Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Thirty-Three

Monday

Good morning, my happy readers, it looks like the warm weather is back. It was very nice this weekend. If the truth be told, it was a bit warm for your cat reporter. There was so much noise coming out of the office overnight that it woke me up, and I had to go and investigate. It was the staff watching England playing football in Mexico, so I joined the party. I must say I enjoyed the cocktail sausages and cold chicken more than the footie, but we did win.

As I trudged back to my cat bed shortly after 4 am, I could hear Legohead singing “Football’s coming home” in that nasal voice of his, followed by a crash as I think a shoe hit the wall. Then I heard him saying, “You nearly got me there, Vic.” If he is wearing an England shirt this morning, I think I might be sick.

I hear there might be problems in the production of this week’s diary. Apparently, my scribe has buggered up the iPad by spilling orange juice over it. As it is his favoured writing tool for my tales, he is going to have to fix it, replace it, or produce it on his MacBook. I think fixing it is probably beyond him, so it looks like he will be struggling on his MacBook until he has saved up enough pennies for a new iPad.

Over the weekend, the Sunday Times broke a story claiming that Nigel Farage had his security paid for by “Posh” George Cottrell, another man who made his money in cryptocurrency. But the tale even pointed out that this was before Farage was an MP and ended before he was elected. In addition, the article said Farage had stayed overnight in an apartment that Cottrell owned. Don’t I remember Legohead staying in Lord Ali’s luxury penthouse? Today, some of the papers are pointing out that this seems to be a hatchet job on Farage from a paper that advised its readers to vote Liebore at the last general election and a reporter who is on record for saying that he hated Farage. This does seem to be a storm in a teacup.

Over in the US, a story of political influence in the World Cup is emerging. In the last round of fixtures, a US player got a red card for a foul, and this was supported by the VAR official. Many of the people who have seen the video say the Yank was a bit unlucky to be sent off, as the incident was probably a bit short of a straight red card. But the competition rules say that once a red card has been supported by VAR, there is no appeal and the recipient is automatically banned for one match. However, the Donald has phoned the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, to ask for the Yank to be allowed to play in the USA’s next match. Infantino has now cleared Folarin Balogun’s red card ban, allowing him to play in tonight’s match. So, the USA have, in effect, been allowed an appeal, something the rules say is not possible. Will Legohead be phoning Infantino to ask for the Englishman who was sent off this morning to have his red card cleared?

Another story of two-tier policing, this time from Birmingham. At the weekend, police were called to a “disturbance”, a street fight where several black men could be seen on video fighting a single white man. The police steamed in aggressively and threw the white man against some shop shutters before arresting him and allowing the black men to wander off. The white man was later charged with assaulting a police officer, and the police asked that the video of the incident that was circulating on the internet should not be shared, as it would be shown as evidence in court. Some time later, the police apparently looked at the video and realised it showed the white man being attacked by black men, and have asked for witnesses. Now they are saying they want to interview the black men in the video. How can people identify the black men if they are not allowed to see the video? You couldn’t make it up.

I had a chuckle this morning when I heard Legohead had said that it was a shame that he was not being allowed enough time to complete his plan for government. I didn’t know he had a plan. He seems to have stumbled from one crisis to another. The only thing I think he had a plan for was to throw out the Rwanda plan, and it looks like he should have stuck with that, as he now needs somewhere to send people to. Just recently, his last head of staff said the government never had a plan for government. Oh, I also hear that a previous head of staff, Sue Gray, asked about the plan for the first 100 days of government and was astounded to learn that there wasn’t one.

Tuesday

Hi folks, gosh it’s getting warm here in London, and it looks like we are in for at least another week of it in the south. Just remember us poor old moggies who wear a permanent fur coat. It’s all good in winter, but it is not so good in summer. Legohead is off to a NATO meeting in Turkey today, where I hear the weather is not as warm as in London. But I hear Legohead may well be in for a tongue-lashing from the Donald over his defence investment plan.

I was delighted to see that the USA got dumped out of the World Cup last night, especially after the Donald’s interference. The American “soccer” team could have done the right thing and just not played Balogun, but that’s not the American way. Instead, they started the match with him at centre-forward, and apparently the US team were very poor. But seeing the Donald telling the press he knew all about sport, describing Balogun dragging his studs down the back of someone’s leg as a “coming together”, the referee being dodgy, how he had never heard of a red card, and how it was unfair to ban a player from an upcoming match, was laughable.

