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

Monday

Good morning, my friends. It was sunny and a little warmer when I went out this morning. Yesterday, I popped into the office to see if the Sunday crew were slacking with no Legohead in the house. I heard a lovely story while under a desk. Apparently, Legohead is going to fire Robber Reeves at Iran so that she can wreck their economy.

I read that The Donald is sending another 10,000 troops to the Gulf. This is in addition to 5,000 Marines on the USS Tripoli and the 3,000 paratroops from the 82 Airborne who have all recently arrived. The US media say the Yanks could capture Kharg Island in a few hours. I have no doubt this could be true and, on the face of it, it looks a good way to stop Iran’s oil exports. But Kharg Island is just off the coast of Iran and could easily be hit by artillery, missiles, and drones fired from the mainland, so I would not want to be on that island. But is this a bluff, and are those troops designated for something else, like grabbing Iran’s refined uranium.

I hear that these drone strikes on Russian refineries might be down to the Americans supplying them with a new type of drone technology. Apparently, Ukraine supplied the Yanks with captured Shahed drones, as designed by Iran and made by both Iran and Russia. It seems the Yanks reverse engineered the drone and found it was susceptible to electronic interference, as it used GPS. From this, the USA has designed their own look-alike drone, called Lucas, which uses internal terrain-following navigation, so it cannot be jammed. They have used these in Iran, and the word is that, in return for the Shahed drones, they gave the internal navigation system design to Ukraine. It is this technology that is in the one-way attack drones that have been so successfully hitting oil refineries and ammunition factories.

The interim manager of Tottenham Hotspur, who was appointed to see them through to the end of the season, has lasted just 44 days and seven matches. With Spurs just one point and one place above the relegation positions, they are getting desperate for a few points to drag them to safety. Igor Tudor has failed to win a single Premier League match during his reign. I suspect the poor man will be relieved to be leaving. The team clearly do not understand him and his methods. But who will want to take on a team in such a desperate situation. The supporters seem to want Harry Redknapp, but he is 79. Why would he want to take on such a mission.

Nestle, the Swiss chocolate maker, has had a lorry load of KitKats stolen. The truck was taking 12 tonnes (413,793) of the bars from its factory in Italy to Poland, and it did not get there. At the time of writing, both the truck and its load are still missing. KitKats are sold all over Europe, so they could end up anywhere. If big Doug down the market has a load of cheap KitKats, they just might be hooky.

I heard an interesting snippet of information over the weekend. Someone on the radio was talking about it being hard to beat wind turbine-generated electricity on cost because the fuel was free. The host said, “But the infrastructure is not, and it is highly subsidised.” Then he went on to say that, in most cases, an 800-megawatt CCGT needs a single connection to the National Grid and, in most cases, this is simple because the unit is built on the site of an old coal or oil-fired power station, which is already cabled or next to a grid line. To get 800MW from wind turbines, firstly you need 200 x 4-megawatt turbines. Then you need to cable up 200 generators to a single point to combine the power, and then run a cable ashore. Once ashore, it needs to be connected to the grid, which is almost certainly miles away. Who pays for this infrastructure. You do know there are currently five levies on your electricity bill, Renewable Obligation, Feed-in Tariffs, Energy Company Obligation, Warm Home Obligation, and Assistance for Areas with High ED Costs, whatever that is, and that comes to about 16% of your bill.

Last year, the British police only solved 8% of burglaries, meaning that they did not solve 92%, and in one third of police areas not a single case was solved. I do wonder what the police were doing. Were they sending 10 officers to arrest someone for hurty tweets or non-crime hate incidents, or was it motoring offences or not having a TV licence.

Tuesday

Hi folks, it is very cloudy this morning, but it is a little warmer. The grooming gang inquiry starts this morning, at long last. It was supposed to begin in March this year and has made it on the very last day of the month. The chairwoman, Baroness Longfield, says she is going to investigate everyone, regardless of nationality, skin colour, religion, or creed. But I have no real hope that she will get to the bottom of the scandal, as she says she is not going to look at every area where the gangs operate or operated and will not announce the areas for “some months”. The worst thing is that the inquiry is expected to last until 2029 and cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

Legohead, and a lot of the cabinet, went on an away day to Wolverhampton to launch the Labour campaign for the local elections next month. I was interested to see most of his speech on TV and saw him tell one outright lie and one half lie. The outright lie was that if Bad Enoch or Nigel were PM, we would have joined the war on Iran. He bases this on both saying they would have let the USAF use British bases when first asked, rather than two days later like he did. Neither of them has ever said they would send our forces to fight in Iran. Next up was his story about saving the average household an average £117 on their energy bill. So far, this is true. The bill for the next quarter should be going down, but the regulator has already said it will go back up in three months’ time. But the reason it is going down is that £150 is being moved from energy bills to tax, so you will still be paying it.

