Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Twenty-Four

Monday

Good morning, my friends. It was lovely and sunny this morning when I woke up, not too cold when I popped out, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain. But the forecast on the radio says it is coming, and it is going to be wet from midday. So, I am not a happy cat, dry when I am on patrol around the place looking for signs of rodents, and then wet when I am done. The school holidays are over, so Legohead is back. Wouldn’t it have been delicious to see him fined for his children being on holiday in school time.

I must start the week by saying well done to Rory McIlroy for winning back-to-back US Masters titles. I don’t much like watching golf on the TV, I don’t find it quick enough for me. I much prefer football and rugby, where they chase balls. But I can appreciate the achievement. I learn that he has won a mere $4,500,000 this time, up from $4,200,000 last year. But it is what comes with it that is impressive, a lifetime entry into the Masters, where even those players who didn’t make the cut into the last 50 won $25,000. Entry into the other three majors for five years, which he already had from last year’s win. A nice green blazer, which he can hang in his own locker in the champions’ changing room. But it is all the extras which come with winning, the free cars, the free golf equipment and clothing, and being paid by the manufacturers. Add in paid endorsements and things like after-dinner speeches. I hear it can be worth $25 million a year.

The big political news of yesterday was Viktor Orbán losing the Hungarian general election, much to the pleasure of the EU and the annoyance of both Poo Tin and the Donald. I find it rather strange that two such diametrically opposed leaders as Poo Tin and the Donald should have been backing Orbán’s re-election. But he was a pain in the bum to the EU, so they are delighted to see his demise. Politically, the new leader, Péter Magyar, is still to the right of centre, but not quite as far as Orbán, and is an ex-member of Orbán’s party. Although vote counting will continue for a couple of days, Orbán has admitted defeat in what looks like a landslide against him.

I didn’t mention it in my diary entry for last Saturday, but I should have reported to you that it was 21:30 on Friday evening when the news was leaked that the Chagos deal was dead. I find it somewhat typical of this government, leaking important news like this at a time when the Saturday papers had already gone to bed and all the media people were probably in the pub celebrating the weekend. Do you remember “a good time to release bad news”? Well, this was another good example.

A second sporting story this morning. Luton Town won the English Football League Trophy at Wembley this weekend. This is a competition for teams in the Championship, Division One, and Division Two, and some ‘B’ teams from Premier League clubs. What is interesting is that Luton were beaten by Swindon Town in the last 16. However, it emerged that Swindon had played two ineligible players, so they were thrown out of the competition and Luton reinstated. The EFL Trophy is worth £20,000 to all entrants and just £100,000 to the winner, so it is way below the winnings that come from the League Cup (Carabao Cup) or the FA Cup.

I hear that the National Wealth Fund has revealed a £599m financing package for Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactors (SMR). Apparently, this is on top of the £2.6 billion allocated in the last spending review for the project at Wylfa. I understand that Robber Reeves says the new money is to go straight into the company, Rolls-Royce SMR, that has been set up by Rolls-Royce PLC and Czech power company CEZ (20%). This Rolls subsidiary is busy on final site-specific design, setting up an assembly line factory, and establishing a supply chain. I understand that they expect to be hiring around 1,000 workers for the assembly process, thousands more in the supply chain, and 3,000 on site. I hear preliminary civil site work starts this week. In Czechia, RR SMR has an agreement to build 30 GWe of SMRs and has a contract with Skoda to manufacture some heavy equipment. CEZ have already signed contracts for preliminary site work out there.

Over the Easter weekend, travellers seem to have taken advantage of the courts being on holiday to set up static caravan parks in several places without planning permission. The claim is that they own the land, so they can do what they like, but this is not true. They still need planning permission, and this is unlikely to be granted. Of course, the councils have gone to the court as soon as they reopened, and, for example, stop notices have been issued. These bar any more work being done on the sites, so it stops the spreading of hard standing or the arrival of any more static caravans until after a full hearing. Unsurprisingly, the police do not want to know, as failure to obtain planning permission is a civil offence and it is down to the relevant council to act.

