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

Monday

Good morning, my friends. It’s quite nice out this morning, with high cloud and watery sunshine. The forecast says the really good weather has gone for a bit. What a pity, I was enjoying my napping time on the windowsill.

Over the weekend, Iran launched two missiles at Diego Garcia, and Legohead tried his best to firstly keep it secret and then claim that their ballistic missiles don’t have the range to hit London. It seems that the missiles were launched at 2am on Friday. One broke up in flight, and the other was shot down by a US Navy warship. The news broke in the US media, but our Government denied it had happened. When it became impossible to deny, the story changed to “their missiles don’t have the range to hit the UK”. I’ll just put this thought out, it is 2,375 miles from London to Tehran, and the Khorramshahr missile has a range of 2,400 miles. So, if you live 30 miles north of London, you should be safe.

Last night there was an attack on four parked ambulances in Golders Green in north London, with them being destroyed by arson. It is all on CCTV, with three masked men setting the ambulances alight. Why was it done, and who did it? Well, I can guess. The ambulances were operated as a free service for all people by a Jewish charity, Hatzola, and were parked at a synagogue. At least Legohead has said it was an anti-Semitic attack. But Sad Dick just called it an attack on some ambulances.

Here’s an interesting story from London. A court has ruled that the Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes in the London Borough of Croydon have nothing to do with clean air and everything to do with raising additional revenue for the borough, whose Liebore council was on the verge of bankruptcy, or the council equivalent. But the shocker for the council is that the court has ruled that the council must return to all the motorists the money they have been fined. This is rather hard for Croydon council, as they have already spent the money. Will they have to issue a Section 114 notice?

Because of the disaster that was Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa, the next order for four Scottishland ferries went to Turkey. How the builders of Glen Sannox laughed when the Turks said the first ferry, Isle of Islay, would be six months late because there had been an earthquake that had messed up production. The other three ferries were to follow at six-monthly intervals, ending in late 2027. However, it has just been announced that the last ferry will now be handed over to the purchasing authority, Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited, in February 2027.

I hear that HMS Anson, the nuclear-powered hunter killer submarine that was recently on a visit to Australia, is reported to be in the northern Arabian Sea. Apparently, she is lying in deep water between Oman and India, occasionally coming to what is referred to as “periscope depth” to communicate by satellite with the naval HQ in Northwood. Anson is an Astute-class submarine, which is said to be the most undetectable of all submarine types. It has six torpedo tubes and carries a mixed load of 38 x 21″ Spearfish heavy torpedoes and Tomahawk Block IV cruise missiles. The Tomahawk has a range of around 1,000 miles and can carry various conventional warheads against both fixed and moving targets on land and sea. I also understand that it has the ability to turn any of its unburned jet fuel into a vapour, turning it into a thermobaric weapon in addition to its warhead. This puts much of Iran in the submarine’s attack zone.

The Donald has threatened to blow up Iranian power plants if Iran didn’t open up the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians said that if The Donald did hit their power plants, they would hit back at their neighbours’ power plants. This morning, The Donald says he has put the power plant attacks on hold for five days while negotiations take place, as progress is being made. However, the Iranians say there have been no discussions. I wonder who is telling the truth.

This morning I have been lying under a desk in the office, listening to the rumours. That’s always a fun thing to do. The word is that Legohead is looking at a reshuffle to move the Government further left to try to fight off the threat from the Greenies. I heard lots of speculation and, although I’ll tell you what I heard, I can’t guarantee that this is what will happen. So far, the only person I hear is out is Wes Streeting, not really surprising since he is on the right wing of the party. Coming back into government would be The Ginger Growler, the mobile phone thief Louise Haigh, and deputy party leader Lucy Powell. I’m really interested in who else is rumoured to get the boot.

Tuesday

Hi folks, much greyer and not so warm this morning, but the Felix chicken in my bowl made up for the weather. The number of illegal immigrants crossing the Channel in the last week passed 1,000 last night, with another 200 crossing yesterday. Not a word from the Government about this awful mess. But I wonder how many of that 1,000 were women and children as opposed to fighting-age men. I suspect it will be well under 50.

