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

Monday

Good Morning, my happy readers. It was dull and grey when I headed out for my morning poo behind the gardener’s shed. On my return, my duty feeder was pottering around, my grub was out, there was fresh water bubbling in my lovely cat fountain, and she was washing my spare bowls. While waiting for the kettle to boil, she is one who always makes a cup of tea. The radio was on, and the weather forecast was on, and the man was saying it was going to be dry, then overnight and tomorrow very wet. Anyway, I glanced out of the window, and it was raining. The Met Office will soon want money for a new super-duper computer to make more accurate forecasts.

I was watching the small boat arrivals at Dover on the internet in the office on Saturday. The Government has been boasting that there have been no small boat crossings for the last six days. Well, they spoke too soon, as there were over 600 people landed at the weekend. And the protesters were out in force, all dressed in all black. The Port of Dover was closed down for several hours, but the protest was completely peaceful. Oh, I understand another two boats arrived in the early hours of this morning. I have no news of how many were on board and if they are counted as arriving on Sunday or Monday.

So, on Sunday evening, a mega dinghy load of 140 illegals was brought into Portsmouth. Why Portsmouth? Well, it seems this dinghy set out from Cherbourg and was intercepted by the Coastguard and lifeboats from the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth. Apparently, it was easier to land them at Portsmouth than to have the boats off station for five or so hours while taking everyone to Dover. The strange thing here is that the authorities were ready for them, with a huge reception tent waiting, along with dry clothes, food, drink and coaches to take them to the reception point near Dover. The police were even prepared for the protesters and were armed with a dispersal order. How long had the authorities known this lot were coming?

Big news from Germany over the local elections in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the Alternative for Germany (AfD) won with 43.8% of the vote. The national Government party were second with 17.2%. This gives the AfD 39 of the 83 seats in the Saxony-Anhalt government, three short of an overall majority. I hear that none of the other parties say they will work with the AfD. However, the AfD say the answer is another election so they can gain a full majority.

The Sunday Times had an interesting story yesterday, where a Home Office whistleblower claimed that just 1% of claimants were genuine asylum seekers. That is a tiny proportion of the 82,000 who have arrived on small boats under Liebore. The whistleblower says that he continually hears the same stories, as if they are working from a script. For example, he talks about how 23 people claimed they couldn’t be returned to Kurdistan because they had been the lovers of the President’s daughter. If that was true, she must be a slut. Then there are the 100+ who claimed they were gay, and all were in a relationship with the same man, who provided them with a letter to prove the case.

An announcement from Jaguar Land Rover this morning. They are going to make 4,000 redundant from their global workforce over the next two years in an effort to save £1.7 billion. JLR are believed to employ around 34,000 in the U.K. I hear that the aim is to make the redundancies mainly among management, research and development, leaving the shop floor mostly untouched. I wonder if whoever it was that stopped Jaguar production and decided to go for being a top-of-the-range electric vehicle maker will be staying or going.

I have been reading about the monetary problems being encountered by my scribe’s local council. It seems that Worthing Borough Council has somehow got itself into around £246 million of debt. Now, this is a council that, up until 2022, had been in the black and had run a £5 million emergency fund just in case something cropped up, like a natural disaster, a flood or a storm. But in 2022, the people of Worthing, fed up with the national Tory Government, fell for the Liebore call for change and voted in a Liebore Council. Since then, they have frittered away a stable financial position with a viable reserve on silly schemes. For example, they have just ripped up a cul-de-sac between the main shopping street and the seafront to turn it into a “living park”, costing £3.1 million, including £50,000 to move a pedestrian crossing 50 yards. They are installing a local heating scheme using Air Source Heat Pumps, which is planned to have cost £500 million by the time it is finished in 2050. And an integrated care centre which is currently two years late and £15 million over budget. No wonder a load of Reform councillors were elected in May.

Tuesday

Hi folks, my is it grey and wet in London this morning. It’s so nasty out there that I was tempted to use the litter tray. But it just wasn’t that bad. Another TikTok video from Mascara Man, boasting about how he has been getting on and doing small things all summer while the Media was occupied with other things. This is true, but rather disingenuous, as while the Media has been reporting on important things like the wars in Iran and Ukraine, the small boat invasion, the economy, energy prices and the Argentinian threats to the Falklands, MM has been knocking £45 off this winter’s electricity bill and reducing bus fares back to the £2 level they were before Legohead put them up.