Tuesday

Hi, folks. Beautifully sunny again in London this morning, but not warm. I watched the Reform press conference yesterday, where they announced that if they come to power they will hold an inquiry into the “Boris wave” of immigrants. They want to find out if it was deliberate or incompetence. Knowing Boris, I suspect it was incompetence.

The first report of the Southport Inquiry was out yesterday afternoon, and it was scathing of the authorities and the parents of Axel Rudakubana, the child killer. The report lists a number of individuals and organisations that, if they had acted, could have prevented the killings. Apparently, the parents knew that AR was buying weapons online, was making the poison ricin in his bedroom, and only went out to be violent. They did not report him to the authorities because they were worried he would be imprisoned. He was turned away by the Prevent system three times, and just six days before the killings he was discharged by the mental health system as “not dangerous”. AR had taken knives to school on 10 occasions and had been expelled to go to a special school, where the head teacher told the inquiry she never felt safe. The police didn’t act because he was the child of black immigrants, so obviously had to be treated with kid gloves. When will our authorities learn.

I read that nearly all cruise lines have been cancelling trips that call at the Tracy Arm Fjord near Juneau, Alaska. It’s not because the fjord and the Tracy Arm glacier are no longer highly popular and less spectacular, but that it is becoming unsafe. Some cruise lines, Carnival for one, recognised this some months ago and have stopped calling there this year. But others, like MSC, have only just decided to cancel from 2027. What makes the fjord so scenic is that it lies between steep mountain slopes, but it also makes it highly dangerous. The glacier is famous for calving mini icebergs that seal pups lounge on, but last summer there was a landslide that caused big chunks of ice to break off and a tsunami that sent waves up to a quarter mile up the mountains. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but rocks continue to fall on a regular basis, hence the ban.

When I first read this story, I had to check that it wasn’t the first of April and it wasn’t an April Fool. It seems that ASDA have bought around 700 commercial washing machines, which will be installed in its supermarkets. The idea is that they will be opening launderettes in some of their big supermarkets so that people can do their washing while shopping. I am sure that ASDA have done their research and think this will make them money, otherwise why spend money on washers and dryers.

In the United States, the Court of Appeal sitting in New Orleans has upheld an earlier lower court ruling that home distilling was unconstitutional. The law was passed some 158 years ago, in the reconstruction period after the Civil War, that placed a federal ban on home distilling with the aim of saving tax revenues. However, it has been repealed in some states. The earlier ruling that home distilling was legal was put on hold as the courts expected the government to appeal. And that they did and have lost, so it now becomes legal to distil spirits at home, unless the government take the case to the Supreme Court.

I hear that Cambridgeshire Police raided a car park in Peterborough yesterday on a tip that stolen goods were being sold there. A man was arrested on suspicion of handling stolen property because he was in possession of 20 bottles of olive oil and various household items. The police later searched a car and found loads more bottles of olive oil, pairs of shoes, boxes of chocolates, and bottles of Dove moisturiser, where a woman and a teenage boy were also arrested. I never realised that there was a big trade in stolen bottles of olive oil.

Babcock International have been given a two-year extension to their contract to supply engineering delivery and management for Type 23 frigates, amphibious warfare ships, Sandown minehunters, and landing craft from its Devonport and Rosyth facilities. What a pity they didn’t include the Type 45 destroyers in the contract. If they had maintained HMS Dragon, it might have got to Cyprus earlier and with a working plumbing system.

Wednesday

Good morning, everyone. It was a little damp when I went out this morning, but not cold. I hear it’s going to be similar all day, with even the possibility of a thunderstorm or two. It’s PMQs day, so I wonder what questions Bad Enoch will ask today and Legohead will not answer. In fact, he will be answering a question he would have preferred. The IMF has come up with a new forecast, reducing their expectations for growth this year from 1.3% to 0.8%. Will this be what Bad Enoch goes with.