I hear there was a nasty accident at New York’s LaGuardia Airport late Sunday night. An Air Canada Express flight from Montreal hit a fire engine that was on the runway. From the early reports, it sounds as if the fire engine was responding to a call from a United flight that had asked for assistance with a report of fumes on board. Air Traffic Control had given the fire engine permission to cross the runway with the plane landing and tried to stop it at the last moment when it was already on the runway. The two pilots were killed, and an air hostess was found on the runway still strapped into her seat. In total, 39 people were taken to hospital, including two firemen.

I hear that Royal Caribbean International is having a swap round of its ships and, in summer 2027, it will be sending Freedom of the Seas to work out of Southampton. The ship is not the biggest in the RCI fleet at 158,000 tons and 3,500 passengers, and it certainly isn’t the newest, as it entered service in spring 2006. This means that it will be 21 years old when it starts offering sailings out of Southampton. Not that its age makes it unsuitable for operating out of the UK, it has all the normal RCI features like an ice rink, an internal mall, a FlowRider surfing machine, a rock-climbing wall and a basketball court. I understand that RCI aims at the 35- to 45-year-old age group, but the average age of British cruisers has only recently fallen from 65 to 55 years.

Last week I mentioned that some Asian nations were firing up their coal-fired power stations because of the war in Iran. Today I read that Thailand is reactivating two units at the giant Mae Moh lignite-fired power station. The country has been moving to gas-fired electricity generation, but the war has stopped supplies of LNG. Hence the start-up of 600 MW of coal-fired plant so as to make up electricity supplies. What a shame we have demolished our old coal-fired plants and closed the mines.

Apparently, the £500 million deal that the Rich Boy did with the Frogs to patrol the French beaches runs out very shortly, and talks to extend it are proving very difficult. I’m not sure that we have been getting good value for our money from the French police. Over 1,000 illegal boat people have already crossed the Channel this year, and with better spring and summer weather coming, that is going to leap. I can’t see any advantage to paying the Frogs a single penny.

It’s more than three weeks since Legohead decided to send HMS Dragon to defend Cyprus in general, and RAF Akrotiri, and yesterday a Government Minister refused to say where it was, other than in the Mediterranean. A week ago, it was reported to be off Gibraltar with RFA Lyme Bay. Surely it can’t take a destroyer a week to sail from Gibraltar to Cyprus. The Minister doesn’t have to say exactly where the ship is, something like “on station” would be good enough. Refusing to say anything led to speculation that the Government is hiding something, like the Dragon has run out of puff. However, it was announced very late yesterday that Dragon had reached the US naval base at Souda Bay on Crete, which is about halfway between Malta and Cyprus, which seems to indicate the ship has a problem.

The speculation as to whether the proposed AUKUS submarine will be equipped with a Vertical Launch System seems to be over. It has been revealed that the MoD has requested US help with the installation of a VLS like that installed on the US Navy Virginia-class of submarine. Virginia boats have four large launch cylinders, each of which contains seven launch tubes for either the latest version of the Tomahawk cruise missile or a hypersonic missile. This arrangement of a VLS in an extra section of the submarine means there is more space in the torpedo room for additional torpedoes. Mind you, it really was obvious that the boat was always going to have a VLS, as the torpedo tube-launched version of the Tomahawk cruise missile is no longer made.

Wednesday

Good morning, everyone. Well, it’s still cooler this morning, but at least it is dry at the moment. A tiny bit of better news for Legohead this morning, the inflation rate for February stuck at 3%. Mind you, I expect that will be the lull before the storm, as the war in Iran is sure to have pushed the cost of oil and gas up in March, so pushing up inflation.

I see the second Type 31 frigate has been dropped into the water from its submersible barge at Rosyth. It will now have to go alongside at the fitting-out berth to be completed. I read that the Type 31s are more complete when they are rolled out of the building shed than most warships have ever been. The idea that as much of the work as possible is done under cover makes a lot of sense. It must be a whole lot easier doing the cabling and installing equipment in a warm, dry environment. OK, the radar dome is added later, but it would not have got through the shed’s door if it had been installed before being rolled out.

Legohead was appearing in front of the Commons Defence Committee earlier this week and, apart from getting mad with Bernard Jenkins questioning him about the still-missing Defence Review, he said one or two interesting things. He talked about the importance of countries buying the same equipment so that various countries’ soldiers, sailors and airmen can use each other’s equipment. He gave the examples of the Type 26 and Type 31 frigates, which have been bought by other NATO countries, and said talks about a potential order by Denmark for the Type 31 were happening at the highest level. He also said he was determined that there would be no delay for the Type 83 destroyer programme. I really don’t understand this, as the MoD has been told to save billions and the Type 83 design doesn’t seem to have been settled yet.

