Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Twelve

Monday

Good morning, my friends, I am beginning to get back into the diary routine after my enforced break. I hear my scribe has got four cruises booked for June and Christmas this year and next year, so I will be taking some more breaks. It was supposed to be drizzling this morning, but it was dry when I went out. It’s not too chilly in London today, more like autumn than winter.

Today is officially Blue Monday, officially the third Monday of the year and called so because it is supposed to be the most miserable day of the year. The weather is bad, everyone is back at work after the Christmas holidays, and people feel poorer because it is a long time since they were paid, early in December, and the January payday is still some way away.

Legohead was rushing around this morning trying to organise a press conference for nine am. He didn’t arrive until 09:15 and then gave the most boring speech ever. He could learn a lot from Nigel Farage, who speaks without notes and looks to be in complete control. I think the speech was supposed to be about Trump wanting to take over Greenland, but he waffled on for 10 minutes before he even mentioned Greenland and still managed to say absolutely nothing.

Yet another defection from the Tories to Reform over the weekend. This time it was Andrew Rosindell, the MP for Romford. That takes Reform to seven MPs, which is the same number as Sinn Féin, who don’t attend Parliament, and only two fewer than the SNP. Apparently Legohead set the rule that a party needed six MPs before they could lay a wreath at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. He was not expecting Reform to ever get there. I wonder if we are in for another rule change before November.

Yet another tale of containers being washed off a ship. This time the contents came ashore near Beachy Head in East Sussex. The containers seem to have contained thousands of large catering-size plastic bags full of frozen chips. Many of the bags have burst and in some places the chips were two feet deep. Of course, the council is out shovelling them up together with nets of onions that have also washed ashore. But it is the number of plastic bags that is primarily concerning some people, as the landing is close to a seal colony and seals like to play with the bags and are thought to think they are jellyfish.

So, the Chief Constable of the West Midlands has finally quit, but instead of being sacked he was allowed to retire on a full pension and with praise from the Police and Crime Commissioner, who was the only one who had the legal power to sack him. But it is the news that this was the second time he had retired as Chief Constable that I found amazing. Apparently he retired two years ago and took a full pension because he was advised that it was economically advantageous to him to do so, and was immediately rehired. It looks to me that Chief Constable Craig Guildford was always a bit dodgy.

I read that 10 employees at Amazon’s giant Coventry warehouse have been diagnosed with non-contagious TB. All have been treated by the NHS and are said to no longer have the illness. I understand that the union at the plant, GMB, wants the plant shut, so that there is no possibility of transmission. Well, this makes no sense to me at all. Non-contagious TB is just what it is called, non-contagious. The disease is in the body, but it is inactive and causes no symptoms and cannot be spread. What is more interesting is how ten workers at the warehouse contracted a non-contagious disease that had been virtually eliminated from the country in the first place. I wonder if they were immigrants and had brought the disease into the country with them.

Tuesday

Hi folks. The sun was out when I went out before breakfast, but it didn’t last. I listened to the radio while eating, and I was delighted to hear that the Donald ripped Legohead a new one overnight. He gently reminded Legohead that giving away the Chagos Islands with the US base of Diego Garcia on it was ‘an act of great stupidity’. I think he was prompted by Legohead saying that the Greenlanders should vote on if they wanted to be part of the US, when he didn’t give Chagosians the vote.

I have been waiting for the promised Reform reveal of a defector from Liebore, and nothing seems to have happened. Has the defector decided not to make the move? Is it still going to happen? Has the move collapsed? As I write this, Reform has not said a word.

Two rumours I picked up today, and I wonder if they are in any way related. First, I hear that Bad Enoch has written to five Tories telling them that their membership of the party has been suspended indefinitely. Their crime apparently is ‘associating with Reform’. If they want to be restored to the party, they must write and tell them, only then will the party reveal the extent of the evidence against them and they can appeal. Otherwise, the suspension is permanent. The second rumour I heard is that five Tory MPs are in negotiations with Reform to defect, and one is Suella Braverman.