The big news today is that the UK Mars bar has suddenly shrunk in size from 51g to 40g. That is 22% smaller, with no change in the wholesale or retail price of 75p. I understand that is known as shrinkflation and is happening to all sorts of things these days. Mars bars were previously reduced in weight back in 2006, when they were reduced from 62.5g to 58g, and again in 2013, when they were reduced to 51g. The makers, Mars Wrigley, say they are reducing the size so that a regular bar delivers only 200 calories. By the way, this is about to also happen to Snickers.

I have been reading about the Russian Aerospace Forces, or Vozdushno-kosmicheskiye sily (VKS), and their problems. At the beginning of the war with Ukraine, commentators fully expected the VKS to very quickly establish air superiority. The VKS had numerous modern planes and helicopters, while Ukraine only had old Soviet-era planes. Oddly, the VKS has never managed to gain air superiority, and its aircraft now rarely venture into Ukrainian airspace. But why? It seems that Western beyond-the-horizon air-to-air missiles have proved to be superior to anything the Russians have. In addition, Ukraine has been successful in attacking airfields and taking out planes on the ground with drones. Another factor is that the VKS had always trained for a defensive war and have to be guided on to targets by air controllers. Finally, sanctions have hit the Russians hard, with a production shortage. New aircraft deliveries are not keeping up with losses, nor are spare parts. Spares have become more important, as jet engines run at military settings need to be serviced much more often than at peacetime settings. According to a VKS report obtained in the West, in a three-week period over the end of December last year and early January this year, the VKS lost 17 aircraft and helicopters to engine failures and metal fatigue.

An interesting tale on the internet. It seems that in the last month the number of air defence systems protecting Poo Tin’s second home in the Novgorod Oblast has been increased from 17 to 27. The satellite photos show the defences are mainly against drones. By comparison, the whole of Moscow is defended by just 65 air defence systems.

I see that Russia has been boasting that they have got two berths at the Ust-Luga oil terminal back into use following the Ukrainian drone attack. I wonder if boasting about it being back in use is very clever, surely it is inviting more drone attacks, this time including the tankers at those berths. I read that the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says that Ukrainian drones have developed much faster than Russian drones. Russia seems to have concentrated on the mass production of three or four drone types in huge factories. In particular, they are said to be churning out the Iranian-designed Shahed 136, which they call Geran (Geranium) 2. The Shahed is a one-way attack drone, a sort of poor man’s cruise missile. Ukraine has gone in a different direction and is said to now have over 200 different companies making drones of all varieties, and some are said to be far in advance of anything the Russians have. The ISW says Russia is losing 30,000 troops a month, more than double the Ukrainian losses, and that 90% of these are now to drones.

On the 12th of this month, an unusual event occurred. A Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarine was filmed leaving Faslane to take over our nuclear deterrent. The boat is off on a patrol of unknown length, to places unknown, but always ready to defend the British Isles. As the boats are propelled by Rolls-Royce pressurised water reactors, they do not need to surface for refuelling. Consequently, they can stay submerged, producing their own air and water, until they need more food or the crew need to see daylight. I read that recently one of the subs was on a 203-day patrol.

An interesting little thing has emerged since Rory McIlroy won the US Masters at the weekend, and that is his relationship with his full-time caddie, Harry Diamond. The pair have been friends since they met on the putting green of McIlroy’s home, Holywood Golf Club in Northern Ireland. McIlroy was just seven when they met. Diamond has been carrying McIlroy’s bag since 2018 and has probably been very well paid for doing so. A golf caddie is normally expected to be paid about 10% of the golfer’s winnings, and McIlroy has won around $90 million while he and Diamond have been together. That means he has been paid around $9 million, if not more if he is on more than 10%.

Thursday

Hello, folks. It was cloudy and breezy, but not cold when I went out, though it is supposed to rain later. I was listening to the latest bit of what seems to be two-tier policing on the radio this morning. At the weekend, a poor girl was raped several times in leafy Epsom. Come Wednesday, and the police have not put out a description of the rapist or rapists, and of course the whispers have started. Last night, a large peaceful crowd appeared demanding details because, when the police haven’t given any details of who they are looking for, it is usually because they are black or brown. What was the police response? Fifty heavily protected riot police were deployed. There was no trouble, the people of Epsom are not like that. But the sudden appearance of 50 riot police, when they can’t send one officer to arrest a shoplifter, tells you everything. The authorities are scared stiff to give us the description of who the police are looking for in case it was another Afghan, Pakistani or Iranian asylum seeker. Is this another “Welsh Choirboy”?

