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

Monday

Good morning, my happy readers. I have been looking out of the window, and it is not very nice outside. I think it is drizzling. The only problem with being confined to the house is that I have to use that horrible litter tray. Why can’t they get me one of those automatic machines that sieves the poo out every time you go and leaves it nice and clean for next time?

There are a few stories this morning that need my eagle eye to assess them. I will start with Mascara Man, who has announced that there was Russian interference in the Brexit vote. He hasn’t given any details, but he called it state-sponsored interference. Well, I seem to remember government interference with stories of an emergency budget if we dared vote Leave, how a hundred thousand jobs would go in the City, and how we would completely lose the EU as an export market. I can’t remember anything from PooTin, but I think Obama saying we would go to the back of the queue for a US trade deal was what swung it for me. It turned me into a Brexit Cat.

Next, I read that there are 2 million people on sickness benefits waiting for a review. Apparently, the average wait is currently two years, and the longest wait is currently 16 years. I hear this problem has been caused by the huge queue of people waiting for assessments. The Liebore government decided that it had to tackle the queue and switched all those doing reviews to doing initial assessments, hence a halt in reviews. Now, some reviews are obviously a waste of time. The person paralysed from the chest down is never going to get better, but the person who has had his operation and wants to go back to work is the obvious one to prioritise.

Reports coming out of the Russo-Ukrainian war speak of 22 Russian officers being killed in a cruise missile attack on a Russian military HQ in Donetsk. The attack was a week or so ago, and the Mayor of the city said it was an attack on a construction site. However, I hear that the attack was actually on the basements of the incomplete buildings, the two levels of which had been converted into the local military HQ. The reports name 22 dead officers. How did this news get out? Well, apparently, someone had the bright idea of searching the free online Russian death records using the date and place of the attack. It came up with the names and ranks of 20 officers, from the rank of Colonel down to Senior Lieutenant, who all died in Donetsk on the same day as the attack, and two more injured officers who died in the two days following the attack. I wonder if Russia will turn off access to its Death Registry.

Over the weekend, the Donald said he had done a deal with PooTin to buy 300,000 tonnes of diesel from Russia. Now, on the face of it, this sounds like a lot of diesel, but it is next to nothing in the real world of US usage. The US consumes around 170 million US gallons of diesel a day, and 300,000 tonnes of diesel equates to 94 million US gallons, about half a day’s usage!

Then the Donald announced that he had brokered an energy truce between Russia and Ukraine. Although, strangely, neither Ukraine nor Russia seem to know anything about this truce. Zelensky said he knew nothing of the truce, and Russia clearly didn’t either, as it hit a Ukrainian power station overnight. Although Ukraine didn’t hit a refinery over the weekend, it did hit a third Yandex server farm, leaving them with just one giant one in Moscow and several smaller ones. I expect to see more being hit in the next few attacks.

News came out at the weekend of more links between MM and the Manchester City owner, Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). The group has entered into numerous deals with Manchester Council to develop sites in and around central Manchester. And who was the Mayor of Manchester? But perhaps the oddest deal that has emerged is the loan of £55 million to ADUG. Why did ADUG need £55 million when it has a billionaire in charge? The excuse was that they couldn’t get a commercial loan, and if you believe that, then my granny has testicles.

Tuesday

Hi, folks. I understand I am to be let out of the house today, but as it’s drizzling out there, perhaps it is better for me not to go out until it stops. MM was caught being devious and trying to change the narrative yesterday. On Sunday, he told a Remainers podcast that Russia interfered with the Brexit Referendum, telling the hosts that it was the first thing he asked about when he walked into Downing Street and was told they had. During the day, the government had rolled out several ministers to row back. Then, in Parliament, he said he had said no such thing and said there was evidence the Russians had interfered with the 2019 General Election.

Another 650 crooks are being let out of prison early this morning. I wonder how long it will be before the first one is back behind bars. When the last lot were let out earlier this month, one prolific shoplifter was caught shoplifting the same evening. Of course, this is a breach of his parole conditions, and he was straight back before his cell got cold.

