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

Monday

Good Morning, my happy readers. Well, it’s the start of another week, and it’s wet and gloomy here in Downing Street. When I say wet and gloomy, I want you to be sure I am talking about the weather and not the PM, although the description fits him well. I was watching out of a window this morning, and one of the ministerial cars seemed to have broken down in the street. The driver was poking about under the bonnet, while one of the bodyguards was holding a big golf umbrella over them both. They eventually got it going and disappeared out of the gates.

Several interesting things happened over the weekend. That useless lump Wes Streeting made a speech in which he said we have a thousand days to prepare for war. I suppose 3 years is a bit better than the 3 days we had to prepare for last week. But in 3 years, won’t a lot of those tins of food have reached their expiry dates and all the poisons in plastic water bottles have leached into the water and given us all cancer? I really don’t think I will still be in Downing Street in 3 years’ time. I will either be retired to the country or dead.

Talking of a three-day stock of food, I had a good chuckle yesterday morning when Angela Rayner was on one of the Sunday political discussion shows. She was asked if she had stocked up. Her reply was, “Yes, I have got a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, some concealer and 20 Marlborough Gold.” The day before, she had added a tin of custard and a tin of baked beans. I wonder if I should try concealer on my operation.

I read an interesting little snippet over the weekend. Apparently, Babcock has joined forces with the American shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) to offer the Arrowhead 140 (Type 31) Frigate to the US for its frigate needs. Because the US has an urgent need for more frigates and no acceptable internal design, Washington has decided to allow up to two ships to be built abroad and others built under licence in the US. Babcock doesn’t have a lot of immediate spare capacity at Rosyth, but it does have a number of things in its favour. It has a relationship with HII over the AUKUS Submarine programme.

It is already building the Common Missile Compartment designed for the US Columbia Class submarine and the British Dreadnought Class. In addition, it has a design with HII for the use of Arrowhead 140 Frigates as a mother ship for HII ROMULUS large uncrewed surface vessels. Perhaps the most important aspect of this bid is that versions of the Arrowhead 140 are already being built in Poland and Indonesia with their fit-outs of weapons and equipment, exactly what the Yanks would want. The Yanks are talking about at least 10 of these frigates and possibly as many as 66. Of course, they would be built in the US, but with design and licence fees payable to Babcock.

It seems to have been a long time coming, but I hear Airbus is to hold talks with BAE about joining the GCAP sixth-generation fighter programme. Ever since the fallout between Germany and France over their 6th-gen fighter project, Germany and Spain, in their Airbus alliance, have been looking for a new partner. In real terms, this meant the GCAP project. The only surprise has been how long it has taken to get talks underway.

An odd story reaches me from the other side of the Atlantic. In Alaska, an LNG project has suddenly hit the headlines, with the CEO of the business and several senior executives resigning. It seems they thought the money to develop the project was coming from an investor in the UAE, but it has emerged that the UAE was getting the money from a sanctioned Russian company owned by Vladimir Poo Tin. But it gets worse. The Russian company was developing an LNG project in Siberia, but work had stopped with the extraction equipment half installed. By backdoor routes, the Russian company was selling the equipment to the Alaskan project in defiance of sanctions. But the straw that broke the camel’s back appears to have been Steve Witkoff and Poo Tin discussing the deal at their recent meeting to discuss a Russo/Ukraine peace plan.

Not a very good weekend for the city of Manchester football teams. United lost at home to Bournemouth and dropped to just one point above the relegation zone. City have been doing better on the field, but their off-field finances have been an absolute disaster. This weekend, City lost their first match of the season at Villa Park, where it is not easy for visitors to win. But it was the news about their finances that was the really bad news. It emerged that the Premier League are considering placing sanctions on the club soon, before the result of their appeal about being found guilty of 114 charges is known. But the word I hear is that Manchester City will also face another 100 or so charges for the years up to 2024. Can City survive as a club if they face years out of the Premier League and the wealthy owners are forced to sell the club?

Tuesday

Hi folks, dry and sunny when I went out, but chilly again. I was pleased to get back to a warm kitchen! The weather ladies say we are going to have a wet early afternoon, so if I have finished my jobs by then, I will probably have a little snooze.

It’s 100 days since the Invisible Mascara Man came to power. I dearly wish I had started counting the days he has been here since he took over. I suspect that if it got to 50 days, it would be a miracle. He would love to run the country from his beloved Manchester, but while Parliament is in Westminster, that is not possible. But he has done next to nothing politically, just a few sweeties thrown to the masses. I do wonder if he is thinking of a pre-Christmas election before the country goes to hell in a handcart early next year.