The government is crowing about closing 11 hotels that were being used to accommodate illegal immigrants. They have boasted that they have got the numbers accommodated in hotels down from 30,000 to 20,000, but there are still 186 hotels housing immigrants open. It is quite noticeable that the hotels closed were mostly in Liebore voting areas that were tipped to turn to Reform in the upcoming local elections. But where have those displaced from hotels gone? It certainly is not back to their country of origin. It seems they have been moved into the likes of old military camps and houses of multiple occupation. Now I find this intriguing. The government claims this is a cheaper option, but it ignores a couple of things, that those HMOs are no longer available to house British nationals, and that the hotels all have long contracts to supply accommodation, so we will continue to pay them until the contracts expire. Note the careful government wording, that the new accommodation is cheaper, not that they are saving money.

I find this business of Legohead wanting to have closer alignment with the EU is amazing. It ignores what we voted for in leaving the EU so we could make our own laws and stop paying a fortune into their coffers. Now I hear that the EU wants us to pay them £15 billion a year to be allowed access to their single market and to take their rules. Now the big question is, would being part of the single market save us more than £15 billion, and how much would we lose in having to abandon other trade agreements like the one with the US?

I just can’t understand this government. I thought the last one was pretty bad, but this one is just awful. They have said they will increase the defence budget to 3% of GDP by 2030 and to 2.6% by the end of this Parliament. But I see little progress. In fact, from the inability to have a warship available to defend Cyprus, I suspected they were spending less, not more. Now I hear that, at a time when the world is so unstable and dangerous, the MoD has been asked to save £3 billion. I guess this is because we are spending so much on welfare and illegal immigrants.

I reported to you recently that the US was sending 2,500 Marines to the Middle East. Apparently, they are there now, and I have just seen photos of them training with adapted M4 carbines. Mounted on the rifle is a little box that I learn is called a SMASH 2000L. This is an anti-drone device that uses a laser to track a drone and a mini-computer brain to work out its course and speed. It then stops the Marine from firing until the drone is in an optimal position to be hit. I just don’t know how effective the device is, I suppose it still relies on how good the operator is.

The new Universal theme park being built on an old brickworks near Bedford has had one good result. It will ultimately be served on one side by a Thameslink station at Wixams and on the other side by the proposed East West Line, with a station at Stewartby. The Wixams station is already under construction, as it was already planned to serve a new town being built at Wixams. However, it may now be expanded to four platforms from its current two. It is the other side, which is currently passed by what is known as the Marston Valley Line, that is interesting. This line is supposed to be absorbed into the East West Line in fullness of time. Now I read that East West are planning to speed up the construction of this section of the proposed line from Oxford to Cambridge via Bedford. The planned line was to be built in sequential sections, but the new plan is for the various sections to be built in parallel, to enable it to be completed five years quicker. The only problem with this scheme is that it will need financing earlier.

Down in Littlehampton, I hear there is a big discussion going on about turning a disused business park into a retail park. The Watersmead Business Park has fallen into disuse since Amazon moved to a much bigger site at Bognor and combined with the Brighton distribution centre. The other big company on the site was Bodyshop, who have downsized and moved to Brighton, having been saved from bankruptcy. The idea is now to use the site as a large retail, food, and leisure park, provided planning permission is granted. I understand that M&S have already announced a 19,000 sq. ft food-only store. Other expected occupants would be Lidl, Mountain Warehouse, and Greggs. Many local people seem to like the idea, but others are worried about the effect on shops in the town centre.