The Department of Stupid Ideas in Westminster has come up with a beauty. The latest idea I hear them talking about is a government app on your phone, laptop, tablet or PC that goes off when a missile attack is detected. I suppose it is cheaper and quicker to build an app than a missile defence system like Israel’s Iron Dome. But if a missile is about to land on my head, I don’t know that I want to know about it in advance. Where would I go, what would I do? It’s not as if we had air raid shelters to go to, like during WW2, or as they have in Israel, where every building has to be built with one. This is just Legohead pretending he is looking after the population.

The Department of Stupid Ideas must have been working overtime, as I hear that the Government is making all new homes have plug-in solar panels and heat pumps. I have never heard of a plug-in solar panel, so I did a bit of research and found that in some places, like Germany, you can buy a plug-in solar panel at the supermarket, the middle aisle at Aldi, and put it in your garden or, if you live in a flat, on your balcony. But the problem is that, at the moment, they are illegal in the United Kingdom and need a change in the law. However, what is missing is the one thing that makes heat pumps and solar panels anywhere near financially viable, a battery to store surplus electricity.

Here is a little point about heat pumps I picked up today. The government’s plan is to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2027. However, we had a total of about 260,000 houses with heat pumps installed at the end of 2025, a year in which we added 40,000 heat pumps. There are 48.6 million homes in the UK, so if we divide the number of homes by the 600,000 target, we get 48 years before every home has a heat pump. Mind you, if we divide it by the 40,000 achieved, you get 1,215 years. And Ed Millipede backs this plan.

Late yesterday, the Government finally announced that HMS Dragon had arrived in the location of Cyprus, just over three weeks after Legohead decided to send it. I only hope that, after the big build-up, it can do a job and defend Cyprus against any missile or drone attacks. Not that I want to see our bases attacked, but I want Dragon to be successful if the island is attacked.

Thursday

Hello folks, from a dry and sunny, but not too warm, Downing Street. After a very showery day yesterday, I do hope it stays dry today. I had to laugh at PMQs yesterday. Legohead made a fool of himself once again, telling Kimi Bad Enoch that he didn’t have any power to allow drilling in the North Sea, and once more not answering questions asked and changing the subject. The avoidance so annoyed Nigel Farage that, when Legohead wouldn’t answer his question, all Reform MPs walked out.

Robber Reeve stood up in the Commons and said the upper and middle classes can expect to pay more in tax to benefit the weakest in the country. So, this means we are going to help those on benefits. I hear the benefits bill is around £400 billion a year and the interest bill on our debt is £100 billion a year. Last month, we had to borrow an additional £14.3 billion, mainly to pay off the month’s £13 billion interest on our borrowing. Can someone please explain how this makes any sense?

Another thing I want explained to me is why the Government hasn’t given permission for the Rosebank oil field and Jackdaw gas field to start production. Both these fields are ready to go tomorrow. Rosebank is the biggest untapped oil reserve in our sector of the North Sea and could be in production later this year. Jackdaw could be turned on tomorrow and has the gas equivalent of 200 million barrels of oil. It is wholly owned by BG International Limited, part of Shell, so the gas is fully controlled by us. There are other fields, like BP’s Clair oil field and Serica Energy’s Buchan Horst field, which are currently in limbo because they are awaiting the outcome of Rosebank and Jackdaw. Clair is the biggest oil field in the North Sea, with 8,000 million barrels of reserves, but was developed in five parts. It is the next parts that are on hold. The Buchan field is believed to have an extra 400 million barrels of oil that could be exploited by sideways drilling from the existing platforms.

I read that the Canadians are making changes to their River Class destroyers, which are Type 26 frigates. The first change announced is that they were going to use Leonardo’s 127 mm gun but have changed to the BAE Systems Inc. 5-inch (127 mm) Mk 45 gun, which is on both our Type 26 (City Class) and the Australian Type 26 (Hunter Class). The design for the installation is done, as is the automatic ammunition handling system, and it is installed on HMS Glasgow. It is a lighter gun and cheaper because the design is complete. The other big alteration is that the second mast for communications on the other Type 26 frigates has been deleted, and the communications equipment is to be incorporated into the main radar mast.