I really don’t understand the game IMM is playing. At one moment, he says he doesn’t want to rejoin the EU, then he says that it is his ambition to “rejoin in his lifetime”, then he tells his Vote Leave-voting constituency that he doesn’t support rejoining. But a bit later, he wants to have free movement, but No. 10 puts out a statement saying that we have misunderstood what he was saying and he doesn’t want to rejoin. The whole thing is a total mess, and I think he is repeating whatever the last person he spoke to told him.

A story reaches me from Germany, where over the weekend more than 2,500 Germans had their 20-day cruise cancelled. On Sunday, the weather was wet and stormy in Bremerhaven, with fifty mph winds. The TUI ship Mein Schiff 3 sailed from the Cruise Port in the early evening on a 20-day round trip to the Canaries. The TUI ship had to navigate past two docked MSC container ships sticking to the dredged channel before heading out of the River Weser and out to sea. Mein Schiff 3 was being guided by 3 tugs, and it passed the first container ships safely. Then a gust of wind caught it, and it smashed into MSC Victorine, ripping a 10-metre gash in the container ship’s side. The TUI ship took bad damage to around 8 lifeboats and their davits. The ship returned to the cruise terminal, and the passengers stayed on overnight before the cruise was cancelled the following morning. It is illegal to sail without sufficient lifesaving equipment for everyone onboard, so they had little choice.

Two men have been charged over the “incident” at RAF Fairford. The two men, Mohmed Abdulkarim and Nouman Essghir, both 24, have been charged with national security offences. The charges include assisting Iranian Intelligence and entering a prohibited place. I can’t say I am terribly surprised, the media has been suggesting the involvement of Iran from day one. Despite their names, both the men are said to be British citizens and lived in Westminster. They are due in Westminster Magistrates’ Court today, but I doubt we will learn anything other than that they have been remanded in custody.

A couple of weeks ago, I told you about the Norwich amputee whose application to renew his Blue Badge had been turned down by the council and more evidence demanded. This is despite him submitting a letter from his doctor and a photograph. Well, I can now pass on the news that he has now been granted a Blue Badge for another three years, but he will then have to apply for renewal. The “extra evidence” seems to have been an appointment with a council physio who watched him walk a few yards on his prosthetic leg and sticks and immediately passed him. What a waste of time and money.

The word I hear on the grapevine is that in tomorrow’s budget there is to be a cut in tax on imported citrus marmalade, gherkins and baked beans. Well, I don’t eat any of those, so my meagre stipend is not going to be helped. If the Chancellor really wants to get the public onside, he should double my wages!

Wednesday

Good morning, all. It is that rarest of things this morning, dry, and the forecast is for it to be dry all day. Today is Budget Day, and my sources say it is going to be a big nothing burger. We shall see at lunchtime when the Chancellor stands up in the Commons. I doubt I will have anything from it in today’s stories. I am usually done for the day by then and looking for lunch. If anything is worth reporting, I will try to cover it tomorrow.

Just a couple of little things I saw on the TV this morning. The Shadow Chancellor was interviewed and asked if he expected taxes to go up. His answer made me chuckle. He said, “Yes, of course. Duck quack, cows moo and Labour taxes.” Then I learned the standing charge on gas bills is going to be removed from next year. The spokesman said it will save you about 30p a day. But that is not really true. The cost is going to be added to the per-unit price. So, if you are a very low gas user, you might possibly save a few pounds. If you are an average gas user, you will probably break even, but if you are a heavy user who needs the heating on because you are sick, it will cost you more. This is a smoke-and-mirrors trick.

Do you remember the story of the Residence Villa Vie Odyssey when it was stuck in the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast? The ship was supposed to be going on a 3-year, 6-month world cruise, and people had paid many thousands of dollars to live on board. Money was always in short supply. The ship eventually departed a couple of weeks late. Not a lot has been heard of the ship for the last two years, that is until yesterday when it was docked in Cambodia. Just after 7 am, passengers were told they had to be off the ship by 14:00 hrs as the company could not afford to buy any more fuel. The instructions were for residents to grab their essentials and that they would be allowed back on board sometime in the future to get the rest of their possessions. The Villa Vie Odyssey was once the Fred Olsen Cruises Braemar. When Covid struck, it was in for a refit and never rejoined the Fred Olsen fleet. In fact, it was laid up for 4 years before being bought cheaply and converted into the Odyssey. I wonder how those passengers are going to get home from Cambodia.