Friday

Hi, everyone. It’s dry but cloudy this morning and not too cold. I’m happy when it is not raining. The news broke in the left-wing Guardian late yesterday afternoon that Mandelslime comprehensively failed his security vetting before it was overruled by the Foreign Office and he was appointed as Ambassador to the United States. Back in January, Legohead told the Commons that Mandelslime’s appointment had been made following all the usual procedures and that the security checking had cleared him for the role. Well, he clearly hadn’t been cleared, as the government has admitted that what the Guardian says is true. So that means Legohead either deliberately misled the House or he misled them based on information he had been given by the Foreign Office. Legohead says he only learnt of the failure to pass vetting on Tuesday. This cat wants to know why he didn’t immediately tell the House but only admitted it when the information appeared in the media. It looks like he was trying to hide it.

I have been reading that in this financial year we have currently committed to giving Ukraine over £3 billion in military aid. All I can say is, at least it is mainly in things made in the UK, so it is giving manufacturing jobs to our people, and it’s not money to buy things made in, say, America, where we get no benefit. I hear that, amongst the equipment we are giving away, are 1,000 Lightweight Multirole Missiles. The main item we are supplying is 120,000 drones of all sorts of sizes and functions. The delivery, which is already underway, will include a mix of long-range strike drones, intelligence and reconnaissance systems, logistics drones, and maritime-capable drones. I didn’t even know we had a drone manufacturing capability, especially one able to make so many of them and of different types. I do hope that the UK companies involved, who I have never heard of, including Tekever, Windracers, and Malloy Aeronautics, are also busy making a stockpile for our own military, but I fear our government is not that bright.

Further to the Mandelslime news, I see Legohead has effectively sacked Oily Robertson, the Chief Mandarin at the Foreign Office. I have never liked the man, he is too slippery for my liking, but I wonder if this is another one of those cases of Legohead sacking someone to deflect from his own failings. I wonder if Oily’s mobile phone is another one that has been stolen or dropped in the North Sea. It would be interesting to see the transcripts of calls made between him, Legohead, Mandelslime, and the Tottenham Turnip, who was Foreign Secretary at the time.

I hear that Carnival Cruise subsidiary Princess Cruises has just ordered three new ships to be delivered in 2035, 2036, and 2038 respectively. The new ships will be called the Voyager class, weigh around 183,000 tonnes, carry about 4,700 passengers, and be LNG-powered. They will be based on what Princess call their Sphere class ships, Sun Princess and Star Princess, but will be a bit bigger. I find it amazing that companies are having to order new ships so far in advance, but it seems that shipyard capacity is limited, with there only being a few yards capable of building cruise ships and 87 already on order.

A Californian nurse who has been suing Carnival after falling downstairs while drunk has been awarded $300,000 by a jury in Miami, Florida. Diana Sanders, a 45-year-old nurse who lives in Vacaville, California, was a passenger on the Carnival Radiance ship in January 2024 when she went on a bender, drinking 14 shots of tequila in eight hours before the fall. The woman claimed damages from Carnival Cruises because she hit her head and back, suffered bruises and contusions, and hurt her tailbone. The jury held Carnival 60% to blame and Sanders 40%, on the grounds that Carnival “over served her alcohol”. I find this quite odd. Did they force her to drink the shots? Did she drink them in different bars? Did someone else buy the drinks for her? Obviously, Carnival don’t agree with the verdict and say there are good grounds for either a new trial or an appeal.

The latest country to appear to be interested in the Anglo-Italian-Japanese Global Combat Air Programme seems to be Canada. The GCAP sixth-generation aircraft, better known as Tempest in the UK, has been attracting interest from several nations now that it is possibly the only sixth-generation Western aircraft project that is proceeding and accessible. The Franco-Spanish-German project is close to collapse, and the US project is closed to anyone else. The three current GCAP partners are reluctant to add any more partners, for fear that the added politics will adversely affect the timescale of the project. However, in this case Canada is looking for observer status, prior to being a possible customer. I would expect that would be much more acceptable.