At the Paris Motor Show, Citroën has displayed a new car which it intends to start selling in 2029. The electric vehicle is a modern version of its infamous 2CV. I must say, I thought the pre-production car looked cute from the outside, and it showed its 2CV roots in its design, but when I saw the inside and heard that it would only do 200 miles on a charge, I had second thoughts. I suppose it is a city car designed for mums to take the children to school and do the shopping. But it is the quirky interior that surprised me, with a removable radio, an 8-inch square screen and space to carry eggs in the doors.

Last week, I told you about the Common Table Group picking up 57 of the Beefeater and Brewers Fayre pubs being closed by Whitbread. Today, I can tell you that Queensway Inns have bought 53 more and say they will be relaunched as “value pubs”, whatever that might be. Another 900 jobs will be saved through these latest acquisitions. Whitbread is disposing of all its standalone pub/restaurants and intends to become a pure hotel chain.

I read that NuScale Power, the American designer of Small Modular Reactors for power generation, is struggling and its share price is slipping. It has no firm orders but does have two “agreements”, from Romania and the Tennessee Valley Authority. It is in negotiations to turn these agreements into orders, but it is taking a long time. In Romania’s case, it has taken so long that the country recently announced that 80% of the contract was still to be agreed and that it was going to reopen talks with other SMR suppliers. I read that NuScale continues to burn money and that the only hope is to sign a firm order, as that will bring in money. Rolls-Royce SMR appears to be in a much better position, having contracts in place in both the U.K. and Czechia, and groundwork permits in both countries.

The man who is charged with murdering Anne Widdecombe and attempting to kill Nigel Farage seems to have finally made the Home Office rethink its stance on supplying protection for many more politicians and even peers. I wonder how much of this has been the result of a “kill list” supposedly found at the accused’s home. I understand that Lee Anderson was one of those on the list, but was not told until very recently. The word on the street was that the report into the £5 million given to Nigel Farage to buy his own protection was due out yesterday. It didn’t appear. I wonder if it was being hastily revised.

Here’s an interesting little fact I heard this morning. One in seven of the cars sold in Britain last year were bought through the Motability scheme. Now, here’s the strange thing: only one in ten of those cars was adapted for a disabled person. OK, I know that not every disability is visible, but these statistics seem to show that nine out of ten aren’t. Yesterday, I heard of a man who had a Motability car because he has a wheat intolerance.

Wednesday

Good morning, all. A nice, sunny but chilly early morning. However, I hear it is going to warm up nicely later. I see it has emerged that Mascara Man has been a little economical with the truth over his connections with the owners of Manchester City. I read he has had dinner with the chairman three times and accepted tickets to football matches and gigs. No wonder he doesn’t want the owners to sell up and go. PMQs today might be interesting.

So, Ed Millipede, the Foreign Secretary, has signed off on the Sea Lion oil field, north of the Falkland Islands. The news came first from Navitas, the Israeli partner in exploration. Perhaps Millipede is trying to get back into the Israelis’ good books. From what I hear, there is believed to be some 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the field, and it could be flowing as early as next year, making the Falklands an oil state. It is no wonder that Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, is not happy. His country is broke, and he would dearly love for the money to be going into his Treasury and not into that of the Falkland Islands. If Millipede, the mad Green, can approve Sea Lion, why can’t Mascara Man approve Rosebank and Jackdaw?

The University of Southampton is carrying out tests to discover how a body’s speed of digestion affects brain power. They are getting people to undergo a cognitive test and also to undergo what it is calling a “Blue Poo” test. They are baking muffins containing blue food dye and getting the people being tested to eat them and record how long it takes to come out the other end. The results of the cognitive test will be paired with the Blue Poo test to see if a fast metabolism leads to a person being cleverer or more stupid.

F1 has signed a contract to have a race in Africa. For a short time, there was a race in South Africa, but the track was deemed not to be up to standard, and it didn’t last. The new race will be in Rwanda, but not for a while, as the track has to be constructed. The site is in a deserted area about 25 miles from the capital city, Kigali. The track has been designed, and it is fairly close to an airport. But major roads need to be designed and built, as do hotels and campgrounds. The first race is hoped to be held in the early 2030s.

