Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Seventeen

Monday

Good morning, my friends. Well, at least it’s not raining this morning. That makes a change, but I bet that after all the rain so far this year, there will still be a water shortage and a hosepipe ban in the summer.

I hear that the Cabinet Office has been rather naughty. The tale I hear is that they broke into a locked safe, removed the master copy of an old bullying report on Dame Antonia Romeo, the new head of the civil service, and destroyed it. That leaves a lot of questions. Who did it? Who gave the order for it to be done? Why was it done? Why couldn’t it wait until Monday when somebody could have just opened the safe? Was someone trying to hide Dame Antonia’s past? There should be an inquiry, but I bet there won’t be.

I watched the Reform UK press conference on a TV in the office this morning. This time, it was the turn of the Reform Shadow Home Secretary, Zia Yusuf, and he laid out his plan if he becomes Home Secretary. A lot of it revolved around stopping illegal immigrants and deporting them. But he also covered things like knife crime and stop and search, all the things the public seems to be demanding. I suppose Labour will call it “populist rhetoric,” but is it wrong to have policies that the public wants?

About 30 Labour MPs have written to Legohead and the chairman of the party, demanding a full independent investigation into “Labour Together,” its connections to the party, and the emerging scandal over the smearing of two reporters from The Times. Supposedly, “Labour Together” were behind the election of Legohead as Party Leader and his victory over the Lefty Corbyn. So it will hardly surprise you when I reveal that the names on the letter are all the usual lefty suspects, including Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, and Richard Burgon.

Transport for London has long-term plans to fix the appalling service on London’s Northern Line. Firstly, the idea is to split the West End and City branches to eliminate the complicated crossover of lines at Camden Town, making the service simpler to operate. Once that is done, they want to increase the service to 45 trains an hour. But this will require a lot of additional trains, and how they will acquire them and where they would stable them is a problem. The current trains used on the Northern Line are on long leases, and there is no prospect of acquiring more of them as they have been superseded. So that means new trains, and there is no money for that until the leases run out in 2040. Then there is the problem of where the new trains would be stabled. A new depot would be needed on each branch. I read that TfL has identified a possible site for overnighting 15 trains on land they own beside the line just north of Totteridge and Whetstone Station on the High Barnet branch. The history of the land is interesting; it was inherited from the LNER when that bit of the line was merged into the Underground in 1940. LNER had used the site as a Horse Hospital. Horses were used to deliver goods on carts locally from LNER stations and to pull LNER horse-drawn buses in central London. I suppose stabling trains on old stables would be appropriate.

Royal Caribbean International has announced an order for two new ships (and options for four more), but has given few details about size or onboard facilities. For several years, all they have built has been huge Icon and Oasis Class ships, carrying 7,600 and 6,700 passengers each. At the same time, passengers have been calling for the replacement of the old smaller ships with new modern ships. The old small ships lack numerous balcony cabins, multiple eating and entertainment areas, all of which could be fixed in the new “Discovery” class. The only hint is that it will be small enough to pass through the Panama Canal. As a matter of interest, the biggest cruise liner to pass through the canal is the 168,000-ton, 1,094-foot-long, 4,002-passenger Norwegian Bliss.

In Luton, a Liberal Democrat councillor has triggered a by-election because he didn’t attend a meeting for six months. Apparently, Councillor Alan Skepelhorn was absent between 15 July 2025 and 20 January 2026, triggering an automatic by-election. The group leader of the Liberal Democrats on the council, Amjid Ali, is not very happy and claims the council has wrongly calculated the absence. This is Skepelhorn’s second long absence; his previous one was a special leave of absence when he had Covid and was in hospital on life support. I think he can be forgiven that.

Tuesday

Hi folks, dry this morning and not so cold. In fact, I think it was warmer than yesterday when I went out, and the sun is promised for later. So Mandelslime was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office late yesterday afternoon and taken to a “London Police Station” for questioning. When I retired to my cat basket for the night, there was no news of him being released. But when I heard the radio this morning, he was released on police bail in the middle of the night. So, I guess that as they released him at some ungodly hour, he had to phone for an Uber to get home. I want to know what the bail conditions are.

There is a judge-led inquiry into the Nottingham student killer, Valdo Calocane, happening at the moment, and it is another one of those disturbing stories that is being hidden on the inside pages by Mandy and Randy Andy. So far, a couple of interesting revelations have emerged. Firstly, when the police looked at the killer’s phone, it revealed he had been watching videos of mass murders in the States, New Zealand, and Dunblane. But perhaps the more serious thing is that he was released from mental hospital detention because he was black, and the workers were worried about being seen as racist if they continued to detain him.