I had to laugh at the latest Ginger Whinger story. It seems he arrived in London yesterday for two reasons, the result of his latest court case, where he is suing the Daily and Sunday Mail, and because it is one year before the Invictus Games in Birmingham. The whole visit has been a mess, with the Ginger Whinger, his family and entourage being offered accommodation in a Royal Residence but having to confirm by a specific date. Then it was announced that Me Gain and the kids were worried about security in London, so weren’t coming. Then, past the deadline, the Ginger Whinger’s “people” announced that he would be staying at Buckingham Palace. Only an hour later, the Palace announced he wasn’t staying there because the acceptance was too late. So, I wonder where he is staying.

Another big court case announcement today, but this time in France. Marine Le Pen will find out if her appeal against an embezzlement conviction is to be upheld, quashed or amended. The conviction was widely seen as political because she was miles in front in the opinion polls for the next French presidential election. If the conviction is quashed or amended, it is looking like the Left won’t be able to stop Le Pen winning next year. However, if the conviction is upheld and she can’t run, then the President is likely to be Le Pen’s young lieutenant, Jordan Bardella.

The news leaked out this morning that the number of people claiming benefits for suffering from ADHD has increased by 40% in the two years since Liebore came to power. It also emerged that there are now over 100,000 people claiming benefits for ADHD, and one in four of them is getting the top rate of £194 per week. But this is not all they are receiving. The money for ADHD is in addition to other benefits. I’m sure there are plenty of people with ADHD who genuinely can’t work, but I’m certain that people have been jumping on the benefits bandwagon since Liebore came to power.

Nigel Farage arrived back in the UK this morning after being in the USA for their 250th anniversary. At the airport, he was pressured by a Sky News reporter over the £5 million he received before he became an MP. Farage was clearly not happy with the reporter, telling him that his employer had overstepped the mark by revealing the address of one of his properties and doorstepping his daughter, who lives there. Sky later denied this, but Farage has come back saying a reporter, who identified themselves as being from Sky, had knocked on his daughter’s door over the weekend. Someone is telling porky pies.

The big news this afternoon is that Nigel Farage has decided to take the battle to the government and the left-wing press by resigning as the MP for Clacton and standing again for Reform in the by-election. I understand Farage had an 8,000 majority at the General Election. He polled 21,225 votes and the Conservatives were second with 12,820 votes. I guess this is to let the government know that the people are with Farage and not the government. However, Farage is taking a risk. If he doesn’t get a bigger percentage of the vote, he got 46.2% last time, the press will call it a failure.

Wednesday

Good morning all, it’s still hot in London and this cat is suffering. I’m continually trying to find somewhere cool to lie down. Thank goodness for my cat water fountain. I must say I do like a drink of cold running water. Yesterday, Legohead went off to the NATO meeting in Turkey and took an England football shirt with him. I was nearly sick when I saw him wearing it.

The news that got pushed out of yesterday’s diary was that the Ginger Whinger and his gang of six, which includes Sir Elton John, Baroness Lawrence and Liz Hurley, lost their claims of unlawful information gathering against Associated Newspapers Limited. Before the case, the judge had said that because the allegations were so serious, the gang had to prove what they were claiming with convincing evidence. The judge said the suspicions of the gang were not proof, and every claim against the publisher was dismissed. Of course, the Gang of Seven can apply for permission to appeal the High Court ruling at the Court of Appeal in an attempt to overturn it. But they cannot do this until after the next hearing on July 29 and 30, when costs are due to be determined, and it is expected to cost Harry’s mob £50 million.

The result of Marine Le Pen’s appeal over the embezzlement conviction is a bit of a French fudge. The conviction was upheld, but the conditions attached were changed. The previous conditions banned Le Pen from standing in the presidential election, but as I understand the new conditions, she must wear an ankle bracelet but is no longer banned from running. The question is, will she want to run with such a requirement? If it were me, I would run and point the bracelet out to the audience at every possible opportunity.