Over the weekend, we received the 48th and last of the F-35B Lightning II aircraft we had on order from the US. That means we now have 47 of them in service, after one fell off the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth into the Mediterranean in 2021, but we did recover the wreckage. Apparently, we still have a requirement for 136, that is 11 squadrons, but we still have not ordered any more. It seems that when we do get round to ordering some more, at least one squadron, 12 planes, will be the conventional type, F-35A, so that it can carry B-61 nuclear bombs. These are American weapons and many are stored in NATO countries and would be released to them in the event of a war.

Last week, I told you how a flight of A-10C Warthog fighters had crossed the Atlantic and headed to the Persian Gulf to help out in Iran. Now I hear that they have been so successful in taking out Iranian Navy vessels, particularly their fast attack boats, that more are on the way. From what I heard, a flight of eight landed at RAF Lakenheath yesterday en route to the Gulf. I understand six were for active service and two were spares. In addition, the word reaches your intrepid cat reporter that 20 more Warthogs have gathered at Portsmouth International Airport at Pease, New Hampshire, which is a standard jump-off point for a flight across to RAF Lakenheath.

Another scandal at the BBC broke yesterday. Scott Mills, the presenter of what is probably the most listened-to programme on Radio 2, their Breakfast Show, was sacked. The BBC said it was for personal conduct. The rumour is that it was for something that occurred 10 years ago. The rumours say that the openly gay man was involved in a relationship that broke up at the time. The BBC say they will not comment on personal affairs.

I see that if we eventually give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the EU wants the fishing rights. Not only does Mauritius get paid by us to take the islands, but they intend to sell the fishing rights to the EU. Under British rule, the waters around the Chagos Islands have been a marine conservation area and have apparently turned into an underwater paradise, and one of the few areas where yellowfin tuna can breed and live unmolested. But having overfished the areas off Mauritius and the Seychelles that the EU has acquired rights to, they see an opportunity to fish out the Chagos Islands if we are not there.

Francis Egan, the Chief Executive of oil and gas exploration company Cuadrilla, has said that they could be producing gas by fracking within three months. He was talking about re-drilling the wells in Lancashire that Red Ed Millepede had filled with concrete, thinking he had stopped production forever. What the idiot never thought about was how easy it is to drill new wells a couple of metres from the old ones. But the interesting thing is the speed at which Egan says it can be done. I guess that is because the company knows where the gas is and can drill a production well straight into the basin. Start today, and we could be burning our own gas next winter instead of importing it from Norway.

Wednesday

Good morning, everyone. It is cloudy in London again this morning, but not too cold when I nipped out. I hear that the negotiations on a new agreement with the Frogs on “stopping the boats” failed to be agreed before the old one ran out at midnight. However, talks are continuing, but according to the Frogs, we are being unreasonable as we want to see some results for our £500 million. In the meantime, there is to be an interim deal where we pay the Frogs £2 million a week for a couple of months to extend the old deal on the same terms.

Legohead has told the BMA that if resident doctors do not call off their six-day strike within 48 hours, he will withdraw the offer of an extra 1,000 training places in the current pay deal. Discussions on the pay demand have been going on for months and getting nowhere, as the BMA want a 26% increase and the government has offered a total of about 7%. Neither side will shift their position. However, I cannot see what Legohead hopes to gain by withdrawing the training places. The country desperately needs more doctors, and training our own must be better than importing them from overseas.

I often report stories on the dreadful state of the ferries to the Scottish islands, but today I hear of a real beauty. It seems that today they have eight ferries on the Outer Hebrides network out of service. This is made up of scheduled maintenance and several breakdowns. MV Lord of the Isles suffered a bow door issue, followed by an engine problem. MV Isle of Arran has a fire suppression system fault and bow thruster problems. The new ferry MV Glen Sannox is out of service again, as detailed last week, and the new MV Isle of Islay has a “snagging” problem. The other four ferries are out for scheduled maintenance, so it is proving very hard to serve the islands and many are short on fresh food.