I hear that the London Stadium, what was the Olympic Stadium, has financial problems. It cost over £700 million to construct, and the Olympic Legacy lot were anxious to get a core tenant in place. They managed that with West Ham United, who jumped at the chance of taking a 99-year lease for a £15 million down payment and £2.5 million a year in rent. The only problem is that the licensing authority has imposed a 60,000 limitation on sporting crowds. This was not a major problem for West Ham, as their old stadium held a lot less and they rarely sold out in the Premier League, and that likelihood is even lower now they are in the Championship. But the stadium owners want to put on some big events to bring in cash. They are allowed to sell 85,000 tickets to entertainment events like the “Take That” concert earlier this year. The problem is boxing matches that are rated as “Sporting Events” and limited to 60,000. Consequently, the big matches go to Wembley or Cardiff, where they can legally sell 85,000 tickets and bring in £11 million in ticket sales alone. No wonder the stadium owners want a change.

Airbus and Boeing have been battling for aircraft sales for years, first one announces a big sale and then the other. With the recent FAA certification of the last two 737 Max models, Boeing appeared to have got itself into a much-improved position, but they have just announced that they expect to miss this year’s expected 737 Max sales target because of a shortage of wings. Not something that they can do without. But it is the freighter market that has been interesting me. The Airbus A350F is undergoing flight testing, and the first is expected to be delivered early next year. Meanwhile, the new freighter version of the Boeing 777X, the 777F, is as far away as ever. The freighter is, naturally, well behind the first passenger version of the plane and will probably come along in 2029. This has played into Airbus’s hand, and they are growing their list of A350F sales and options, including snatching customers, like Atlas, who are currently an all-Boeing company. Atlas have a hard 20-aircraft order for the A300F and, until early this week, options for 20 more. They have just signed up for another 20 options. That is pointing to a 60-freighter fleet.

I hear that Ukraine has a test communications satellite in orbit. It was launched as part of a SpaceX payload earlier this month. Ukraine has relied on the SpaceX Starshield system until now. Starshield is the military version of Starlink. Ukraine learnt a hard lesson earlier this month when the transmission speed of Starshield was throttled by the Americans. A few of their own satellites therefore make a lot of sense for Ukraine. Mind you, I do wonder if they will be low-orbit satellites that can be reached by portable dishes like Starlink.

Something rather unusual to report as my last story today. For the first time I can remember, there are 3 of our 4 nuclear missile submarines at sea. The fourth, HMS Victorious, is in Devonport Dockyard undergoing maintenance. I wonder why we have 3 of these missile ships at sea at the same time. The Government will tell you it is because of our increased ability to turn the boats around. However, I suspect the real reason is the same security problem that has caused the Government to warn us to stock 3-day emergency food supplies.

Thursday

It’s a good morning to you, my friends. Well, it’s a bit overcast this morning, but at least it is not raining. I saw the Budget on TV, and my conclusion is that John Healey is a more boring speaker than Legohead. What a difference when Bad Enoch spoke. She was to the point and funny. This Budget will go down in history as the Gherkin Budget.

It seems that my sources were right. The Budget really was a great big nothing burger. It just kicked virtually every important financial decision into the long grass. OK, 20 million householders in Community Tax Band A to D homes are going to get £100 paid into their bank accounts next year. But this will fall way short of the big jump in electricity prices forecast for January. Then there is the removal of the standing charge from your gas bill. This is confirmed as sleight of hand, as the approximate 30p per day will be added to the price of the gas. Even the urgently needed increase in the Defence Budget has been kicked into the far distance.

The stock market has this morning reacted to the Budget, and surprisingly, the banks have gone up. The additional tax on them is about half what they were expecting. Perhaps a little more surprising was that defence contractors like BAE and Babcock are also up as I dictate this. With defence spending being kicked down the road, I can only surmise it is because spending wasn’t cut!

One of the interesting things about the Budget was that the OBR counted the revenues from the Rosebank Oil Field in the Budget. The calculation is £1.4 billion in income to the Government by the end of the Parliament, or about £0.5 billion a year. Although Rosebank has not been approved and the Energy Secretary is “minded not to approve it”, I suspect the Cabinet is going to approve it. Otherwise, there is a big black hole in the Budget.

