starting price of €7 million. I wonder if my scribe has enough wonga to buy it and use it as his personal yacht.

Sometimes I hear stories that make me ask why? This is one such tale. On the seafront at Worthing there is a pedestrian crossing on the seafront that takes people from the back doors of the Marks and Spencer shop over the road to the promenade and beach. The crossing has been there for years and is well used by people on the prom popping into the M&S food hall for a sandwich and/or drink. But the broke Labour council is spending thousands of pounds and nine weeks’ work to move the crossing 20 feet nearer to a cul-de-sac the council is turning into a small garden. What an enormous waste of money.

Another big loss for the NHS over transvestites using women’s changing rooms. Six Darlington nurses who took their health trust to a tribunal have won their case, that they were discriminated against. After the High Court ruling last year on what constitutes a man and a woman, I wasn’t in the slightest surprised by this decision.

I read that Stan Kroenke, the American billionaire owner of a sports empire that includes Arsenal and the Los Angeles Rams, has just been revealed as the US’s biggest landowner. Last year he only had the fourth biggest land holding, but he recently purchased a million acres of ranch land in New Mexico. Kroenke now owns 2.7 million acres, which is bigger than the Yellowstone National Park, or roughly 2 million football fields. The new land purchased had previously been known as the ‘Singleton Ranch’ and used to raise cattle and horse breeding.

That’s me finished for the week, and I’m ready for my afternoon snooze. Well, this morning’s rain seems to have stopped, but it is dull and grotty outside. I think it’s an indoor snooze this afternoon. I’m off to see if I can get into Legohead’s bedroom. If not, I have identified a spot on the first-floor landing where the central heating pipes run under the floor and it is lovely and warm. Chat to you all again next week.
 

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