The loss of an E-3 Sentry AWACS plane in the Gulf is a painful reminder that the USAF is in a tussle with Congress to update its airborne battle management fleet, and pressure is on Legohead over the inadequate number of E-7 Wedgetails we are procuring to fill the gap created by our retirement of our E-3Ds. The US was down to only 20 working aircraft and had sent six of them to Saudi Arabia to watch for drones and rockets from on high, something its ancient radar is quite good at. Not as good as the newer US Navy E-2D Hawkeye, which are helping out, or the modern E-7 Wedgetail lent by Australia.

Without these aircraft flying high over the battlefield, the military has to rely on ground-based radar that is much more limited in range by the curvature of the Earth. We initially ordered five E-7s, but this was reduced to just three, and the delivery slowed down to save money. Our first plane has been delivered and has been undergoing flight testing. It is expected to enter service any day now, but with just one plane it is impossible to cover the UK 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In fact, with three planes this is not easy. I think the cancelled two planes may well be reinstated, and possibly increased. Even Australia has seven in service, Turkey has four, and South Korea has four. The USAF has a requirement for 26, but only two on order. The USAF problem is the same as ours, a reluctance of government to spend the money in “peacetime”.

Yesterday, I talked about the cost of delivering wind-generated electricity into the grid so that it flows to those areas where it is needed, mainly in the North East, the North West, the Midlands, and the South East. Rather interestingly, I read that a £3 billion headline contract has been signed for a fourth undersea cable to bring power from the wind farms in the north of Scotland to the grid in England. That illustrates perfectly where your money is going.

An interesting ruling from the British Indian Ocean Territory, BIOT, Supreme Court yesterday. They ruled that the islanders who have moved back on to the outer islands did so legally and have declared the eviction notice they received illegal. This makes another problem for Legohead, as the prospective deal with Mauritius is written with the assumption that the island chain has no residents.

A bit of news emerged yesterday afternoon about Karl Turner, the Liebore MP for Kingston upon Hull, who has had the whip withdrawn. I have heard Turner on the radio many times, and I always thought of him as a proper socialist. He seemed to favour the working man over the woke lot that seem to be running Liebore at the moment. Subsequently, he has been critical of the likes of Legohead and Red Ed Millipede. The interesting thing is that Turner learnt of the loss of the whip from Talk Radio, who phoned him to ask him to come on a show to talk about the suspension, having been briefed by the Whips Office, and they did not bother to tell him. I would laugh if he joined Reform.

Thursday

Hello, folks. There was a bit of sunshine on my morning excursions, so I was happy when I got back, but that soon disappeared when I heard the forecast for a cloudy day. I hear that Sad Dick says London is safe, so the hordes of marauding kids in Clapham did not happen, and McSwindle did not get his phone stolen.

The Liebore porker, Lady Nugee, also known as Dame Emily Thornberry, has come out with a real cracker. She stood up and said that all illegal immigrants should immediately be granted leave to remain. This would cost us billions, as they would become entitled to claim benefits. But I suspect that behind her love of immigrants is the hope that they will vote for Liebore.

I had to laugh at the video where a fake interviewer asked a protester in America why the US is fighting for the “Straits of Hormuz”, and not the “Gays of Hormuz”. The girl obviously has no idea what the “Straits of Hormuz” are, as she goes on about gay bias. At first, I thought this was a couple of actors, but while the interviewer was, the girl being interviewed was clearly not.

I hear of an IT boss who was arrested by Hertfordshire Police under a law that had been repealed. Forty-one-year-old Sam Smith from Stevenage had gone to bed when twelve officers turned up at his door at 11:45 on a Saturday night, arrested him over a blog he had written, and searched his home, seizing his phone and computers. He was then slung in a police cell overnight. The police told him he was under arrest for sending false communications, an offence that had been repealed and replaced with a lesser, non-arrestable offence some time before. When he was released from custody, the log recorded that the search was not “suitable or lawful”. Mr Smith is suing Hertfordshire Police for £70,000.