An amazing development in the central Government’s local Government reorganisation. Four big reorganisations have been called off, including Essex and Hampshire, and at least 14 others have been paused for re-evaluation. This is a huge climbdown by the Government over its devolution plans. I understand that eight regions have already launched legal action against the reorganisation in their areas, and others, including Reform-led Kent, were on the verge of joining them. I don’t know if the legal action has played any part in the Government’s actions.

I hear that the south of England’s vineyards have had a bumper summer due to the warm weather. It appears that the grapes have already been harvested, around about a month early, and the crop has been very heavy. It now remains to be seen if a bumper crop can be turned into a vintage wine year. Just a small point, in Roman times vineyards were as far north as York, and this was centuries before climate change had been dreamed up.

I am a bit worried about 95-year-old Bernie Ecclestone. Apparently, he was arrested over the weekend when he arrived at Lisbon Airport on his private jet with a shotgun for which he had no paperwork. He claimed to be on his way to a clay pigeon shoot. Strangely, the man had been arrested a few years ago in Brazil for having a shotgun in his luggage on his private plane. I’m not sure if he is getting senile or just has so much money that he doesn’t care. When he was running Formula One, he was already a multimillionaire, but he sold F1 for $6 billion, although he wasn’t the sole owner. At one point, he was believed to have been worth $4.6 billion, but after an expensive divorce and a battle with the taxman, he is now thought to be worth just $2.6 billion.

Yesterday, Airbus announced a firm order for another 8 x A350F freighters, taking firm orders for the type to 115. The customer for these eight planes is currently not being disclosed for commercial reasons. At the same time, Airbus revealed the first A350F in a special parcel livery that it will be in while undergoing test flights. It will be joined shortly by a second test aircraft. The first delivery is currently scheduled for late next year. The new Boeing freighter, the 777-8F, is running about two years behind the A350F, but the actual status of the programme is dependent on the 777X being fully certified and could slip.

The US Navy has been conducting endurance testing of Rolls-Royce Marine engines, and both the MTU Series 2000 and Series 4000 have been certified for use in autonomous drone boats. These marine engines are available in different versions, providing up to 4,300 kW of propulsion power and 2,000 kWe of electricity. They come in V8, V12, V16 and V20 configurations. The test has included 720 hours of running unattended, as well as thousands of hours of component testing and in-service running. The idea was to simulate a possible 30-day unmanned ship mission. I suspect you could get a ship anywhere in the world in 30 days.

In a road just around the corner from where my scribe lives, double yellow lines have just appeared on a very short stretch of road. I have seen photos, and the lines look very amateur, as if they were spray-painted on the road. The road authority, West Sussex County Council, says the lines are not official, and they are investigating. My guess is that a local resident has got fed up with someone parking in a place that makes access to their drive difficult. I wonder what the official offence is and what the penalty is for painting your own road markings.

Wednesday

Good morning, all. Lovely and sunny this morning, but not so warm. I watched Prince George walking between his parents, going to the first day of proper school at Eton. I must say how confident and smart he looked, a real credit to his parents. I think the monarchy will be safe in his mother’s and father’s, and then his, hands.

A major problem yesterday, with the National Air Traffic Control System suffering a major breakdown. Apparently, the system first broke down around lunchtime and, although planes continued to land for a while, take-offs stopped at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham airports. By mid-afternoon, it was said that technicians had identified the problem and were fixing it, but with no planes taking off, the airports became clogged and long-distance flights were diverted all over Europe. Although the system was restored late yesterday, today the airlines have loads of planes out of position and tens of thousands of passengers they have to fly. It is said the disruption will last into the weekend.

Yesterday afternoon, Ed Millipede, the Foreign Secretary, announced to Parliament that the Government was banning all imports from what he called the occupied Israeli West Bank. I don’t know how he is going to implement a ban on goods coming from the illegally occupied West Bank. Goods simply have “Product of Israel” on them and, strangely, although we don’t import a lot from Israel, most of it is important to our economy. For example, one in seven of our medicines comes from Israel, and they are also our second-biggest overseas defence supplier. The Israelis were not slow in responding and quickly closed our Consulate in Jerusalem and have banned a number of leading left-wing politicians, including Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana, Naz Shah, John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, Diane Abbott, Hannah Spencer, Carla Denyer and Sian Berry. I doubt that any of that lot have any intention of travelling to Israel in the near future.