Here a report that made me laugh, according to what I read Lammy, the Tottenham Turnip, says that since Liebore came to power everyone in the UK is £6,000 better off. He says he gets emails every day from people thanking him. I always thought he was simple, now he has confirmed it, and shown that he is also delusional.
The Tottenham Turnip.

Back just over a month ago, Ukraine claimed they had hit and disabled a Russian Kilo Class submarine in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. At the time, the Russians claimed that no damage had been done to the submarine and that it remained fully operational. Today I have seen a satellite photo of Novorossiysk, and the boat is still in exactly the same spot as it was when it was said to have been struck by an underwater drone. I wonder who is telling the truth.

A bit of a surprise announcement by the Colombian Air Force for the replacement of their small fleet of Israeli Kfir fighter jets. For several years it has been thought that the replacement was nailed for the Dassault Rafale, and it was all over bar the shouting. However, I hear that the Saab Gripen has emerged as the late winner with an order for 12 planes. The list price of the Gripen is a little higher than the Rafale, but it is my understanding that the overall cost of the plane was lower when the operating costs and maintenance costs were taken into account.

In the Irish Republic, the country’s very first wind farm at Bellacorick has just been decommissioned. The 21 turbines generated a total of 6.45 MW and lasted just over 30 years from being commissioned. That is about in line for the life expectancy of a land-based wind turbine. Those out in the North Sea are expected to survive for considerably less time. The land freed up is now going to become the third phase of the nearby Oweninny Wind Farm and will host 18 new wind turbines, four times the height of the old ones and each able to generate 6.5 MW. I wonder what will replace them in 30 years.

Wednesday

Good morning everyone, and it is horribly wet here this morning and I had to go out; I just hate that litter tray. Anyway, I came back a soggy moggy and sat in front of the kitchen radiator to dry off. So, another blow for Legohead this morning, as the inflation rate is up again, when he had been boasting how it was going down. In Germany inflation is 2%, in France it is 0.7% and here it is 3.4%. Why? Could it be Liebore government economic decisions.

Interesting statistics out yesterday, private sector wage increases fell once again to 3.6%, the lowest rate in five years. This is the precise opposite of public sector wage increases which last year increased by 7.9%. It’s always the same when Liebore are in power, tax and spend. The other news was unemployment, where the number on the public sector payroll continued to fall and is now down 135,000 in the last three months. The fall was particularly heavy in shops and hospitality.

I have learnt that the testing of the new Piccadilly Line tube trains has revealed a major problem caused by the design. When a train moves through a tunnel the envelope the carriages move within must be smaller than the bore of the tunnel and there are computer programs that are used to evaluate a train design. However, the new trains are made up of nine small carriages, unlike the old trains that were made up of six larger carriages. The overall length of the trains is fixed by the length of the platforms. But three of the carriages on the new trains have no bogies and are suspended between the carriages before and after them. The test software could not check this design, and in testing the suspended carriages have been found to sway outside the design envelope. Is a stiffer joint between the carriages going to be needed?

Yesterday the Government gave the long-expected planning approval for the new Chinese Embassy in London. I think the fun will start now, with just about every opposition party and local residents being against it. I suspect this will not be the last we hear about the new Embassy. There will be rows in Parliament and legal appeals and probably a judicial review.

I hear of an Uber driver in Bradford who has just lost an appeal after the council withdrew his licence. The driver, Amar Rangzab, has been charged with two counts of fraud by the Insolvency Service and the council decided he was not a fit person to hold a taxi licence. The Insolvency Service has charged Rangzab with taking out a £50,000 bounce back loan and not repaying it and borrowing £3,000 to buy a watch using a property he did not own as collateral. Rangzab told the magistrates’ court that the £50,000 he had was not a bounce back loan but was given to him by a kind passenger and he had spent it all on gambling. The magistrate refused the appeal, saying his story is unbelievable.