In the USA, QVC Group, the owner of TV channels QVC and Home Shopping Network, is on the cusp of applying for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. There are said to be debts of over $5 billion. In the US, Chapter 11 bankruptcy is a halfway house to full bankruptcy and gives a company 90 days’ protection from people chasing the debt to try to sort out their financial problems, or file for full bankruptcy. The UK version is still on air and trading as I write this, but it is owned by QVC Group, so it is not clear if it is included in the problems.

Saturday

Morning, my friends. It’s a beautiful sunny morning here in the street, and with any luck it is going to stay that way all day. I must say the atmosphere here is better today, with no Legohead, “the great international statesman”, about. I intend to get my patrol and stories done very quickly today so I can get out in the sun.

I hear an interesting story this morning. Dan Hodges, from the Mail on Sunday, says that towards the end of last year the Mail heard from multiple sources that Mandelslime had failed the security vetting on several grounds and that, because he had already been appointed as Ambassador to the United States, Legohead was not very happy. Hodges added that at the time the government was rumoured to be casting around for a way for Mandelslime to remain in post. Hodges says the paper approached Downing Street and asked them if the story was true. Downing Street came back to them a week later and said there was not an iota of truth in the story. Unfortunately for Legohead, the rebuttal seems to be the lie.

In Newport, South Wales, a disabled man with one leg, heart failure, and diabetes applied to the local council for a disabled bay outside his house. After waiting over two years, the council workmen turned up to paint the bay on the road around his parked car. The man asked if he needed to display his blue badge outside his home. He couldn’t get an answer, so his wife went indoors to check on their computer. Finding that he did, she picked up the blue badge and went outside to put it on display in the car. But in the few minutes between the workmen finishing the bay and the wife arriving to put the blue badge on the car, a traffic warden had written a £70 ticket for parking in a disabled bay without displaying a blue badge. The council said the fine will be reduced to £35 if it is paid within two weeks.

In China, BYD, who claim to be the biggest car maker in the world, have just suffered a huge fire at its Shanghai factory. The fire has destroyed a massive stacking car park holding many hundreds of cars. The problem with a stacking car park is that machinery places cars within inches of each other, both horizontally and vertically. This means that if a car catches fire, the ones to its left and right, above and below, and in front of and behind are likely to also catch fire. In addition, BYD make EVs, and water does not put out a blazing EV battery. BYD were very quick to say the fire was caused by a workman setting insulation alight and was not a battery problem. My guess is that a battery may not have caused the initial fire, but as the car park was used to store test cars and old EVs waiting to be scrapped, I am certain that batteries would have been involved.

Last December, a Great Northern fast train from Kings Cross to Ely had a little incident as it crossed the Cambridge junction at Hitchin. Apparently, the train was running as an express on the fast line, but it was blocked ahead and the train was switched to the slow line. The train crossed the junction points at 56 mph instead of the recommended 24 mph because the driver had a green light, which he interpreted as the track being clear. The train lurched so badly that passengers fell off their seats. The inquiry has just been told that the driver had only been passed to drive on his own 11 days before and had never driven on that route before.

Nigel Farage has said that on day one of a Reform government they will table a law to turn all the immigrant accommodation, like the camp at Crowborough, into detention camps where the immigrants are kept under lock and key and not allowed to roam the neighbourhood. It might prove a bit hard to implement, as a new law will have to be passed by the Lords, where the Liebore party have a big majority. But there is a convention that eventually the Lords must pass legislation that is included in the government party’s manifesto.

I’ll end on my favourite story of the week. The Secretary of State for Transport, plump Heidi Alexander, has wrecked her green Mini Cooper. She drove it into a deep pothole on the B4437 near Burford, returning from a Liebore event. The car blew two tyres, was left undriveable, and had to be recovered on an AA recovery vehicle. Now that a senior Liebore MP has suffered in the same way as ordinary people do, will we see a greater priority on fixing potholes.

That’s me finished for the week, and it’s not even midday, so there is plenty of time for my snooze. The weather has been a bit odd this week, with a bit of sun but not terribly warm. Today it’s much better, and hopefully it’s going to be a good week ahead. It seems that the old saying “April showers bring forth May flowers” isn’t working today. I’m off to the windowsill. Chat to you all again next week.
 

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