I am hearing a rather suspicious story. Back in September last year, Mandelslime was sacked as Ambassador to Washington, and the Tories started asking for the phone communications between government officials and Mandelslime to be made public. The Government spent three weeks working out how to keep communications out of the public domain, particularly those between Morgan McSweeney and Mandelslime. One week later, McSweeney, who was supposed to have done the due diligence on Mandelslime, reported that his work mobile phone was stolen, with all the messages between the pair lost. But it gets better, the police didn’t investigate the loss of the phone because they misrecorded McSweeney’s address. Couldn’t they have asked the Government for the right address? It’s all very fishy to me, and I’m only the Chief Mouser.

There is quite a problem developing with the F-35 stealth fighter. The plane was originally built to be equipped with the AN/APG-81 radar. But since Lockheed Martin started building the Lot 17 aircraft, the plane has been built to take the new improved version of the radar, the AN/APG-85. The problem is that the new radar is not expected to be ready until 2028. By that time, Lot 17, Lot 18 and part of Lot 19 should have been built. Each lot comprises 150 planes. To accept the new radar, the design of the plane has been amended, and it can no longer accommodate the old design of radar. So, the decision has been made to produce and deliver the Lot 17 and Lot 18 planes without any radar. Instead, they will have metal weights installed in the plane’s nose to keep the plane in balance.

The news has been announced that the Metropolitan Police have stated that two men have been arrested over the burning of the four ambulances in Golders Green. A Met Police spokesperson said the two men were arrested in central London and pointed out that the CCTV showed three people. Wes Streeting promised to replace the ambulances, and I was pleased to see this has been done, but why was it a hodgepodge of types of ambulances?

Friday

Hi everyone, drizzling in London this morning, not the sort of weather I like. So Legohead thinks that because McSweeney reported his phone was stolen to the police, it really was stolen. I only have to remind you of Louise Haigh to prove that people whose phone has not been stolen report it to the police as stolen. Have they had a look in the back of his old office desk drawers?

Last week I told you about a 100-plane order for Airbus A320neo family aircraft from Irish lessor AerCap. Now they have repeated the event with an order for 101 Airbus A320neo family aircraft from China Eastern Airlines, at a reported value of $15.8 billion. I assume that, based on the value of this order, the AerCap order will also be worth around $15 billion. Some commentators had been giving Airbus a bit of a hard time over the low number of orders they had booked in the first couple of months of the year. This now looks a bit daft, them having booked 201 orders from just two customers in just over a week. I suppose I should add that, in December last year, Airbus booked 148 orders for A320neo planes from Chinese airlines.

At the moment, there is only a joint bid from the USA, Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica for the 2031 Women’s World Cup, and one from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for the 2035 event. The home nations bid is being managed by the English FA on behalf of the four home FAs and, as such, the current plan includes matches at 22 different stadiums, 16 of which are in England, three in Wales, two in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland, with the final being played at Wembley. Of course, this doesn’t suit Andy Burnham, the so-called King of the North. He wants the final to be played at the new “Old Trafford” in Manchester. The problem with this is twofold, the bid document has named Wembley, and the new “Old Trafford” only exists as a plan on paper and there is no certainty that it will ever be built.

YouGov has just published an MRP poll for the 2026 Senedd election in Wales. It is interesting in that it shows the collapse of the Liebore and Tory votes, with them getting just 12 and 1 seat respectively. It says the biggest winners would be Plaid Cymru on 43 and Reform on 30. Green is shown on 10 and the Limp Dumps on a big fat zero. Now, I do wonder if YouGov are underestimating Reform, as in their Westminster polling they always have them four or five per cent lower than any other pollster. But it is the Liebore slide from government on 44 seats to third place that is most noticeable.

I hear that the Government tekkies say they have retrieved “some” of McSweeney’s messages from his “stolen” Government phone. I must say I was surprised when it was said that all the messages were lost, as I had heard that all Government phones were automatically backed up and that security around them was extremely strong, and if a Government phone was lost, all hell was let loose. What I don’t understand is how it could be possible not to have backed up his phone.