Do you remember when the door plug of an Alaska Airways Boeing 737 Max blew out at 16,000 feet, back in 2024? It led to a rapid decompression and several passengers being injured. Several passengers sued Boeing, who initially claimed they had no responsibility for the accident because the plane was not under its control at the time of the accident, throwing the blame on Alaska Airlines and the aircrew. Sometime later the investigation showed the problem was with the plane’s assembly and nothing to do with either Alaska Airways or the crew. Boeing settled out of court, but Boeing’s initial defence was widely circulated, and the aircraft’s captain is now suing Boeing for $10 million for defamation and damages, as they had blamed him. I wonder if he will succeed in court.

This year Boxing Day will fall two days after Christmas Day. That is because this year Christmas Day falls on a Friday, and as Saturday and Sunday are normal days off work, Boxing Day will move to Monday 28th as a substitute bank holiday. I understand Easter is early this year, with Good Friday falling on Friday April 3rd. Interestingly, August bank holiday Monday falls on the latest date possible, Monday August 31st. I suppose being that late cuts the wait until Christmas.

Thursday

Hello folks, not a bad morning when I went out, no frost but a bit dull. So Legohead cut out his planned visit to the WEF in Davos yesterday. I suspect he couldn’t deal with being in the Donald’s shadow. So, what did he do instead? He went to a village in Hertfordshire and spoke to 17 villagers in the village hall. Shows him in his true light.

I wondered why Legohead agreed to the new Chinese Embassy yesterday and I have been reading a bit about the background. Legohead wants to do a trade deal with the Chinks, which he thinks will get our inflation down. China has lots of excess production and would love to dump it in the UK, but they are playing the long game, and refusing to do a deal until they get the Embassy agreed. But the Chinese have been putting more pressure on him to agree. The tactics have included cutting off the water and electricity to our embassy in Beijing and to refuse us the ability to carry out repairs. Legohead is a weak man and has got himself into this position.

Did you see me on the TV? I was happily doing what I do best, sitting on the red carpet outside the front door when it suddenly the door opened. I turned to see who was coming out, and a Polish photographer rushed out and nearly trod on me. For a 19-year-old cat, I am still pretty agile, and I moved out of the way quickly and it just resulted in a near miss, but it put the wind up me. The headlines flashed before my eyes, ‘Larry the Cat crushed to death under falling photographer’. Fortunately, it didn’t happen and I live to nap another day.

When the United States had the U2 spy plane shot down, and its pilot Gary Powers captured, there was a decision made not to risk any more pilots over Russia and China. But this left a problem as the US still desperately wanted the photo intelligence the planes were capturing, and satellites weren’t yet capable of taking over the task. So, the Yanks secretly tasked the Lockheed Skunk Works with developing an unmanned plane, D-21, what we would now call a drone. I hear that only 200 men were ever cleared to work on a project that was only recently revealed. Unfortunately, several of the planes crashed, but the Russians and Chinese always thought they were manned missions. The drone was capable of Mach 3.3 at 90,000 feet, but it was cancelled in 1971 when satellite technology took over.

I hear that bus passengers in Crawley, West Sussex, are not happy. The local operator Metrobus has spent a lot of money going green and have been buying hydrogen-powered buses. But they have withdrawn 45 buses from service following an unexplained fire in one of the type. This has led to numerous cancellations and timetables becoming works of fiction. I understand Metrobus has no idea when things will get back to normal.

I love the reports of rows between Ryanair’s boss Michael O’Leary and US billionaire Elon Musk. It all started because O’Leary said his airline would not be installing Starlink as installing an antenna on his planes would increase drag and cost €250 million a year. Musk said this was bullshit, to which O’Leary said Musk might be a billionaire but he was an idiot. The row has simmered on with the pair exchanging insults. The latest I hear is that Musk is threatening to buy Ryanair. That would be interesting.