I must say I enjoyed reading the letter from the Lord Chamberlain saying that the status of Ginge and Whinge had not changed one iota now that they were back living in the U.K. The letter said that they were not back as working members of “The Firm” and were not entitled to use the HRH title or to attend events as royals. The Montecito two have issued their own statement complaining that they had no advance warning of the letter. However, I understand that they were told about an hour before the announcement. I’m not sure if the pair expected to resume a royal life on their return, but the Chamberlain’s letter says otherwise.

It is looking like the leader of Camden Council, Sagal Abdi-Wali, will be selected to run as the Liebore candidate for the vacant Holborn and St Pancras seat. The writ for the by-election was moved in Parliament yesterday, and it looks like the election will be held on 8th October, although there is still a possibility that it could be a week later. Abdi-Wali arrived in the country as a child refugee, fleeing Somalia. This could be a clever move by Liebore, standing a Muslim against the Green Party, who will almost certainly be looking for the Muslim vote.

Last week was the wettest week in England since early February. I know we have had a lot of rain because the grass in the rear garden here at No 10 has stopped looking like straw and has turned back to green. It has even been growing, and the gardeners have even had the mower out. However, the Water Companies have been very quick to say it is not enough and drought conditions still exist in much of England and Wales. In many places, they are reminding us that there are still hosepipe bans. Well, with all the rain in London today, I doubt our gardener has been considering using such a thing.

This week’s landing of 140 illegal immigrants at the tiny Eastney Marina in Hampshire sounds to have been a bit of a last-minute panic to find somewhere for the two RNLI lifeboats to bring the immigrants ashore. Southampton Port put out quite a long statement explaining that they had been asked for permission for the two lifeboats to dock there, but declined, saying they simply did not have the facilities. I hear that Portsmouth Harbour was also approached and refused on the same grounds, and even threatened legal action if there was an attempt to land there. It seems the jetty at Eastney was a last-minute alternative and rather a desperate one, as there is only one easily blockable road to the site.

Thursday

It’s a good morning to you, my friends. Bright and sunny this morning, but it was so chilly overnight that the central heating in the flat came on and woke me up. Mascara Man seems to have put his foot in it at PMQs yesterday when he said that national security was less important than social security. If we don’t spend money on defence, then we won’t be able to spend money on social security.

The news has just been released of another problem with the Scottishland ferry Glen Sannox. This happened last June, but we are only just learning about it. The ship was carrying 82 passengers from the Isle of Arran to the mainland when suddenly a gas valve failed and released around 700 kg of highly flammable methane gas. Some of the gas got sucked into the ship’s ventilation air intake, setting off gas alarms. Apparently, the problem first occurred on the ship’s outward journey from Troon to Brodick on Arran. The ship was sailing on the 80-minute trip using LNG when an alarm went off and the port engine tripped on low gas pressure. The ship switched to diesel and carried on, but it was on the return trip that the incident happened. Apparently, an investigation has pointed to a badly worn valve that had been damaged by vibration occurring when the ship goes astern, a known problem caused by the propellers that are to be replaced by a new design when they have been manufactured.

I read that EasyJet is currently in the London High Court over six Airbus A320 aircraft it was leasing from an Irish company, but they apparently fell foul of economic sanctions on Russia. The leasing company was a subsidiary of a Russian company, making the planes Russian-owned. EasyJet told the company that they could not legally fly, maintain or repair the planes and were consequently returning them to the Irish/Russian owners. Three of the planes were in Cyprus and the other three in Madrid. The Irish leasing company has subsequently declared bankruptcy, and the company liquidator is suing EasyJet for $72 million, claiming EasyJet did not have the right to walk away and owed for the loss incurred on selling the planes. I will be interested to see what the result of the case is.

The tiny village of Piddington has long been unhappy about the military camp next to it being proposed to house some 1,250 immigrant men, when there are only 350 residents in the village. The village has no shop, post office or pub and is worried for the safety of its children and women. They have been campaigning for the plan to be reversed and had garnered a lot of support. But the news has broken that the authorities have had a change of heart. Instead of 1,250 men, the camp is now planned to hold 3,500 men, 10 times the village’s population. It sounds to me as if the ‘Powers That Be’ have decided to punish the villagers for complaining.

