Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Fifteen

Monday

Good morning, my friends, this is the start of a huge week in Number 10. No, it is not Legohead hanging on by his fingertips, it is more important than that. On Sunday it will be 15 years since I took up residence here. Will they throw me a party? I doubt it. I have a blue plaque at Battersea Cats and Dogs Home, the least TPTB could do is put one up in Downing Street. I have survived six PMs, soon to be seven, and seen two monarchs. I have a higher popularity rating than any of those six PMs and, according to the dreaded vet, I am in good health for a 19-year-old cat.

Well, obviously the huge story over the weekend has been the departure of Morgan “the Pirate” McSweeney. But the line that he resigned is hard to believe when it is as clear as the whiskers on my face that Legohead sacked him in an attempt to make his position more secure. I rather doubt he will have managed to save his own skin for more than a very short time, and his going will bring down the whole government. Even Liebore MPs think he is on borrowed time. But who is the replacement? I do not think there is one.

This morning Legohead was scheduled to make a public speech, but I hear he has pulled out and, despite lurking outside closed doors with my super hearing finely tuned, I have not been able to find out why. I could speculate, but I will not. He is due to address a meeting of his MPs tonight and I am told they are looking for blood. There will be calls for his resignation and I suspect he will be in for a very rough ride. I suspect he will promise to go if the May local elections are a disaster and will throw another adviser under the bus. I suspect that this time it will be National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell.

Over the weekend I read that since the Government introduced the Early Release from Prison scheme, the statistics show that more people have been recalled than have been released early. Now, I am only an old cat with a tiny brain, but I have a problem with that. How can more people be recalled than have been released early?

Well, my prediction of advisers being thrown under the bus came true a bit faster than even I expected. Tim Allan has gone this morning as Downing Street Director of Communications. Allan was a very effective communications director, but he was a protégé of Mandelslime, so he had to go. Is this the start of a flood of resignations? I hope so.

News reaches me this morning about the shortlist for ambassador to the US when Mandelslime was appointed. I am told there were three names on the list, the ultimate winner, Mandelslime, ex-Tory cabinet minister Michael Gove and Bear Grylls. I can understand Gove and Mandelslime being on the list as they were both ex-politicians, even if they were both disgraced. But Grylls was famous as an adventurer who drank his own urine and as Chief Scout. Apparently his survival programme on TV was very popular in the US. There would have been none of these problems if they had picked Bear Grylls.

The weather in the Channel was much better this weekend, so for the first time in about a month we had two hundred and nineteen crossings yesterday. Since Liebore came to power we have now had over 66,000 crossings on small boats. In a very short while that will tick up to the biggest number of illegal migrants under any PM. But I forgot Legohead is “smashing the gangs”, or so he says.

Tuesday

Hi folks, it is dry at the moment but I see that rain is forecast yet again. A Cabinet meeting this morning and I cannot wait to see all the happy, smiling faces of the frontbenchers. I wonder how Wes Streeting will get on after being called out for plotting with Anas Sarwar to oust Legohead. In addition, I want to add that 530 small boat immigrants have arrived in the last two days while Legohead has been worrying about hanging on as PM.

So, according to reports being linked to the meeting between Legohead and his backbenchers last night, it ended up with him getting several standing ovations and promising to fight on as PM. I would love to know just how warm and widespread that applause was. Did Legohead threaten to call a General Election if the meeting wanted to throw him out? I would not put it past him and those turkeys would not vote for Christmas.

A big call from Scottish Liebore late yesterday when their leader, Anas Sarwar, called for the resignation of Legohead. Anas is of the opinion that Scottish Liebore has no chance of defeating the SNP while Legohead is still in Number 10. I have news for him, Scottish Liebore has little chance of winning the Scottish election in May anyhow. The electoral system north of the border was designed to lead to coalitions with its mix of first past the post and proportional representation. Consequently, it rewards runners-up with loads of seats. In the last 10 or so opinion polls in Scotland the SNP have been in the lead with Reform running a clear second.