In the small Leicestershire village of Queniborough, there is a new David Wilson Homes estate being built, and it was to be served by two Arriva Midlands bus routes, the 5 and 5A. But that was until contractors working for the housebuilder installed an island refuge at the end of a road. This made it impossible for the buses to turn out of the road without mounting the pavement, so the services have been rerouted, avoiding the centre of the new estate. I hear the council has intervened, the island is being removed, and the buses should be back tomorrow. But it does make me wonder who at the council approved the island without thinking about the buses.

I have been learning about the oil left in our offshore oil fields. Apparently, when we started exploiting the likes of the Forties field, BP expected to recover about 20% of the deposit, the norm for free-flowing oil under pressure from the rocks above it. Having taken the easy 20%, BP sold the field to an American company, saying that they might be able to get another 120 million barrels out if they injected water to push the oil towards the extraction well. The company has taken 240 million barrels out so far. There is a bit of a problem when it comes to using water to push out the oil, as the water eventually seeps past the oil and starts coming back up the well. I understand that if you mix polymers with the water to thicken it, you can extract even more oil.

Over in the Clair oil field out in the Atlantic, west of Shetland, the UK’s biggest field, with around 8 billion barrels in place, has a different problem. The sea is around 150 metres deep and very rough, which is a problem, but the oil is very sticky, so even water injection was only bringing up a small amount. But research showed that oil was sticking to the sandstone and was bonded by salt, and the normal injection of salty seawater made it stick more. The answer here is desalination. The fresh water weakens the salt bond and releases the oil. It is now predicted that Clair will produce well into the mid-2030s using existing wells. Don’t let them tell you we are running out of offshore oil. It just needs a bit of ingenuity to recover it.

Thursday

It’s a good morning to you, my friends. Very grey and grotty when I popped out this morning. I must say, it’s nice to be in the old routine and not having to use the dreaded litter tray. Oh, I nearly forgot, it was Felix Chicken this morning.

Yesterday, as well as being PMQs, it was an Opposition Day, a day when the official opposition gets to put a topic forward for debate. Yesterday, the debate tabled by the Tories was about scrapping the proposed immigrant camp in Piddington and leaving the ECHR. When the debate was announced, the government benches emptied, as did the Limp Dump benches. Even the Limp Dump MP who has Piddington in his constituency skipped the debate. Interestingly, there was not a single female Liebore backbencher in the House, just two who were replying from the front bench. But the government MPs all appeared to vote the motion down with their mates in the Limp Dumps and the Racist Greens.

Did Mascara Man open his mouth and put his foot in it again in the Commons yesterday? He referred to the man charged with the killing of Ann Widdecombe as her murderer, finding him guilty before legal proceedings have concluded. In fact, they have hardly started. If he had said this anywhere other than Parliament, he could have been guilty of contempt of court, but lucky for him, what is said in the House is considered privileged. On the other hand, a slip of the tongue like that could be used as an excuse to claim a mistrial.

Every day, the Manchester City-sized hole Mascara Man is standing in seems to be getting deeper. It had been believed that he had a single meeting over a posh dinner invitation with the chairman of the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). Then it became three dinners. Now it has become a lot more, but no one can be certain exactly how many, as the data seems to have been erased. But it has been reported that ADUG were invited to accompany government representatives on a trade trip to India. I wonder what we were doing taking what is virtually an Abu Dhabi state enterprise on a trade jolly to India.

Regarding the £55 million the Mayor of Manchester’s office loaned a company owned by ADUG, I hear on YouTube that MM chaired all the meetings between his office and the group. But this fact seems to have been wiped from the Mayor’s Office website. Have they forgotten about the Wayback Machine!

The US airline United has an outstanding order for 50 Airbus A321XLRs that it intends to use on its thinner transatlantic routes. It has already announced that when the aircraft arrives, the first will be deployed on routes to Ireland, France, the Netherlands and Spain, but, rather surprisingly, not Italy. The trade has been speculating that United’s decision to rely heavily on installing 20 of its First Class “Polaris Suite” seats on each plane may have increased the planes’ weight so much that it has reduced their range and Italy has become a marginal destination. If that is the case, then I guess it is back to the drawing board.