A video has gone viral on the internet showing a young policewoman telling a large group of Muslim men in Whitechapel that she was not going to arrest a Christian preacher for preaching in the area. The Muslims seem to have called the police because they said the preacher had insulted the Prophet. The policewoman politely and calmly explained to the group that the preacher was not breaking any law, that there was no such thing as a blasphemy law in the UK, and if they didn’t like what the preacher was saying, they should simply walk away. Isn’t it nice seeing the police enforcing the law without fear or favour in a pleasant manner? That should be used for a training video on how to do things correctly.

I find it very strange how in Russia they always report on how the air defence system has shot down any Ukrainian attacking drone, but the burning debris falls on the target and there are explosions and fires. When the Ukrainians report a drone hitting a target, the Russians contradict the report and say they shot down the drone. I think the Russians must be extremely unlucky to have the debris fall on every target. Yesterday it was the Kaleikino oil pumping station, the main facility in the Almetyevsk area of the Republic of Tatarstan, located more than 1,000 km from Ukraine’s state border. I wonder if the Russians moved the defence systems a bit further away from what they are supposed to be protecting, they might not be damaged by falling debris.

Another new policy from the Green Party was revealed this morning. They have announced a policy that prostitution should be legalised, and we should allow brothels on the High Street. In addition, all sorts of pornography should be made generally available. Add this to their mad policies on drugs and house rentals, and I wonder how anyone, but a maniac, could vote for them.

I learnt that British Transport Police are being frustrated in the investigation of sex crimes on the nation’s trains and stations by the failure of CCTV. It seems that although most trains, buses, and stations are fitted with CCTV, in 50% of investigations last year video was unavailable or so poor it was unusable. The problem is there is no obligation for the train, bus, or station operators to either install a system, or if they do, to ensure it works, that the video output is kept, and that the condition is decent. When the BTP asked for the CCTV recordings last year, too often the camera wasn’t working or the video had been taped over. This cat thinks that cameras should be made compulsory, they should be maintained in working condition, and video should be clear and retained for at least a year.

It’s four years today since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. It was expected to be a quick and easy “limited military operation.” Today, the meat grinder of a war drags on, with thousands killed every week. The Russians don’t give any statistics about losses of dead and wounded, and the Ukrainian statistics are suspicious. Third countries say over 1,000,000 casualties have occurred. But what is clear is that the truth about the war is slowly emerging to the Russian people, and the Ukrainian people are a bit more informed as the war is mostly happening in their country. But the death and destruction is now occurring in Russia due to Ukrainian long-distance rockets and drones, and the people are realising what is happening and don’t want to join the army. This morning, I learned that the Russian army is losing soldiers faster than it can conscript and train them. What a mess.

Wednesday

Good morning, everyone. I thought I would never say it again, but it is a lovely sunny morning in London. It is nice in the sun. I only hope I can spend some time on my windowsill. I sometimes wonder about the sanity of some of the people who live in this nation. A new national opinion poll out overnight has the Greens on 18%, second to Reform on 28%, with the Tories and Labour joint third on 16%. How could anyone with half a brain vote for a party that wants to legalise drugs, ban people from renting out houses, give illegal immigrants a free house, free NHS hospital and dentist treatment, and pay them a wage to do nothing?

Just 100 days before the football World Cup in North America, with matches scheduled to be played in the US, Canada, and Mexico. After the recent events in Mexico, if I had match tickets for games there, I would be seriously worried. Over the weekend, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) drug cartel was killed in a police raid. The man, named Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as “El Mencho,” was wanted, with a $15,000,000 bounty on his head, by the FBI. But the gang has kicked off big time in eight of Mexico’s states. They have set up roadblocks, burnt cars and shops, and shot at people. The police and Civil Guard have been called out and are trying to restore order, but if I had World Cup tickets, I would be a little bothered.

As of today, if you are flying between the Republic of Ireland and the UK (or vice versa) on Aer Lingus, you will need a passport. However, if you are on BA, you can still use an official photo card, like a driving licence or bus pass, to identify yourself. On the Aer Lingus route between Belfast and London, the passport rule doesn’t apply as that is a British domestic route. What is strange is that the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland share a Common Travel Area. Citizens of both countries can travel without having to carry a passport, and no documentation is needed between the Republic and Northern Ireland. Aer Lingus says this brings travel on all their overseas flights in line.