What a terrible train crash in Spain, where a high-speed train crashed into the back of a stationary train, killing at least 68 people south of Madrid. The initial investigation seems to point to a computer failure at a control centre, but that doesn’t really explain things, as in the event of a failure, signals normally go to red and everything stops. At the moment, it would appear that didn’t occur, as the high-speed train didn’t get stopped.

I hear that we have given Ukraine a couple of UK-built drone boats to play with as they like. Down on the south coast of England, a company called Kraken has been developing this remote-control boat for the Royal Navy. Apparently, the 8-metre boat can do 55 knots and carry a 600 kg load. The K3 can also stop and start its engine remotely, so it can hang about. It has a 3-week endurance and a range of over 1,000 kilometres. But I hear you say, why would Ukraine want to use one of these boats when it has proven designs of its own? The answer comes in two parts. The boat comes with a configurable load cell, so yes, it can carry a big bomb, but it could just as easily have surveillance equipment or an electronic warfare load. It is also air-transportable and can be dropped from a plane on a sled, and work immediately. It has been successfully trialled by being dropped in the North Sea into 8-foot waves. Now it is being tested in wartime conditions.

In Parliament yesterday, the Invisible Mascara Man ruled out a general election for a year. Oddly, it doesn’t feel like that here in Number 10. If you were to ask me, I have the feeling the Budget was preparing the ground for an election early next year. The Budget was a standstill exercise with a bit of tinkering around the edges that does virtually nothing. I get the idea that the Chancellor didn’t want to do anything that might drive voters away from the party. As this involved not making any real spending decisions other than increasing the benefits bill, it was a pretty poor effort.

Friday

Hi everyone. A bit different this morning. It’s misty and cool, but the forecast is dry and sunny. I didn’t watch it on TV last night, but I have seen the clip from Question Time on the Internet where Zia Yusef blasted Alistair Campbell, calling him a liar and a war criminal. Campbell clearly didn’t like it, had a face like thunder, got all pointy and was rattled. But the audience was plainly on the side of Yusef. I would love for Campbell to sue. He would find the Dodgy Dossier difficult to defend.

Gosh, the aftermath of Tuesday’s Budget is getting interesting. In particular, everyone seems to be telling a different story regarding the lack of reform of the welfare costs. The only thing in the Budget was an increase in benefits. The Chancellor, who I have just realised looks like Dobbie the Elf, has now said that Liebore will handle reforms in a “Liebore Way”. Then it was claimed they were waiting for two reviews to report, Mascara Man says nothing will happen for a year, and a government spokesman says there will be no changes in this Parliament. So, the “Liebore Way” seems to be to kick the reform down the road.

The weather for the past fortnight has been rather wet and windy. Consequently, the Channel has been too rough for illegal immigrants to cross. But yesterday the wind dropped and the sea calmed down, and they were back crossing in small boats. One boat that came all the way from Belgium, with 88 on board, was even painted in the colours of the Kurdish flag. In total, over 200 crossed yesterday.

More than a decade ago, Rolls-Royce decided to opt out of the market for jet engines for single-aisle planes and to concentrate on the bigger engines for twin-aisle planes. This has been successful in that they have made a decent profit out of the big engines. They have also developed a new, bigger, more powerful engine type called the Ultrafan, but as yet there is no plane for it to be used on. But Rolls has had a change of heart and wants to re-enter the single-aisle market, where both Airbus and Boeing are looking at new aircraft types, and there could be a massive market. However, Rolls needs to develop a new engine. This morning, IMM has been at the Rolls factory in Derby, where he has announced a Government investment of £2.5 billion over several years to develop a version called the Ultrafan 30 for the new single-aisle market. I do hope that this plan works.

There is a growing trend in takeaway restaurants like McDonald’s and KFC to get people to order from a touch screen instead of from a person at a counter. In the way of things, it is a lot cheaper to use a machine than to employ a person. However, in America this has gone even further, with the customer being asked to add a tip for service as they pay. Now I read of a man who bought three milkshakes from a Shake Shack outlet at Dallas airport. As he checked out, the screen offered a tip option page. The options were 15%, 18%, 20% or No Tip. As the man objected to paying a tip to a machine, he selected No Tip, and the machine recalculated the bill, adding 50 cents to each drink. The owners of Shake Shack say it was a software error. But, in the style of Mandy Rice-Davies, they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Every day, Ukraine and Russia report the numbers of drones they have sent against the other and what they have hit. In recent days, the numbers of Ukrainian drones claimed to have been shot down per day by the Russian news agency Tass have been increasing, and earlier this week the figure was about three times the number Ukraine said they had sent. However, yesterday Tass claimed to have shot down a record 1,214, around four times what Ukraine dispatched. And, of course, no drones hit a target. Only Russia’s largest soda ash plant mysteriously caught fire when hit by drone debris, and local residents were forced away from the plant by the police.