This morning, it has emerged that the Home Office is threatening to remove all visas issued to Eritrea unless they agree to take back their released criminals and failed asylum seekers, something they are currently refusing to do. I can’t understand why it has taken so long for the Home Office to find a bit of a backbone. We get thousands of Eritreans coming over on small boats. They are the second-largest cohort of illegal immigrants. Back in 2025, a similar threat was made to Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Angola and Namibia decided to accept returnees, but the DRC refused and had a visa ban imposed. They caved in last February and now accept our returnees. This has been a Reform policy for years, and we were continually told it would not work.

Friday

Hi, everyone. It is a grotty morning, wet and chilly. When I went out, I sprinted down the garden as fast as I dared, so as not to burst my stitches. My duty feeder today is one of my nicer ones, so she went and found a towel to dry me off and was super careful to only dab around my stitches.

Bad news again for the economy in August, as the economy had an anaemic growth rate of 0.1%. This is down from 0.4% in July and 0.7% in the three months to August. Take that alongside yesterday’s Scottish Energy prediction that the price of energy will increase by 16% at the January fix point. Something is very wrong with the cost of electricity. I keep hearing that switching to renewable energy is the way to go because it is cheap, as it gets its fuel for nothing, yet the Leccy bill still has all sorts of green levies tagged on to it. What is the excuse for Leccy going up in price? The government tells us that it is down to the price of oil, but I thought we were using the sun and wind as fuel.

I told you yesterday that MM had opened his mouth and put his foot in it over the man charged with killing Ann Widdecombe. Now I hear that Hansard is to be “corrected”. I’m not sure “corrected” is the right wording. Surely, it prints only what is actually said. The amended version will not be a true record, so it is hardly being “corrected”, it is being politically adjusted for the benefit of MM.

The Donald has admitted that there never was an energy ceasefire. He made it up because he hoped it would stick. For three days, Ukraine refrained from hitting refineries, in the hope that Russia would reciprocate and not hit Ukrainian energy installations. Last night, Ukraine got fed up with Russia ignoring Trump and hitting its power stations, so it hit back, and another refinery was burning this morning. I also hear that the Ukrainian Navy had a go last night, firing a Neptune anti-ship missile at a Russian airbase. According to satellite pictures, the missile hit the middle of six Su-34M bombers on the flight line. The pictures show four destroyed and burn marks on the tarmac of two more. The Su-34M is used to launch glide bombs into Ukraine, so there might be a little relief coming.

Nigel Ward, a 71-year-old from King’s Lynn in Norfolk, lost his left leg in an incident on a cruise ship three years ago. This year, he has applied to renew his Blue Badge, which affords parking privileges to people who are disabled. To show he still had a disability and that his leg hadn’t grown back, he sent them a recent photograph. Norfolk County Council said they couldn’t accept the application and that more proof of his disability was needed. Apparently, there is no such thing as a Blue Badge “renewal”. An official said that when a badge expires, you have to make a fresh, full application. So, the fact that Nigel had previously held a Blue Badge is disregarded, and this is a new application, so he has to prove his disability all over again. Utter stupidity.

I read that the latest huge seller in Russia is the old-fashioned landline phone. Even the Russian ministries have been buying them, and sales are up by 80%. The reason is that digital internet phones, which people had mainly switched to, have proved to be highly unreliable as Ukraine has been attacking the country’s server farms. There is, of course, a second reason: Western sanctions. The makers of Western telecoms equipment have had to withdraw from the Russian market, and the domestic market is mainly PABX-based.

After being told to stop faffing around and make a decision on Rosebank and Jackdaw at PMQs, MM said the decision would come soon. He went a little further yesterday and said the decision was imminent. Back in July, MM said he would approve both the Jackdaw gas field east of Aberdeen and the Rosebank oil field off Shetland. My understanding is that Jackdaw could be producing within months of being approved, so if it had been approved back in July, when MM indicated he was ready to do so, the gas could have been flowing already.