The Tottenham Turnip has announced a plan to speed up the justice system. It’s very simple: he is going to give them more money. Isn’t it odd that the Labour Party thinks that more money is the solution to everything? He hasn’t said where the money is coming from, but it looks like it is going to be spent on more judges and longer court opening hours. Of course, this may help a bit; only time will tell. But why, up to now, do courts only open for such short hours?

Yesterday, in answer to a press question, Reform’s Shadow Home Secretary said he would be open to a future Reform Government introducing a face-cover ban. He explained that not only did face coverings upset people, but they made it difficult for the police to use facial identification software. In Europe, many countries have brought in such bans, including ultra-conservative Switzerland. I’m certain that a so-called “Burka Ban” would draw huge protests from Muslims.

In Hull, Yorkshire, they are remodelling an open space, now known as Queens Gardens. Previously, it was the city’s first dock, built in the 1770s as “The Dock,” but later renamed the “Queens Dock” and was infilled by the Town Council to form a public open space in 1960. For some years, the Hull City Council has been remodelling the gardens, and this has meant lots of excavations. I read that during a recent one, an excavator driver struck something hard, and the driver was a little worried that it was a WWII bomb, as Hull Docks had been very heavily bombed. But after a bit of careful digging, it was revealed as a 300-year-old cannon. As the cannon had been sealed, it has been speculated that it had been decommissioned and just dumped in the dock.

I didn’t realise that when McDonald’s first started, they concentrated on selling only burgers, cheeseburgers, fries, and sodas. It wasn’t until 1967 that they introduced a “Premium Burger,” when, after a lot of badgering, they gave a franchisee permission to try what was named the Big Mac, which introduced the concept of the double-patty burger that has become the McDonald’s classic. Since then, they have tried several times to launch another “Premium Burger,” but to date, despite many attempts, they have failed to do so. I see they have now decided to have yet another go, this time with the Big Arch. I am not so sure this is it, but if you fancy a Big Mac with a different sauce, added crispy onions, and double the calories of a Big Mac, then this is for you.

Thursday

Hello folks, the sun has gone today, but it was not cold when I popped out. I wish I could work out what is going on with this Chagos thing. A minister makes a statement in the Commons saying the whole thing is on pause. Then, two hours later, a government spokesman says it isn’t and that the minister misspoke. In the meantime, it certainly seems to be paused as nothing is happening with the bill. The problem is we have a treaty with the Septic Tanks, which says that Chagos can only be disposed of if the Yanks agree, and at the moment the Donald says “No.” I guess the whole thing is in limbo; neither Legohead nor the Donald want to back down.

Outrage from the Prince of Darkness over his arrest. His very expensive lawyers claim that he was arrested because the police believed he was a flight risk. They say he had an appointment for an interview with the police next week. What I don’t understand is how having an appointment with the police would stop him from skipping off abroad, out of reach of the long arm of the law, to the Virgin Islands where he would take up residence. Putting him on police bail allows them to put bail conditions on him, such as no foreign travel and surrendering his passport. I wonder where you would go to. I’d go somewhere warm and sunny with lots of Felix. I think Barbados seems to fit the bill.

On the day of the Gorton and Denton by-election, I see that Labour are becoming desperate in their social media posting. The headline shows a block graph with Labour on 28% and Reform on 27%, with the headline “There is only a point in it.” But when you read the small print on this small (400 people) poll, it says the Greens were also on 28%. However, if you look a little further, at people who say they will definitely vote, it has Green on 30% and Labour and Reform both on 28%. This poll was done for the Labour Party, so it is likely to have favoured them. But it makes me wonder why Labour are concentrating their attack on Reform. Does this reveal whom they think is actually going to win the seat? We will know the result on Friday.

So, Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, has come up with another brilliant plan. She wants boys as young as three and four to be able to go to school in a dress. Very few children of that age get to choose their own clothes; they wear what Mummy dresses them in. So, a three-year-old boy in a dress is more likely to reflect his mother’s views than his own. I’m not sure how someone as daft as Phillipson got to be a Secretary of State.

Progress was seen to be happening at Babcock’s Rosyth yard last night with the rollout of HMS Active from the Ship Assembly Hall. Active is the second of five Type 31 frigates Babcock is building. In the next few days, the structurally complete ship will be moved onto a barge and taken out of the building area to deeper water to be floated off. It will then commence its fit-out. At the same time as the rollout was occurring, the ceremonial first cutting of steel for HMS Bulldog was occurring in the module building sheds. Bulldog is the fourth of the Type 31s, and its keel will soon be laid in the Assembly Hall alongside HMS Formidable, which is the third ship of the type and is already under construction. The final ship, HMS Campbeltown, is expected to replace Formidable in the Assembly Hall late this year.