I learn that over the weekend Carnival Corporation updated its computer software and loads of systems stopped working, both on shore and at sea. On shore, ship sailings were delayed as people could not check in. On board ships, systems failed including the ordering tablets used by waiters in the restaurants and bars, with them having to resort to pencil and paper. This caused the updating of on-board accounts not to happen until the system came back. Normally, on-board accounts are updated instantaneously when your card is swiped. I hear that the shipboard casino also failed. This is not terribly important on British cruise ships, but it is huge on American ships as they are enormous and take a fortune. There is a rumour that Carnival was moving from Windows 95 to Windows 11. I wonder if that is true.

The Japanese PM, Takaichi, has won a “supermajority” in the lower house with at least 326 of the 435 seats. For a supermajority she had to win over 310 seats. With a supermajority the government can overrule any bills blocked by the upper house. This is rather important for Takaichi as she wants to rebuild the Japanese Self-Defence Force with new rockets and drones and many in the upper house are against it. The PM campaigned for a supermajority as she wants to build up the JSDF against China building up its military and would like to make the armed forces able to attack as well as defend, but for that she will also need a supermajority in the upper house, which will then allow a change to the constitution.

I learn that Babcock is still in the running for an order for four frigates for Sweden. As I understand it there are three main bidders, France’s Naval Group, Spain’s Navantia and a Babcock/Saab consortium. Of course, being a British cat, I am backing the British company, but as Babcock has teamed up with a Swedish company it must put them in a good position. As I understand it, the ship being pitched by Babcock/Saab is based on the Arrowhead 120 design, not the Arrowhead 140 which is the basis of the Type 31 for the Royal Navy and for the Polish and Indonesian orders. I believe the number is the length of the ship in metres, so the ship being proposed for Sweden is 20 metres shorter than a Type 31, but with a fit-out like that developed for it and consequently cheaper. Could the same ship suit the Royal Navy?

I have learnt that Elon Musk has acted to stop illegal Russian use of its Starlink system. I have been told the Russians have had serious communication problems with their front-line troops talking to their headquarters because of blind spots in their radio transmission areas and their own lack of a decent satellite communication network. So they resorted to purchasing thousands of Starlink terminals on the black market. They have even resorted to putting Starlink terminals in drones in order to improve their accuracy. But Musk appears to have noticed the Russian use and has started shutting down illegal sets.

Wednesday

Good morning, everyone. Well, it is dry at the moment but I got my paws very wet when I went out because I cut across the grass. It is PMQs again today and I fully expect Legohead to get another good shoeing from Bad Enoch. Mind you, I wonder what the odds are that Legohead attacks either Reform or Nigel Farage instead of answering the questions.

A big shock for the Democrats in the US who have been trying to implicate The Donald in the Epstein mire. Well, it emerged yesterday that The Donald reported Epstein to the FBI as a paedophile in 2005. At the same time, he warned them about Ghislaine Maxwell. Apparently the FBI said, “nothing to be seen here”. I wonder if they even looked. No wonder Epstein and The Donald were not the best of friends, even though the Democrats keep trying to smear him.

Is it not strange, just as the Ginger Growler was tweeting, can you say “Xing?”, a new website, “Angela for Leader”, goes live. The Growler disowned the site, saying it was dirty work by her enemies. Well, who is going to believe that when it appears to have been built and hosted by the same people who host her parliamentary website?

Listening to Jeremy Kyle’s Breakfast programme on Talk, on the kitchen radio, he moans about Labour MPs and Cabinet members refusing to come on his show. Even when a spokesman is sent out on the milk run to push the Liebore line, they go everywhere else, including Sky, LBC, Talk Radio and the BBC, but not Talk. On Tuesday morning Kyle says his team phoned up 200 Liebore MPs with an invitation to come on the show, and the only one who accepted was the old lefty, Graham Stringer, who is 75 and not bothered if he loses the whip as he will probably lose his seat to Reform at the next election.