I hear that it is a busy time for plane spotters at RAF Lakenheath, the main station for USAF strategic bombers in the UK. There are now 23 USAF bombers at the station, eight of which are the giant B-52s, while the rest are the sleek, swing-wing, supersonic B-1s. I understand that the US is down to just 45 B-1 bombers, so a full third of the fleet is at Lakenheath. But, of course, it is all the other planes that are supporting the hugely increased number of Yanks temporarily maintaining the bombers, with equipment flown in directly from the States, that really interest the plane spotters. Where else in the UK are they going to see the likes of Boeing 747 freighters in the colours of Atlas Air and Western Global that rarely leave the USA.

The Royal Australian Air Force is to become the first export customer for the new AIM260 air-to-air missile. The development and performance details of the missile are highly classified, but it is believed that it has a beyond-visual-range performance of at least 120 miles. It is now in mass production and is expected to replace the AIM120 as the principal air-to-air missile of the USAF and the USN. The Aussies are expected to procure 400 of the missiles to allow each of their F-35As to fully load their internal weapons bay with six missiles each. The reason the Aussies are being allowed first dibs on the export of this missile is their close proximity to China. The other country that would currently be allowed to pay $5.6 billion for the missile is Japan, again due to its proximity to China.

I think the best April Fool I read yesterday was from the UK Defence Journal. They revealed that to enlarge our RN fleet, we are ordering 300 inflatable frigates, the first of which will be HMS Bouncy Castle. It also talks about how one of the prototypes suffered a problem when a seagull landed on the deck and pecked a hole in it. It also told us that the early ships are to be called HMS Lilo, HMS Rubber Duck, and HMS Paddling Pool. I bet you can come up with some good names.

Friday

Hi everyone, it is back to wet again this morning and it was not nice for my constitutional this morning. Still, my breakfast, Felix and fresh water, was waiting when I got back, and my duty feeder had put the radio on, tuned to Talk, and some bloke who does Friday, Saturday, and Sunday breakfast times. Not my favourite presenter, but at least he is not a lefty like that bloke Jobby on LBC, who I hate.

Legohead called a press conference this week and spent twenty minutes saying absolutely nothing, just a lot of waffle. Then, when he thought everyone had dropped off to sleep, he slipped in what the presser was all about. He said he wants to move the UK closer to the EU. When asked if he wanted to rejoin the Customs Union, he refused to say “no”, which probably means “yes”. But this was not in his General Election manifesto. In fact, it said we would not rejoin the EU or the Customs Union, and we voted against it in the Brexit referendum.

Robber Reeve seems to have realised that if we allowed drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, the revenues raised would do wonders for the economy. This puts her at odds with Red Ed Millipede, who is a fully committed greenie. Is this a fracture in the ranks of the cabinet. I have always understood that Robber and Legohead were very close. In fact, it was impossible to get a fag paper between them in their policies. So, does this mean that Legohead is now also in favour of drilling in the North Sea, and Red Ed is being given enough rope to hang himself.

I have read that we have just placed a £24 million order with SAAB for Giraffe 1X radar. Now, I know that we already have some 10 of these radar sets for use by the Royal Artillery, but I am not sure whether the order is for us, as these radars are particularly useful at detecting low-flying drones, or is being purchased for Ukraine, as the money seems to be coming from the UK-administered NATO Security Assistance and Training Ukraine, NSATU, Trust Fund. Whichever it is, the good news is that they will be built in the UK, so we are keeping Brits employed.

I am not really sure how this works, but as I understand it, the US company Amentum and British company Cavendish Nuclear have set up a joint venture called Litmus Energy, which has won a contract to become the “Client’s Engineer” for Great British Energy – Nuclear on the Wylfa SMR project. The £300 million contract is to last 14 years. Cavendish Nuclear is a division of Babcock International and brings the engineering giant’s clout to the party. But the interesting thing is that Amentum also has a contract to become programme delivery partner for Rolls-Royce SMR small modular reactor projects, beginning with those in the UK and the Czech Republic. Now, the SMR chosen for Wylfa will be made by Rolls-Royce, so it looks like Amentum has been appointed to support both the buyer and the seller.

CRAM is the land-based version of the US Navy Phalanx CIWS, “Close In Weapon System”, the six-barrel Gatling gun used as the last resort weapon to protect Navy ships from rockets, shells, missiles, and drones. While I hear that at sea the system is reckoned to be about 80% effective, the land-based version is apparently far less effective, especially against drones. There appear to be several reasons for this. At sea, the chances are an attack will be from a missile or a shell, and these follow a predictable plunge onto the ship. They also tend to be made of metal, so when hit by an explosive shell it slows enough to blow up inside it. On land, the attack is more likely to be a swarm of drones. An explosive shell tends to go straight through their fibreglass body. In addition, they only carry a load of around 1,500 shells, enough for around 30 one-second bursts, before needing 30 minutes to be reloaded. Not much use against huge swarms of drones.