Around 14,000 North Korean soldiers were sent to Russia to fight for them against Ukraine. In the early days, they were never out of the news, but recently they are never mentioned. What has happened to the North Korean troops? Where have they disappeared to? From what I hear, Poo Tin decided that they were expendable and threw them into the meat grinder. As a result, over 6,000 were killed before the North Korean leadership kicked off. As I understand it, NK troops are now being used in more support roles; they are drone operators, on missile launchers, or artillery crews, replacing Russian conscripts who are the meat grinder fodder now. I hear that Kim Jong Un has recently opened a special new city for the widows and children of soldiers killed in the fighting.

The smallest football stadium in the Premier League is Bournemouth’s Vitality Stadium, at 11,307. That small capacity makes it very difficult for the club to survive in the top tier of English football. Consequently, Bournemouth have applied for and been granted planning permission to enlarge the stadium. The first phase will start at the end of this season with the demolition of the South Stand and its replacement with the lower tier of a new stand seating 3,300. This will bring an overall capacity increase of 1,300. The next phase is due to start over the 2026/27 season when the southeast and northwest corners will be infilled. This will be followed by work on the East and West Stands. Eventually, all this work is planned to bring the capacity up to 20,200, lifting it up one place in the capacity table.

Friday

Hi everyone, the rain is back this morning and I got a bit wet when I went out. When I retired to my cat basket last night, the polling was still going on in Gorton and Denton, so I have only just learned the result. I can’t say I am surprised at the results. The Muslim vote in the seat was always going to vote Green. But the Reform vote, at 29%, reflected what they are polling nationally. The Tories and Limp Dumps managed a miserable 2% each, and the likes of Advance and Rejoin the EU were reduced to polling less than the Monster Raving Loony Party. But the biggest loss was that of Labour, whose vote collapsed by 25% and polled only 26% of the vote, half of their General Election vote. I think the most worrying thing is the report of “Family Voting” at 12% of the vote. Roll on a General Election.

So, the Metropolitan Police told Mandelslime’s very expensive lawyers that the person who dobbed him in about planning to skip off to the British Virgin Islands was Mr Squeaker. This is disgraceful, and I’m not sure if it’s against the law to reveal who a whistleblower is. Can you imagine the consequences if they told a criminal, Mr Big, that it was Mrs Smith at number 42 Arcadia Avenue who squealed on him? Mind you, why would Mandelslime want to take refuge in the British Virgin Islands, from where he can be extradited?

The ONS published the latest immigration statistics yesterday. Some notable items are that small boat crossings last year were up 13% on the previous year. Last year, 42% of immigrants processed were either granted a visa or leave to stay. That means 58% of the 100,000 processed should no longer be in the country. But loads of them appeal, so they stay, and last year, 17% of appeals were granted. At the end of the year, 39,600 immigrants were housed in hotels, down from 41,500 the previous year, but it is still higher than when they came to power. The interesting thing is that those immigrants have been moved from hotels to houses of multiple occupation, so we are still paying for them.

The story going round No. 10 today is that the Foreign Office has struck an agreement with the EU to hand over control of Gibraltar to them. They are supposed to still remain British but be administered by the EU, with EU customs and EU regulations. But the UK government has a big problem. In a referendum, 99.8% of the voting population voted to remain British. Legohead has no idea how to tell Parliament that he has agreed to give away another British possession. Where next, will he offer money to Argentina to take over the Falklands?

With a couple of good weather days earlier this week, the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats has jumped. Last time I looked, it was over 600 so far this year, well up on the same time last year. When the weather was bad in January, all I saw on TV was a Labour MP saying how the “One Out, Ten In” policy was working. Well, no, it wasn’t; it was only the annual winter weather pause. As soon as we get a couple of decent days, they start pouring over the Channel once more. By the way, I hear there is an estimated 10,000 migrants in the camps in France, waiting for their chance to pay the people smugglers £3,000 a head for a place on a small boat.

News reaches me about the “Your Party” central executive committee (CEC) elections. There are 24 seats on the CEC, and both of the current joint leaders, MPs Steptoe and Zarah Sultana, took seats. However, 14 Steptoe supporters were elected, while only 7 Sultana supporters were elected, meaning Steptoe now has enough support to push his ideas through. I suspect one of the CEC’s first actions will be to announce that Steptoe is to become the Your Party leader in the Commons. It’s a bit of a comedown from being leader of the Official Opposition, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.