The TV deal I told you about last week, the takeover of ITV’s broadcasting assets by US-owned Sky TV, has finally been agreed. The public will probably be quite happy with the combination, as the companies have said there will be no loss of ITV programmes disappearing behind a paywall. In fact, they say the opposite is true. They will make some of Sky’s sports portfolio available “free to air”. But all this sort of merger is aimed at making money. How, I hear you ask? Let’s look at an example. Both companies have advertising sales departments, and a combined organisation will only need one, hence saving money. One big hurdle remains. The takeover will have to be cleared by the regulator.

I read that a cargo version of the old Boeing 737-400 has crashed into the sea on a flight to Karachi. The plane, operated by K2 Airways, was flying from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, reported navigation problems to air traffic controllers and is thought to have come down about 278 km west of the city. According to reports, something rather odd occurred, with the plane suddenly falling 5,000 feet in a minute before climbing 6,000 feet in 30 seconds. The plane then dived into the sea from 35,500 feet in about 90 seconds, an abnormal rate of descent. I will be interested to find out what happened here.

On some LNER trains they have installed two AI safety systems. One is called the Pantograph Damage Assessment System (PANDAS) and the second is called Automated Intelligent Video Review (AIVR). The first constantly assesses video of the pantograph picking up power from the overhead line, using AI to look for damage. The AIVR system works in a similar way but looks for faults on the track. On 3rd July, the AIVR system automatically reported a track fault on the East Coast Main Line near Retford. Oddly, this was the only report from an AIVR-equipped train at that spot. So, the engineers had a look at the video using Mark 1 eyeballs and discovered that the AI had interpreted a snake slithering across the track as a fault. Back to training for the AI system.

At the NATO meeting yesterday, it was announced that the SAAB GlobalEye had been selected as the replacement for its ageing E-3 AWACS planes, with a requirement for 10 new aircraft. Good news for SAAB, who seem to be on a winning streak. Currently there are not a lot of the planes in service, just five operated by the UAE. But they have orders from France (2 + 2 options) and Sweden (2 + 1). Also, orders announced but not yet signed include Canada (6), Denmark and Finland (4), Egypt and Germany. Now SAAB can only produce three planes a year, but with demand increasing, this is bound to increase. I nearly forgot, this is also good news for the UK, as each GlobalEye uses two Rolls-Royce BR710 A2-20 turbofan engines.

Thursday

It’s a good morning to all my readers from a baking hot Downing Street, still with a missing Legohead. The media is still full of the Farage resignation and by-election. I hear the enquiry into his “gift” of £5 million is likely to take over a year to come to a decision. In which case, I don’t blame him, as once an enquiry has started you are not allowed to comment on the case. So, we are looking at 12 months of allegations he is not allowed to defend in public. Now that is a kangaroo court.

It looks like the continuity party is refusing to play the game and stand against Nigel Farage in Clacton-on-Sea. They obviously all realise they have no chance of winning, so they have not been willing to stand and lose their money there. I wonder if Farage could change his mind and not stand down.

Virgin Media is in trouble with the regulator, OFCOM, which has fined them £28 million for failing to let people cancel their contracts with the company. It seems that when someone phoned them up to cancel, Virgin had several tricks to stop the customer from leaving. The favourite methods seem to have been fairly basic, normally just cutting off the call, putting the caller on hold forever or just ignoring the cancellation and carrying on billing the customer. This is the biggest fine ever issued by OFCOM. Virgin says that it is now part of the automatic switching system, so it can’t happen now. We will see.

It seems that Ukraine has been deploying a new weapon in its war with Russia, what appears to be a fence-post-shaped bomb dropped from a drone. The new weapon has a spiked end, very similar to the type of spike that people drive into the ground when building a garden fence. The idea is that when dropped from height, the bomb penetrates the ground before exploding. This is a much simpler version of the Second World War earthquake bombs. The estimates I read say that such a bomb, dropped from a height of 30 feet, will penetrate five feet into the ground before exploding. Of course, a commercially available fence spike is not made from thick enough metal or of robust enough construction for use as a penetrating bomb, and the actual bomb is of much tougher construction. But for clearing out Russian frontline bunkers, the Ukrainian military seem to have come up with another unconventional idea.