With the closure of Amazon Fresh stores in the UK, I hear that many of the sites have been taken over by Tesco and the majority will become new outlets of Tesco Express. Tesco is already opening Express stores at a high rate. There are over 2,000 in existence and they added more than one a week last year. In total, Tesco has acquired 70 stores and, as I understand it, the first five will be open by the summer.

Over the Irish Sea the Government has been taken to the European Committee of Social Rights over its refusal to pay the Irish Armed Forces overtime or make any provision for premium payments on Bank Holidays, in defiance of the EU Social Charter. The European Social Charter is a Council of Europe treaty that guarantees fundamental social and economic rights. However, the Irish Government is saying that they believe compliance with the treaty is voluntary, but they are reviewing the committee’s decision. I wonder if the Irish Army is allowed to go on strike.

Many airlines are cancelling their flights to Cuba because the island cannot refuel them as it has run out of aviation fuel. It seems to be the longer-haul services that are suffering most, especially the ones from Canada because they fly direct and need to refuel. Flights from the USA are not direct and can therefore refuel on other Caribbean islands. At the moment, Air Canada, WestJet and Air Transat have all cancelled their flights and stopped selling tickets. But a bigger problem is that it has stranded a lot of Canadians on the island. I would have thought that the Canadian carriers could have stopped off in the likes of Miami to refuel, but I do not know if that is allowed under US law. At this time of year there are few direct flights from the UK, so we British are not too concerned at the moment.

Thursday

Hello, folks. A surprise this morning, no rain and the sun was out when I popped down the garden, however I hear it is going to rain later. I watched PMQs yesterday and I was not in the slightest surprised that the biggest cheers for Legohead came from the Opposition benches. Rather than being honest like last week, Legohead chose not to answer questions, apart from the planted ones his backbenchers asked. Instead, it was the usual deflection and answering a totally different question. A wasted 35 minutes I will never get back.

Yesterday Carl Beech, the fantasist, was let out of prison after serving 40 per cent of a 20-year sentence. I am sure you remember Beech, he was the one who made up stories about a paedophile gang of prominent people including Ted Heath, Leon Brittan, Harvey Proctor and Lord Bramall, operating in Westminster. His tales said they murdered and raped children. He spun the craziest yarns and was believed by many, including Tom Watson, the then Liebore deputy leader, and LBC presenter James O’Brien. The Met Police, under the encouragement of the then head of the CPS, Legohead, launched a very intrusive investigation which cost a fortune and collapsed when it was proved that Beech was a liar. How can we let people like him out of prison? He has ruined too many people’s lives.

Another example of Legohead’s wonderful judgement emerged yesterday. Another of his ex-advisers has been shown to have been a friend of a paedophile. This time it is Matthew Doyle, who was the communications chief before last. Doyle was promoted to the Lords when he quit. But he was out campaigning for Sean Morton, an ex-Labour councillor in Moray, Scotland, after the candidate was charged with possessing indecent images of children in December 2016. The councillor was, of course, found guilty. Liebore says they did not know about Doyle’s campaigning when he was appointed. But they did when he left and was appointed to the Lords as a Liebore peer by Legohead. I hear he has now resigned the whip and will sit as an independent, so that is alright then.

A 23-year-old Afghan illegal immigrant has just been found guilty of raping a 12-year-old girl, various other sex acts and videotaping the whole thing. I understand that Afghanistan has offered to take him back, but the Government has refused as the Taliban tend to execute people who rape young girls. But it is how he was caught that astounds me. After the rape he took the girl to a corner shop and bought her a drink, but he was stupid enough to pay using his government-issued debit card. I note that this story is hardly being reported in the MSM. Why?

I really do not understand what is happening in Britain today. Now I read about a 13-year-old boy stabbing a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old in the neck and back, in a classroom in a school in the People’s Republic of Brent. The boy who is believed to be the perpetrator has been arrested and is being investigated by anti-terrorist police because it has been reported by eyewitnesses that he shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the attack. I read varying reports about the stabber, some say he was currently excluded from the school and others that he was not a pupil of the school. And here is the problem, we will be told nothing and, in a vacuum, rumours will grow, and soon we will be told he was a Welsh choirboy.