A major step forward in the development of the Challenger 3 tank. It has successfully fired its main gun for the first time. The new 120 mm smoothbore gun replaces the rifled barrel of the Challenger 2. This has the advantage of making it compatible with standard NATO ammunition, instead of the unique ammunition of the current tank model. The rifled bore is reputed to be more accurate, but the new gun has a higher exit velocity which in theory means greater range. The new tank has an interesting defensive weapon from Israel that uses radar to pick out anti-tank weapons and automatically fire a cluster of small rockets at it while instantly automatically reloading ready for a follow-up attack. It looks to be a powerful upgrade.

Friday

Hi everyone. It’s a little damp this morning and I am feeling my age today. I think the damp has got to me. Roll on the warm weather.

An interesting story is emerging from Manchester this morning. Andrew Gwynne MP, who was suspended from Labour over offensive WhatsApp messages, will soon retire from his constituency in Greater Manchester. The story says that he has been told to retire on medical grounds, but for months he has been denying that he was going to step aside to allow the so-called ‘King of the North’, Andy Burnham, a path into Parliament and possibly a shot at being PM. But firstly, Burnham would have to gain the Liebore nomination for the constituency. Then he would have to be elected and the current opinion polls make this questionable. Assuming all this goes in his favour, he would then have to wait for Legohead to resign or be thrown out, then be nominated to run and finally win an election of fellow MPs. Quite a difficult road to follow.

So, the Donald has got exactly what he wanted, bases on Greenland that will be sovereign US territory much like our bases in Cyprus. In addition, he has got an agreement for the US to extract rare earth minerals, and what has this cost the US? The initial reports say $1 million an inhabitant. Well, there are only just about 57,000 residents so he has got those minerals for the US on the cheap.

They might not yet have sold as many Babcock Arrowhead 140 (Type 31) frigates as BAE Systems has sold Type 26 frigates, but they are getting there. Yesterday they sold another two licences to Indonesia. This brings the total Arrowhead 140 sale to UK, five, Indonesia, four, and Poland, three, with five additional options. Add to that the information that Babcock are negotiating for sales with New Zealand, Denmark and Sweden in the short term and another five countries in the longer term, the future at Rosyth is beginning to look rosy.

I have a warning for anyone thinking of going on holiday to Mexico, or even on a Caribbean cruise calling at a Mexican port. The Mexicans have just banned the sale of and the use of vapes. This includes tourists on day trips from cruise ships. If you take your vape ashore with you from your ship you could be fined up to $14,000 or eight years in jail. The new law is so vague that even just possession of a couple of vapes could be considered dealing. Although it looks like you will be OK with 40 cigarettes in your pocket.

Back last week I told you about our Tranche 3 Typhoons being equipped with the new ECRS Mk2 radar. Well, the official announcement came yesterday and Leonardo in Edinburgh have got an order worth £453 million to supply 38 new radar installations and to upgrade the existing two prototypes to production status. So, we are procuring just 40 radar sets that match the 40 Tranche 3 planes we have on order or delivered. So, what about the others, Tranche 1, 24, and Tranche 2, 67, planes which the RAF has? The T1s are used as our Quick Reaction Force and T2 are already being upgraded allowing them to utilise the same Meteor missiles, Brimstone missiles and Storm Shadow missiles as the T3. I hear they will get the radar when money can be found.

Last year Brighton and Hove Liebore Council paid £6 million to upgrade its digital bus stop information boards. The ‘upgrade’ took place in August and to date has proved to be a disaster. The boards are regularly showing blank screens with a message to consult the timetable. The whole point of these boards is to tell passengers if a bus is running late or has been cancelled. The company that supplied the technology is doing a survey of the faulty boards and has promised they will all be working by the end of February. I wonder if it will happen.

Saturday

Morning my friends, the forecast for today is sunny periods but there was no sun when I popped out, but at least it wasn’t cold. Since I retired to my cat basket, the Government has pulled the next reading in the Lords of the Chagos Bill. It seems two things have happened, the Donald has withdrawn his approval, and the Tories have pointed out it is in breach of a 1966 treaty with the US that says, ‘the territory shall remain under UK sovereignty’. I hope the whole sad episode is now dead.