A couple of reports from the Ukraine war this morning that I can’t confirm. Firstly, the Western press is saying that Russian military casualties passed 1,500,000 dead and wounded yesterday. That is way more than in any Russian conflict since World War 2 and around 10 times the total Russian losses from 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan. Then there is the story of the Lyman Salient. For several months, there have been rumours of the Russian army struggling in an area north-east of Lyman. Back in 2025, the Russians created a bulge in the front line and flooded soldiers into it. But since May, I have been hearing stories, first that the advance had been halted, then that the Russians were losing ground, and finally, today, Russian milbloggers are saying the Russians are in full retreat and have given up some 200 km2 and now have their backs to the Zherebets River, and Ukraine has already crossed the river. This news comes not from Ukrainian sources, who have been very reluctant to talk about these events, but from the Russian side.

I have a cat story for you today. Every year, Battersea Cats and Dogs Home has a vote for what it calls the Purr Minister, the top cat in the Houses of Parliament and Westminster. This year’s winner was 14-year-old black moggy Bella, whose servant is former Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay. She won 877 public votes, ahead of the Bishop of Newcastle’s cat, Ebba, with 741 votes. You might wonder why I didn’t win, but as a previous winner, I wasn’t allowed to stand again.

It has been announced that an order for seven electric ferries, desperately needed by the Scottishland state-owned shipbuilder Ferguson Marine, has gone to Poland. Remontowa Shipbuilding SA, based in Gdańsk, has won the £175 million order, which is due to start being delivered in 2027 and completed by 2029. Six of the double-ended ferries are to carry 150 passengers and 26 cars, while the seventh is for 250 passengers but only 16 cars. The ferries are battery-powered and are designed for recharging overnight.

Friday

Hi everyone. Well, a pleasant morning, not wonderful but decent. Hampshire Police has decided to announce that if there are further anti-migrant protests and people hide their faces, they will be arrested. So, after two protests where the right were masked, only a few in Portsmouth, the police are to arrest people. But no one is arrested at the weekly masked pro-Palestinian marches in London that have gone on for years. Definitely two-tier policing.

I have been learning about United Airlines’ first Boeing 787-9 fitted with a new premium-heavy cabin layout. From its first paying flight for United, it has had problems. It flew from San Francisco to Singapore but had to return empty because of problems. It was then taken out of service for some time while United’s engineers tried to fix it. Boeing then had it ferried to their Moses Lake maintenance depot and, two weeks later, it was returned to San Francisco as fixed. It was then used on a flight to London Heathrow, which it made, but the gremlins returned and once again it was returned to San Francisco empty. It seems that the problem is related to the Traffic Collision Avoidance System. This automatic system spots nearby planes and offers solutions to avoid them. It seems this system is working on later-delivered planes, so it seems this one has a bug somewhere.

The Government announced that local mayors will be allowed to introduce a local tax on overnight accommodation for tourists. But the stupid thing is that there is no limit on what can be charged, although the idea is that a mayor can set a percentage of the accommodation cost the tourist is charged. I suppose this is easy to do with a big hotel’s computer booking system. But it is not so easy for a small seaside B&B, which will have to separate the cost of the accommodation and the breakfast and collect a percentage of the accommodation, then presumably pay it into a council account. Wouldn’t it be easier to pay a fixed sum of a few pounds a night? This is what happens in many European towns and cities, and some demand the tax in cash on check-in.

For over 100 years, the City of London has not allowed companies to display their name on buildings at a high level. Although not actually a bylaw, planning permission was denied for signs above forty feet over street level. I hear that many of the businesses in the Square Mile would love to have their name on the top of or down the side of their buildings and have been lobbying the City for a change. The word reaches me that the City is likely to agree. So, I suggest you keep your eye open for HSBC on the roof of their new headquarters building next to St Paul’s Cathedral.

At 1:30 am on Tuesday morning, the first freight train loaded with 1,000 tonnes of materials from a quarry in Buxton, Derbyshire, arrived at the Sizewell C Nuclear Power Station site. The single train load equates to 50 lorry loads. The Sizewell builders say that when the civil work hits its peak, four trains a day will be arriving on site, and between now and Christmas, 100,000 tonnes are due to be delivered. All trains are due to operate overnight, but the Stop Sizewell group are not happy, even though the use of trains will cut thousands of lorry movements.

The minority Labour Group on West Sussex Council are pushing for the County Council to build a £6.3 million expansion to a primary school in Worthing. The idea is to add 34 SEND places to the school. It does seem rather a lot of money for so few places. I would have thought that much money would build a whole new school.