I am not sure how many times I have told you about problems with the two Scottishland ferries, Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa. Sannox was delivered last year, but even being very late in service, it has had its problems and is currently out of service for repairs. The news I bring you today is about the Glen Rosa, which was supposed to have been delivered in 2018 but was finally meant to be delivered in December this year. Today I learn that it will not be delivered until February next year, as it is being fitted with new propellers. The old design on its sister ship had been found to be causing stress fractures in the hull, so perhaps the delay is for the best.

Saturday

Hi, my friends. Dry, sunny and chilly again this morning. A second bad day for the Liebore Government on the small boat migrants yesterday, when 263 arrived. Friday’s provisional number jumped to 700 people on 10 small boats. It just goes to show how the weather determines how many cross the Channel. Two days of calm seas and nearly 1,000 arrived. I see that they are forecasting 10 days of calm weather with low winds, so be ready for lots of crossings in early November.

I hear that Robber Reeves has been reported to the Parliamentary Commissioner. What for, I hear you ask? Well, it’s over reports that she is to stand down from Parliament to take a job as an adviser to a bank. The Parliamentary rules say that Ministers cannot take a job as an adviser in something related to what they were a minister dealing with for two years after leaving the ministerial post because they might pass on government secrets. But that is not the problem, as she has not taken up the full-time job yet. The report to the Commissioner is over allegations that she acted as a part-time adviser to a financial organisation while still the Chancellor.

Virgin uses Terminal 3 at Heathrow for all its flights out of London. It has a partnership with Delta on the North Atlantic, and when travelling with Delta from the States, passengers can book a through ticket on Virgin to, say, Africa or India. What is very handy is that Delta is also based at Terminal 3, so it is easy to transfer between Virgin and Delta, or vice versa. But Heathrow says Terminal 3 is overcrowded, and they need Delta to move to Terminal 4 in 2028. Virgin is appealing, as it claims that it will make interchanges between the airlines more difficult and longer, and will cost both airlines business.

I read that Russia has had a terrible October in its war with Ukraine. Not only have they failed to gain territory this month, they have lost 50,000 troops, dead or wounded. They are beginning to suffer a manpower problem, as they don’t have the capacity to train soldiers as quickly as they are losing them.

Not a lot of detail, but I have just seen the headline results of a survey in a motoring magazine. The main result of the survey was that most EV owners intended to switch to a hybrid or a plug-in hybrid for their next car. Not a result the Net Zero mob will be happy to see, but one I think is very revealing. These are the people who have been cajoled into buying an EV and have decided that, despite the hype, it is not for them. Why they are not going back to a fully petrol car beats me. The statistics I read show that hybrid owners spend the vast majority of their time on the road using the petrol engine and rarely use the car’s battery drive. If you are going to hardly use the electric drive, why buy a more expensive hybrid, lug around the extra weight and suffer inferior mileage?

Better news for Reform at this week’s by-elections, where they took two seats, one from the Limp Dumps and one from Liebore. Reform also failed to hold a seat that Liebore won by three votes. This seat was very interesting, as Restore ran a candidate who took 7% of the vote. This prompted Nigel Farage to say, “Vote Restore, get Liebore”.

As usual, I have a cat story of the week for you. It’s a tad different this week, as it is about big cats. Well, not exactly big cats, more like medium-sized cats, as the ones in question are lynxes. The animals have been extinct in Britain for eight centuries. The Lynx Trust wants to reintroduce the cats to Britain and, as such, proposed introducing three from the forests of Sweden to be released into Kielder Forest. They needed a licence to do this from Natural England, and it was refused on the grounds that it would breach the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976, which prohibits the release of certain animals into the wild. The Lynx Trust appealed, and the High Court has agreed with Natural England that a release is not allowed. So, you will not be seeing lynxes in your local woodland.

That’s me done for the week. My wound is still improving, and my fur is definitely growing back, but it is still very slow. At this rate, it is going to be years. It’s dry out there this afternoon, so I think I will have a sleep on MM’s bed. He is hardly ever here, so he won’t know. Chat to you all again next week.

 

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