Saturday

Hi, my friends. Sunny but chilly this morning, and Chicken Felix for breakfast for the second time this week. I hear that the Minister of State for Education has come up with a great idea this week. She wants to bring in what she calls oracy in GCSEs. I seem to remember that spoken English was included in the English Language GCSE 10 or maybe more years ago, but it was cut out as too many teachers were marking up their own pupils. Has she got some new way to stop this?

It has only taken NHS England 18 months to obey the Supreme Court ruling on trans people and issue new rules for hospitals, clinics and doctors’ surgeries to implement the ruling. In April 2025, the Court ruled that under the Equality Act, sex means biological sex (which is birth sex) and, for example, trans people had to use the toilet of their birth sex. Of course, this was not easy for a woke organisation that allowed trans women (men) into women’s toilets, changing rooms and wards, and spent large sums of money defending the practice in court. The new NHS guidance states, “Single-sex services, such as hospital accommodation, should be provided on the basis of biological sex.” It adds that “trans people… should be accommodated in line with their sex as registered at birth, with single rooms used where necessary”. I fail to see why it has taken 18 months to issue this guidance.

Mind you, in Wales, Plaid Cymru have issued a statement marking the International Day of the Girl, talking about people who have periods. I wonder just how woke you have to be not to call those people women. I do wonder how the Welsh electorate manage to vote for this lot in such numbers that they managed to form the Welsh Government. I guess they were in such a rush to get rid of Welsh Liebore that they didn’t examine Plaid in much depth and have jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

The AUKUS programme moved on a bit this week with confirmation in the Commons from a minister that the Government still intends to build 12 AUKUS-class nuclear submarines for the Royal Navy and to help Australia build six more identical boats. The British ships will be built by BAE Systems at Barrow-in-Furness and will be the follow-on boats to the six Astute-class boats. I have just one question about this project: is it funded? As the defence funding announcement seems to have been pushed back yet again, where is the money for such an ambitious project coming from?

Another big order for Airbus. This time, it’s US leasing company Aviation Capital Group LLC, from Newport Beach, California, which has signed a firm order for 75 A320 family aircraft. It takes the company’s firm orders for A320s to 180 aircraft and the total A320 family orders placed with Airbus to 20,400. This means more wing orders for North Wales.

I read that the EU has been busy discussing the Energy Trading Scheme and its likely successor, ETS2, this week, and there has been anything but harmony. ETS is the means the EU bureaucrats want to use to reduce carbon emissions and drive towards net zero. In this week’s discussions, ETS has faced a bloc of 16 nations trying to amend and weaken its costs on companies. But the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, France and Germany are currently against any further weakening of the scheme. The weighted voting system used by the EU means that what France and Germany want, they usually get. But there is a problem emerging. In Germany, the country is swinging towards the right-of-centre party, the AfD, and they are firmly against the ETS. Furthermore, there is a general election and a presidential election coming soon in France, and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally is leading in the polls. How she, as president, would view the ETS and ETS2 is not known, but Jordan Bardella, the likely prime minister of a National Rally government, is not a fan. There could be big changes coming to the EU if both France and Germany join Italy in its move to the right.

When MM hosted Zelensky in Downing Street earlier this week, he made two promises regarding weapons. The first was to give Ukraine an additional number of our Lightweight Multirole Missiles. The missile is said to be one of the few missiles cheap and capable enough to be used to take down the new jet-propelled drones now being increasingly used by Russia. But I find the second promise more interesting. Ukraine receives gifted weapons from about 50 different countries, and these are a vast mixture of items of different types, origins and ages. In fact, Ukraine is a bit of a dumping ground for weapons that are nearing the end of their life. The second promise is to work with Ukraine to update the weapons using UK technology, such as sensors, fuses and guidance systems, and turn them into practical weapons. It’s handy to know that we are good at something, as we will have to update our own weapons while MM is not publishing the defence budget.

That’s me done for the week. I’m getting over my little operation, but I am not happy to have a bald patch. My fur has started to grow back, but it is still just fuzzy. I was assured that my fur will grow back soon, but how quickly is soon? I hope it is before the weather turns really cold. Chat to you all again next week.

 

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