Here’s a strange little story for those of you who are tempted to buy an imported Chinese electric car. The British importer of Skywell electric cars, Innovation Automotive, has stopped trading, so the dealers and owners now have major problems. The company has not gone bust, it has just stopped trading and has sold off all its stock to a dealer, V12 Sports and Classic. If you want to take a chance on a new Skywell BE11 SUV, I hear that they are on sale for £13,995 instead of the listed £40,000, making it the cheapest car available in the UK, while stocks last.

A bit of good news from Scotland on the troubled ferry MV Glen Sannox. I hear that the ferry is to be temporarily employed on the route between Ullapool and Stornoway for those heading for the HebCelt festival between 15 and 18 July. The ferry will supplement the normal ferry on this route, MV Loch Seaforth, and provide an extra 10,000 passenger journeys during the music festival, with both ferries making two round trips a day. The Glen Sannox is still awaiting new propellers following the current ones being found to be the source of the vibrations causing cracks in the ship’s hull.

The Tottenham Turnip made an announcement in Parliament this lunchtime saying that the King had agreed to a government request to pardon Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK, in 1955 when she was convicted of murdering her abusive lover. Of course, it is a bit late now as she has been dead for 70 years. But to make things even more odd, the death sentence is being replaced with a life sentence, even though Ellis was hanged 70 years ago.

Friday

Hi everyone, and it’s still baking hot in London. It’s getting to be too hot for your favourite feline. I like it warm, but not this warm. I was sad to hear that Ann Widdecombe has died overnight. I haven’t seen her for a bit, but I rather liked her when she was in government and used to visit No. 10 on a regular basis. She always said hello, and she was one of the few people I let stroke me. Rest in peace, Ann.

Every year Airbus and Boeing predict the number of aircraft they are going to build that year. The Airbus prediction for this year is 870 aircraft. In June alone, the company delivered 89 aircraft, taking deliveries in the first half of the year to 351, up 15% on the same period last year. I hear that internally Airbus are delighted with the numbers, particularly as there are always more deliveries in the second half of the year. Apparently, Airbus has upped its internal delivery target to 900 for the year.

Also in the Airbus paperwork for June is an order for 40 new Airbus A320neo family aircraft. The purchaser is shown as “undisclosed”, but the order is for 16 A320 and 24 A321 aircraft. As I have said several times, any order for Airbus is good news for the UK, as the A320 family’s wings are made in North Wales. Airbus has around 9,300 aircraft on order, which is over 10 years’ production at the current rate.

I have been reading about Project Breakstop, a British project to build a cheap, ground-launched, long-range cruise missile for use by our military and for export (Ukraine?). Over 400 companies showed an interest in the project and three were selected to build and demonstrate a prototype in Phase One. The three are MBDA, the well-known missile maker, MGI Engineering, which is building Tigershark, a jet-powered cruise missile, and Roton Aerospace, which is offering SkyLance, a rocket-booster-launched, propeller-driven missile. All three were successfully fired earlier this year and, surprisingly, all three were given £15 million Phase Two contracts to each develop 15 prototypes with launchers. There were a few rules, a minimum 500-mile range, a minimum 225 kg warhead, a cruise speed of at least 600 kph, a maximum cost of £400,000 each and a minimum production rate of 30 a month. But there is one other unspoken rule. It must contain no American-made parts or software. The UK is fed up with having to have US permission to use its weapons and armaments just because they have a tiny American component or software. The French have also learnt this lesson. They recently offered a version of the SCALP cruise missile to Egypt with the American GPS stripped out.

A bit back I told you about Eurostar ordering 50 Alstom Celestial double-deck trains to replace its existing old trains. Now I learn that Eurostar has taken the recent hot weather into account and decided it needs to beef up the trains so that they can operate in temperatures of up to 55°C. The €2 billion order placed late last year stipulated that the trains should be able to operate and keep passengers cool in external temperatures of up to 45°C. However, a village near the track in northern France hit a temperature of 44.3°C earlier this year, a bit too close for comfort. Consequently, Eurostar wants a version of the train designed to run in the Sahara. Eurostar has admitted that it is going to cost them a bit more but has not said how much.