A wealthy man flying from New York to his holiday home in Paris via London purchased seven very expensive collectible bottles of malt whisky from a duty-free whisky boutique at JFK. While transferring planes at Heathrow, the bottles, worth an estimated £7,000, were confiscated because they were over 100 ml and weren’t in a special security tamper-evident bag (STEB), with satisfactory proof of purchase visible inside. The man told Heathrow security that he would abandon his plans to fly to Paris and stay with friends in London, hence he wasn’t breaking any rules and they could give him his Scotch back. They refused. Subsequently, he took Heathrow to the small claims court. The judge ruled in his favour, and he has been awarded the £7,000 plus £3,200 in costs and expenses. Heathrow has paid up.

Saturday

Morning, my friends. Yet another wet morning, but not too cold. Bad news on the radio when I got back from my trip down the garden. The Yanks and Israel have launched attacks on Iran this morning, and reports say they have targeted numerous sites. In response, Iran says it has launched missiles at Israel. With a third American carrier group on its way to the Middle East, I can’t see this being over very quickly. At least it takes the spotlight in the media off the disaster that is Legohead.

I read that the UK Treasury is currently holding talks with U.K. North Sea oil and gas producers about ending the Energy Profits Levy before its scheduled end in 2030. This is the levy added to a barrel of oil to grab a windfall tax when oil and gas prices rose due to the Ukraine war. It has increased oil and gas taxation to 78%. The legislation allows the tax to finish earlier than 2030 if it falls below a six-month average of $78.65 a barrel. Yesterday, Brent Crude was selling at $72.52 a barrel, the highest it has been since the end of July last year, so the threshold for removal has been triggered. This is bad news for Labour’s “Green” policy, particularly Red Ed Millipede.

News reaches me from Uttlesford District Council in Northwest Essex. Until yesterday, the council was under the control of 19 Residents for Uttlesford councillors. The rest of the council comprised 11 Conservatives, four Liberal Democrats, three Reform UK members, and two independents. Yesterday, two of the Residents councillors resigned the whip and joined Reform. This still leaves the Residents as the biggest party but will leave them vulnerable to a Tory–Reform–Independent coalition.

Rolls Royce is looking at re-entering the market for narrow-body aircraft jet engines that they abandoned years ago. My guess is they have been tempted by rumours of both Airbus and Boeing looking at new narrow-body designs. The plan is to develop a scaled-back version of its new giant engine, the Ultra Fan. Of course, a new engine needs lots of money to develop, but this is partway there as it would be based on the Ultra Fan. It also explains why RR has been talking about a new engine needing government investment.

The Green Party parliamentary win at Thursday’s by-election has been reported to the police over voting irregularities. I told you yesterday about how official observers had complained about “Family Voting,” where more than one person is in a polling booth (and this is illegal), occurring in 12% of votes cast. The local council, which oversaw the vote, claimed that the official observers had not reported any incidents to them during the election, so everything was OK. But the observers are not legally allowed to intervene during an election, only afterwards. The margin of the win was such that it would probably not have changed the result, but that does not stop “Family Voting” being illegal.

It looks like the rumbling animosity between Pakistan and Afghanistan has once again broken out into open warfare in the past few days. The border disputes between the two countries have been going on for several years but escalated this week when the Afghan Taliban, using weapons left behind by Joe Biden when he withdrew US forces, attacked numerous Pakistani military posts along the 2,600 km border. Pakistan has hit back and bombed military camps in Afghanistan, saying they are in open war with them. I say “bombed,” but at the moment it is not clear whether they used planes or rockets. I hear that several third parties are trying to get the two countries to talk, but I bet the Indians are more than happy to see them fighting each other.

My last story this week comes from over the Irish Sea Channel. Transdev, the French operator of the Dublin tram network for the last 22 years, has lost the franchise to a joint venture of British company Amey and French company Keolis. These same two companies already run the Docklands Light Railway in London and the Manchester trams. I understand that Transdev has been losing money on the Dublin system despite carrying 54 million passenger journeys every year.

That’s me finished for the week, and I’m off for my afternoon snooze. It’s peeing down out there, so I’m not going out. I enjoyed my nap on Legohead’s bed last week, but he’s still in Number Ten today, holding a meeting with Cobra. I wish him luck. I don’t like snakes; I’m quite happy to take on the Downing Street fox, but not a snake. Chat to you all again next week.
 

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