I read that one of the killers of PC Harper, who was dragged behind a car while trying to steal a quad bike, was a convicted sex offender. In the records at Frankland Jail, Durham, Albert Bowers is recorded as a “Sex Offender”, “Violent” and “Racist”, but was still considered fit for early release by the Government. I really don’t know what to say about this. It is too wrong for words.

Saturday

Morning, my friends. A lovely sunny morning with a bit of high cloud. I was astounded to hear late last night that Reform have been given the largest ever U.K. political donation, £36 million, in a lump sum. The cryptocurrency billionaire Bob Delo had previously given Reform £4 million twice, timing the donation to arrive before the Liebore Government bans the making of political donations from “foreign-based donors” of over £100,000. Delo is actually British and was born in Sheffield, but had been living in Hong Kong, so fell foul of the proposed law, specifically introduced to stop people like him giving Reform money. At the time he gave the £4 million, Delo said he would move back to the U.K. specifically to be able to donate more money and not break the new law, so I presume he has done so, or he wouldn’t have been able to give the new money. I bet Liebore are pissed off. I gather that in 2018 Delo was named by the Times as Britain’s youngest self-made billionaire. He was born in 1984, so is currently 42.

You probably read about the Amazon Prime Air cargo flight that overran the runway at Miami airport, killing seven people on the ground, five in an airport cleaner’s minibus and two in a car on a road the plane skidded over. I have been interested to see the authorities have just released the last bit of the cockpit voice recorder, and it is very revealing. They were coming in to land far too quickly, and the pilot not handling the flying kept warning that the airspeed was too high. There were several other mistakes, the speed brakes were not armed, and the flaps were not set correctly. There were several automatic warnings about height and speed. Finally, because of the speed, the plane touched down too far down the runway and shot off the end, hitting the cleaner’s bus, radar equipment, the car on the highway and ending up with its nose in a Tesla parking lot. Under normal landing conditions, the speed brakes would have triggered automatically when the load came on all three sets of wheels, but this 767 landed on only two sets of wheels for much of its landing run. For the same reason, reverse thrust was locked out, making the overrun inevitable. It seems the pilot, who ignored the speed and height warnings, has a lot to answer for.

It was quite close in the vote yesterday, but the Assisted Dying Bill failed in the Commons yesterday by 284 votes to 270. This was an attempt to reintroduce the same bill that was lost when it ran out of time in the last session of Parliament. This was a free vote and showed just how split the House of Commons is on the subject, but seems to have moved a little from the pro to the anti side since the last bill was lost. Mind you, there were nearly 100 who chose to abstain. The pro-MPs say a similar bill will be reintroduced. It sounds like the EU, who like to keep on voting until the result they want is achieved.

For some time, the Royal Navy has been expecting to be told that its Type 45 destroyers are to receive the DragonFire laser system, making them the first RN surface ships to have a directed-energy weapon. It has finally been announced that the first Type 45 will be fitted with DragonFire next year. This cat says the sooner our ships get a cheap laser defence against drone swarms, the better. Expending half-million-pound missiles on £50,000 drones is never sensible when a £10 drone shot does the same job.

Only four by-elections in the U.K. on Thursday this week. But it seems the by-elections bear no connection to the National Opinion Polls. Of the four seats up for grabs, Liebore held one and the Tories held one, while the remaining two were big wins for Reform, who took one seat from Liebore and one from the Tories. But the vote percentages are telling. The Liebore vote was down badly in every seat bar the one they held, and the Reform vote was up in every seat.

While on the subject of elections, it has emerged that Liebore will not announce the result of the review of the Jackdaw North Sea gas field approval until after the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. Although the Government haven’t given a reason for the delay, it seems fairly obvious that the worry is the prospect of losing by-election votes from the left of the party to the Greens. So, this is electoral manipulation. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a legal challenge.

TransPennine Express has placed an order for 29 new battery-powered trains. The trains will run on the lines from Liverpool and Manchester in the West to Redcar, Scarborough and Hull in the East via York, Leeds and Doncaster. The company, which is part of Great British Railways, is having the order subsidised by £1 billion in Government money. I suppose battery-operated trains mean clean, modern, electric trains that can serve places like Hull, where the track has still to be electrified. But I wonder who will be paying for the recharging equipment at those terminals that are still to be electrified.

That’s me done for the week, and it’s much better outside than last week, so it’s going to be my favourite windowsill again this afternoon. We are actually due another week in Parliament, the last full week before the conference recess for a month. Do they ever do any work? Chat to you all again next week.
 

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