Another mass shooting at a school in North America, but this time in Canada. The incident happened in the small town of Tumbler Ridge where police were called to the high school. The police found six dead bodies and at least 24 injured, one of whom died while being transported to hospital. Police say the shooter was among the initial dead and had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Another two dead people were found at the shooter’s home. But what amused me was the police description of the shooter as having brown hair and wearing a dress. Well, that rather interested me. I have never heard of a female mass shooter. I am sure there must be some, but I have never heard of one, so I read a bit deeper and, of course, this was a trans male who was said to be obsessed with guns. Why, oh why, can the police not come out with the whole story from the start, especially in this case where there is no court case to worry about?

Rolls-Royce has announced a new production version of its Trent 1000 engine for the Boeing 787. There are only two engines available for the 787, the Trent 1000 and the General Electric GEnx. The Rolls engine has been losing sales to the GE engine recently, mainly because of the GE’s better reliability, leading to it having a longer time between off-wing maintenance sessions. Rolls has been working hard to fix the engine’s problems. It has always performed well when on the wing, it is just that it had to be taken off the wing more often. The new production version of the engine brings together all the modifications and fixes and will be known as the Trent 1000XE and is said to more than match the GEnx reliability. The other thing about this is that, as old Trent 1000 engines under Rolls contract maintenance go through a factory overhaul, they will be upgraded to the 1000XE standard.

Friday

Hi everyone, it is sunny this morning but a little cool out. A tale reaches me that Rupert Lowe is on the verge of launching a new political party, Restore Great Britain. Why on earth he thinks he has a chance of winning seats in Britain anywhere other than his Great Yarmouth seat beats me. On top of that, he has obviously decided not to include Northern Ireland in his party’s domain. It seems to me that he is taking his feud with Nigel Farage to new levels.

So, Sir Jim Ratcliffe has upset the lefties by daring to talk about the country being “colonised” by millions of immigrants. It is not the millions of immigrants living in ghettos that the left are unhappy about, it is the use of the word “colonised” that they object to. Well, Sir Jim is clearly right, the new immigrants are trying to take over. You only have to look at what happened at the last general election when six Liebore MPs lost to “Gaza Independents”. They were elected on a single platform which the UK cannot alter. Now we have another Muslim group trying to take over Birmingham Council, that is colonisation.

Yesterday Airbus announced its latest order for the A350. This time round it is Air Canada and they have ordered eight A350-1000 aircraft. The -1000 is the bigger of the two passenger versions of the A350 and is designed to fly further and carry more passengers than the -900. Airbus has received over 1,500 orders for the A350 family of planes, with the majority being for the smaller -900. The A350-900 was on sale for a couple of years before the -1000 went on sale and had built up a lot of sales before its bigger sibling was available.

Word reaches me that Andy Burnham is plotting another run at becoming an MP so that he can have a crack at the Liebore leadership. This time the tale is that Peter Dowd, the MP for Bootle, might be willing to stand aside for Burnham. Dowd was a huge supporter of the Tramp when he was leader and is now firmly on the back benches with no chance of any possible government job. But what I do not understand is how this is any different from Burnham’s last run at being an MP when he was banned by the Liebore hierarchy. They said then, and I am sure will say again, that they do not want to have a competition for the Mayor of Manchester. I suppose Burnham could stand down as Mayor and force the issue, but I wonder if they would dream up another reason for not letting him stand.

I see that the second stand-alone box for streaming Freely TV has hit the market and, like the first box, is proving difficult to procure. The first box, Pleio, from French manufacturer Netgem, launched late last year and has regularly been out of stock on Amazon as demand has outstripped supply, despite the price going up. The new option is the British-made Aero 4K Streamer Box and it went on sale in Curry’s on the 5th of this month and was completely sold out by lunchtime the next day. It is due to also go on sale at John Lewis and Amazon later this month and costs £30 less than the French box.