The latest news is that energy bills are expected to go up by £440 per annum in July when the current price cap expires. But it gets worse, as inflation is also expected to increase, and on top of that the Bank of England is expected to raise the bank rate, which will be reflected in mortgage rates going up. So, come the summer, this cat forecasts a load of financial pain for my lovely readers.

Saturday

Morning, my friends. It was very grey again this morning when I went out. I was listening to the radio while eating my Felix, and I heard the latest news about Zac, NHRN, Polanski and his warped view of what the voters want. He says a Green government would reduce the maximum speed limit to 50mph, even on motorways. They would make all people retake their driving test every five years and would reduce parking spaces to force traffic off the roads. That may be OK for people who live in big cities where there is adequate public transport, but what about those who live in villages with a bus only on “market day”, or the painter and decorator who cannot take his stepladder on the bus or train.

So, the King has chosen not to put out an Easter message this year. I understand from an announcement from his office that, unlike the Christmas message, it is not something that is done annually. Why not. We had one last year, and this year the world is in a far worse position, with a war in Iran and an oil crisis looming. The King found time to send a message to the Muslims for Eid on a day which coincided with Shrove Tuesday. Does the “Defender of the Faith” think more of Islam than Christianity.

This week, there were four local by-elections on Thursday. One of each was being defended by Liebore, Limp Dumps, an Independent, and the Tories. The Liebore seat went Green, just, with a 54 majority over Reform. The Independent went to Limp Dumps, Liebore got 0.8% of the vote, and the Limp Dumps and Tory seats both went to Reform. The Reform vote was at 33% in its worst constituencies, so it seems to be rather more than the 23% that YouGov constantly report.

I hear rumours that Red Ed Millipede is going to give the go-ahead for the Jackdaw natural gas field in the North Sea, 150 miles off Aberdeen. If he does allow drilling, it will be the first new North Sea gas field for a decade. I understand that this single field can supply 6% of the nation’s gas demand and can be doing so before winter. I heard some woman on the radio saying that its approval will do nothing to reduce the cost of oil. Of course it will not, you stupid person, it is natural gas, not oil.

In June, the EU is changing its naming convention for marmalade. From then, the preserve we know as marmalade, made from oranges, lemons, and limes, will have to be called citrus marmalade. This is because in some EU countries, notably Spain and Italy, they call preserves made with things like figs and plums marmalade, when others call them jam. So, in a typical EU compromise, from the first of June what we call marmalade will have to be called citrus marmalade, and plum jam will be called either plum jam or marmalade. Why not call it what it is, jam. Now, if we do as Legohead wants and join the single market, we will have to follow this mad rule and sell jam as marmalade and marmalade as citrus marmalade. It is all rather confusing. What would Paddington Bear think of this rubbish.

Back when we had a Tory government, the then Minister of Defence, Grunt Shatts, announced that we were advancing the operational date for our DragonFire laser anti-aircraft weapon from 2032 to 2027, and it would be tested in Ukraine. Well, I am pleased to see that it has been confirmed that the system is still on line to be installed on our Type 45 destroyers in 2027. But there has been no mention of the testing in Ukraine, unless I missed it somewhere. I do understand that an order has been placed for six systems for the destroyers at a unit cost of $160 million. Mind you, we do not have to spend a fortune on ammunition, as it costs about $10 a shot.

My final story of the week is partly about me. Carol Kirkwood, the famous BBC Breakfast Time weather forecaster, retired this week. On her last day, she had the privilege of being allowed to visit me in Number Ten. She really is as nice in person as she appears on TV. She talked to me nicely, and I let her stroke me. She told me she loves cats, and now she is retired she is thinking of getting a couple. She said she would love for me to be one of them, but I am afraid I do not intend to retire yet.

That is me finished for the week, and it is snooze time. No sun in London, and there is supposed to be a storm coming this afternoon, so once again it is not going to be the windowsill this afternoon. I enjoyed the Thatcher Room, as all the lefties never go there. Chat to you all again next week.
 

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