On his way home from the NATO meeting in Ankara, the Donald swapped planes at RAF Mildenhall. The President was flown in on one of the old Air Force Ones. I hear that reporters on board the flight from Turkey to England were asked to keep the blinds shut during the flight. Apparently, Trump said that the request was probably because of the “sleaze-bags over here”, in an apparent reference to Iran. At Mildenhall he swapped onto the newer, shiny Air Force One given to the USA by the Qatari government. The Donald said the plane was at Mildenhall so that the US forces based there could see it.

An interesting story about a football goalkeeper has just emerged. The ex-Leeds keeper Illan Meslier, whose contract expired, along with hundreds of others, on the first day of July, has signed on to be Arsenal’s number three. Apparently, he could have become the number one keeper at Birmingham but chose to sign for Arsenal instead. Apparently, the Arsenal offer to become number three was better than the Birmingham offer to be their number one.

Saturday

Morning my friends, and it’s yet another hot one. A nice morning in No. 10 with Legohead at Chequers planning his future as a backbencher. I see that Mascara Man was one MP short of being elected leader of the Liebore Party when voting paused for the weekend. When voting reopens on Monday, I bet there is a queue of Liebore MPs wanting to claim it was their vote that made him leader and subsequently PM.

I see the National Grid has been struggling in this hot weather. The problem has been the lack of wind, so all our wonderful wind turbines have only been managing to put out a maximum of around three gigawatts all week. OK, the solar panels have been churning out about 14 or 15 gigawatts, but this is only during the daylight hours. So, how have we been managing a daytime demand of around 36 gigawatts? The answer is we have fired up the gas turbines, lent on the biomass burners like Drax and made up the missing eight or nine GW by importing from the continent. But, of course, Red Ed Millipede won’t admit the Grid has been in trouble this week, and it’s only getting worse.

Only 14 council by-elections this week and, just like last week, there were a mass of holds, mostly by the Limp Dumps. Not a good week for Liebore. They won a seat from the Greens, lost one to them and held one. Reform had a better time, gaining two seats, holding one and losing none. Not such a busy week next week, there are only five seats up for grabs.

I see that Arsenal Ladies have had an amazing couple of weeks, signing some of the best international ladies’ players available. At the end of last season, I was a little surprised to see some of the club’s favourite stars being allowed to leave. But the four replacements announced in the past fortnight have been a considerable upgrade. Yesterday they signed one of the world’s best left-backs, the Spanish international Ona Batlle, to replace the released Katie McCabe. Some upgrade.

On Thursday, the world’s largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s Legend of the Seas, sailed on its maiden voyage from Civitavecchia, Italy. The ship is an Icon-class ship. Royal Caribbean likes to name its classes of ship after the first one of the type. Consequently, this class is named after Icon of the Seas. So, you might wonder why this new ship is the largest when the class is basically the same. For some odd reason, Legend is one foot longer than her sister ships. The ship will be visiting Marseille, Palma de Mallorca and La Spezia before returning to Civitavecchia in a week’s time. The ship carries 7,600 passengers and 2,350 crew, that’s just short of 10,000 people on board.

Terrible news about Ann Widdecombe. The police are treating her death, at the age of 78, as murder. Apparently she was found dead by her carer, with a serious head injury, and was covered in blood. The police say they are looking for a white male and are asking for anyone with relevant video from a doorbell camera or a car to hand it over. Widdecombe lived on her own, apart from her cat, Aloysius, in a bungalow in a village on Dartmoor. I do hope this is sorted out very quickly.

If you are elected as a county or borough councillor, you must attend at least one meeting of the council, or any subcommittee you are appointed to, within six months, or your appointment will lapse and a new election will be held. This has just happened to Councillor Nadia Farhat, who has not attended a Nottingham City Council meeting since a full council meeting in January. The council issued a warning to the ex-Liebore, then Independent councillor, that she needed to attend a full council meeting or a meeting of either of the subcommittees she was on before Wednesday 8th July. However, Farhat was now in a Catch-22 position. Neither of the subcommittees she was on had met in over six months and no meetings were planned. In addition, the next full council meeting was not until Monday 13th, making compliance impossible.

That’s me finished for another week, and it’s still very warm here in the street. I am off for my nap on my favourite windowsill, if it’s not too hot. Another week when I have enjoyed digging up the strange and wonderful tales. Chat to you all again next week.

 

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