Overnight the Donald has really upset the British and other NATO forces by claiming that only American forces fought on the front line in Afghanistan. In reality, this was well wide of the mark, where NATO answered the US call after 9-11 and supplied forces for fighting in Afghanistan and the hunt for Bin Ladin. Proportionally we lost as many, if not more troops on the front line, than the USA. But of course, Trump’s remarks were aimed at his domestic audience, where the American people believe they have the best forces in the world and they have won every war they ever fought in, which is clearly BS.

This morning, I bring you the story of problems with the construction of the new Fleet Solid Support ships. These ships have been a sorry tale from the moment the order was placed. The FSS is a Fleet Auxiliary and under the EU ‘Exit’ agreement they are considered unarmed and so not a warship, so bidding was open to EU shipyards. To cut the story short the contract was placed with a Spanish company with final assembly in Belfast. But the steel had to come from the UK and that is the current problem. An order for 34,000 tonnes of steel plates, for three ships, was placed with Liberty Steel Dalzell but they say they have a cash flow problem and cannot procure the steel they have an order to sell. This all boils down to governments allowing the collapse of the British steel industry coming home to bite them.

In India, the head of the Air Force, Air Chief Marshal A P Singh, has suggested that India needs to join one of the international sixth generation fighter programmes as alone they will struggle to produce a sixth-generation fighter aircraft. This leads to the question what programme they could join. Well, the US, China and Russia all have their own programmes but none of them are looking for a partner. They would much rather sell the finished product to a third party. However, there are two international programmes, where several nations have come together to develop a sixth generation jet. The Future Combat Air System is a consortium of France, Germany and Spain, while the Global Combat Air Programme comprises the UK, Italy and Japan. The FCAS programme is suffering from a leadership row between France and Germany, and progress has become so bad that Germany is considering pulling out and teaming up with Sweden. Finally we have GCAP, which is progressing nicely and is known as Tempest in the UK, which was its name before the consortium was formed. In those early days, India was offered a role in the Tempest programme but turned it down. Will they now want to join and what can they offer?

David, the Tottenham Turnip, Lammy, has hinted at a climb down on his plan to limit jury trials. Not only has it become clear that the plan is hated, not just by his political opponents, but by political friends, and his union masters have said the scheme is unworkable. The whole idea for the scheme is to save court time and hence money. However, the latest research has revealed that his idea would save just 2% of court hours which is a flea bite. Has the Turnip realised that this cost saving idea has no merit or has the political rejection got through his thick skull.

Just as a small indication of how wet it has been in England recently I read about the Ardingly Reservoir. This reservoir was virtually empty after a particularly dry summer, and its owners Southeast Water were in trouble. In the past six weeks it has rained nearly every day, and it is now full to overflowing. Yes we are short of reservoir storage in the south of England but this was mainly as a result of EU rules and a huge increase in population. Now both Thames Water and Southern Water have plans for giant reservoirs but the NIMBYs are not happy and are fighting them. Do they want permanent hosepipe bans?

Our Home Secretary, the Pixie Balls woman’s Muslim replacement, has come up with an idea that is half sensible. She wants to merge the 43 police forces in England and Wales to become just 12. On the face of it, there is a load of money to be saved by reducing the backroom organisations. Only 12 HR departments, 12 purchasing departments, 12 control centres, all very sensible and making the forces cheaper to run. But in recent years there have been a multitude of cuts, front desks have been closed, and detention centres merged meaning anyone arrested must be driven for miles to be detained and then miles back to appear in court. A merger of forces will only make this worse. Before I give this idea my full support, I want to see the full cost implications.

That’s me finished for the week and I’m ready for my afternoon snooze. It’s not raining and the sun is in and out. I think I might try a windowsill snooze this afternoon. If it’s not so nice there’s always that spot on the first floor landing where the central heating pipes run. Chat to you all again next week.
 

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