On two consecutive nights, Ukraine has hit one of Russia’s biggest oil export ports with long-range drones. The two ports on the Baltic are about 1,200 miles from Ukraine and were considered to be safe from attack because of the distance. The Primorsk port near St Petersburg was hit first, and there were huge fires shown on YouTube videos. Then the nearby port of Ust-Luga was hit the next night and, once again, huge fires broke out in the oil storage farm and on at least one tanker being loaded. I hear that both ports are shut down and that represents a drop of 40% in Russian oil exports.

The rumour of the day is that after the local elections, Legohead is going to make Sad Dick a Lord. This is partly to compensate him for the seat losses Liebore are expected to suffer in London, but mainly as a sop to the left of the party. But the best bit is that he is expected to be given a seat in the Cabinet. Is this so he can’t be the next PM?

Saturday

Morning, my friends. It’s sunny out there this morning, but I hear that it is to be wet this afternoon. I hear that, over the Atlantic, Tiger Woods has just been arrested for DUI, what we call drug driving. In the UK, two offences within ten years is a three-year ban, an unlimited fine and probably having to pass a special test before getting his driving licence back. But it would also probably mean a year in prison. Now this is the fourth occurrence of DUI. In the UK, he would probably be banned from driving for life. I will be interested to see what will happen in a Florida court.

Today’s Phonegate news is good fun. From what I hear, all the McSweeney messages between him, Mandelslime, Legohead and various others have been recovered by the simple method of issuing him a replacement phone with the same number. This simple procedure means that WhatsApp and other systems have simply made all the messages available again. Unsurprisingly, the police have now commandeered the phone. Hence lots of worried faces in Number 10.

I am delighted to hear that the Olympic Committee has finally seen the light and has announced that only women are going to be allowed in female events. Why it has taken so long to happen beats me. It has been going on for years and, despite people like Dame Sharon Davies talking about it, nothing was being done in many sports, as they could set their own rules. It’s my guess that seeing a boxer who was supposed to be a woman, but was clearly a man, beating up women boxers and winning a gold medal was the final straw.

The news has emerged that Mandelslime’s personal phone has not been asked for by the police investigating him. It’s strange that the police grabbed his official Government phone to check its messages, despite the fact that much of what they are investigating happened before he was appointed Ambassador to the USA and presumably got a Government mobile phone. Surely, if there were incriminating messages, they would be on his personal mobile phone. Mind you, it’s so long since he was suspected of wrongdoing that he has had plenty of time to wipe it, or lose it.

Something I don’t understand is why we have just given Ukraine what I understand is called the RapidRanger air defence system, when we don’t seem to have enough systems to defend RAF Akrotiri. The RapidRanger is a close-in mobile system mounted on a large SUV. The system includes day and night cameras and a laser guidance system for its Starstreak 2 or Lightweight Multirole Missiles. The 360° four-missile launcher can be loaded with a mix of the two types of missiles. It is designed to take down low-flying UAVs, drones, helicopters and some types of cruise missiles. Sounds to me like we should have had them in Cyprus.

Ahmad Mulakhil, an Afghan asylum seeker, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for abducting and raping a 12-year-old schoolgirl. Personally, I don’t think that is the right sentence. He will probably be out after serving half the sentence and be granted leave to stay, as the Taliban might execute him. Well, that’s his problem. If I had my way, he would be on a plane back to Afghanistan this afternoon and would have to take his chances with the Afghan authorities.

With the coming of spring, I hear of the arrival of Jet2 at Gatwick Airport. I have been hearing that Jet2 have been itching to expand their business to Gatwick for several years, as it is home to many of the southeast’s charter jet holidays. Until now, they have been unable to obtain enough take-off and landing slots to make an operation at Gatwick financially viable. They have now opened up with 29 routes to summer holiday destinations, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Malta, Italy, Cyprus, Croatia and even Bulgaria. Jet2 will base six planes at Gatwick year-round. However, they will swap to just 14 winter sun routes, but utilise the planes by adding skiing flights, Christmas markets and Santa flights. This is great news for the people of Crawley, Gatwick’s closest town, as the operation will support 300 new full-time jobs.

That’s me finished for the week, and it is now time for my snooze. The sun has disappeared and it’s raining this afternoon, so it’s not going to be the windowsill this afternoon. It will have to be somewhere quiet, maybe the Thatcher Room, as all the lefties never go there. That has ended my three weeks running on the windowsill. Chat to you all again next week.
 

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