Yesterday Liebore introduced the Bill to let 16-year-olds vote at the next General Election. This idea came about some years ago when Liebore were in opposition and surveys said that the young were inclined to vote heavily for them. So they put it in their manifesto for the last election. Now I know they have ignored a lot of what was in that manifesto but have decided to go ahead with this measure. However, times have changed and the most popular party with 14-, 15- and 16-year-olds currently is Reform. I suspect that some Liebore MPs will be hoping this Bill fails in its passage into law.

First blood in the court case between Trump and the BBC over the documentary that the BBC cut to make it look like Trump encouraged the mob to attack the Capitol building has gone to The Donald. The BBC lost its attempt to stay the case by claiming that no one in the States could have seen the programme. The defence pointed out that there are such things as iPlayer and YouTube where the programme could have been seen. The case against the BBC now starts next February.

Saturday

Morning, my friends, a bright, dry day in London this morning for a change. I would even go as far as to say it was quite mild when I went out. A lovely, quiet morning here in the street, with Legohead off at a security conference in Munich. In Brighton and Hove people are going door to door asking residents to boycott Israeli goods. Is this a way of identifying Jewish residents for future actions?

So, the latest person to leave the Government is Sir Chris Wormald, the Cabinet Secretary and the Head of the Civil Service. The Government spokesman who announced the departure said it was by mutual agreement. That means he got a big payoff for agreeing to go. It has been clear for some time that he was on his way out but was fighting for a payoff. Now it seems that he has not been sacked as an agreement has been reached. How many more are going to be out on their ear before it is Legohead’s turn?

A new accusation emerged against Mandelslime yesterday. Of course this is only what I am hearing at the moment and might be made up, but the accusation is that he took backhanders over the Chagos Islands deal with Mauritius. But it goes further than that because the word I hear is that other government advisers and officials are also involved. If this is true it could explain the mad rush to dispose of the islands, but it could also be the final push that causes the fall of the Government.

In Scotland a new crime has appeared, thieves are stealing used cooking oil from restaurants and fish and chip shops. It seems that the dirty oil is valuable as feedstock for biodiesel. The shops and restaurants save the dirty oil and it is normally collected by recycling companies. However, thieves wait until just before a collection is due and nip in when the volume stored is worth stealing.

In Basildon, Essex Police have come to an agreement with the local bus operator, First Bus, to allow them to charge their 50 electric police cars at the bus depot. Not so daft as it sounds on first hearing, as the depot has fast chargers that can recharge a police car in only 20 minutes. Essex Police have over 800 cars and vans and, until the number of EVs becomes greater, it is not considered worthwhile paying for a host of fast chargers.

Yesterday Palestine Action won an appeal in the High Court overturning their banning as a terrorist organisation. The High Court seemed to think that spraying paint into military aircraft engines and breaking a policewoman’s spine with a sledgehammer are not serious enough to have the organisation proscribed. The Government has announced that they are going to appeal the decision.

For my final story of the week, I go to the parliamentary by-election in Denton and Gorton where all the candidates have been out campaigning hard and much door knocking has been taking place. I hear that the leader of the Green Party was recently out in the constituency and found himself in an extra care home. For those of you who do not know, extra care homes are blocks of flats for people who can live alone but may need a little extra assistance to do so. They often have restaurants for residents, nurses to help with medication and people to clean flats and do shopping. Most places have added security with a buzzer entry system that allows a visitor to have a resident let them into the building before ringing the bell at the individual flat’s front door. The story I hear is that Zak Polanski, NHRN, had gained entry to the block and was going flat to flat canvassing until residents called security to have him thrown out, saying there was a “strange man” in the block.

That is me finished for the week and I am off for my afternoon snooze. It is not raining but there is no sun and it is still too chilly out on the windowsill for my old bones, so I think I will aim for a nap on Legohead’s bed while he is away. Chat to you all again next week.
 

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