Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Four

Monday

Good morning, my friends. Lovely and sunny this morning but cold again. So, they have recaptured the escaped Epping sex criminal. I feel a little sorry for him as more of the story emerges. I don’t know if what I am hearing is true or whether it is reporters’ guesswork, but I hear he was in a large cell waiting to be collected for transportation to a deportation centre with a whole load of prisoners on early release. He was simply let go with the early releases. But here is where it gets interesting, it seems he hung around the prison trying to be let back in and was told to go away. In fact, he was given £80 and directed to the railway station.

I hear Legohead is off on his travels again this week, this time it’s Turkey. According to the Middle East Eye, he is going to tie up the sale of 40 Eurofighter Typhoons to the Turkish Air Force. Well, I can’t complain when we sell Typhoons overseas, it brings foreign currency in and keeps British workers employed. But I hear there is a subtle twist to this deal. The Turks have an urgent need for the aircraft but only want the latest version, so, and here it gets interesting as it isn’t completely clear, it seems we are offering to transfer 20 of the RAF’s latest planes to Turkey and supply 20 more fresh from the factory. So, whether the 20 being transferred will be operated by the RAF and later replaced by 20 more brand-new planes is unclear. But Turkish pilots are not familiar with the Eurofighter. Oh, I also hear that Turkey has signed an agreement to buy second-hand Eurofighters from Qatar.

Reports are coming in this morning that a Ukrainian drone has hit and breached a dam in Belgorod. The governor of the area says it was a drone strike, and the BBC say there is substantial flooding below the dam showing on satellite photos. The only question is, was it a Ukrainian drone, or was it a fault with the dam that it is convenient to blame on Ukraine? I suspect it probably was a drone strike. The Ukrainians have been busy hitting Russian infrastructure recently, and this is an extension that makes sense.

Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, the Tottenham Turnip has announced that from today there will be “advanced checks” on people before they are released from custody. But surely this is only being brought in because of this highly publicised case. There were 263 prisoners wrongly released in the last 12 months, three times the previous year, and no one was interested in doing anything until now. It’s amazing what a bit of bad publicity does.

I see Legohead has decided to broaden his attack on Reform, saying the party is racist. This has come about because Sarah Pochin said, in answer to a listener’s question on the radio, that she didn’t like seeing so many black and brown people in TV advertising. This followed a Channel 4 report pointing out that the misrepresentation of non-white people in TV adverts was enormous, with 40% of men in adverts being black when there are only 4% in the British population. I know it is a topic that my readers often discuss on GP and agree with Sarah rather than Legohead, so according to him you are all racist.

News this morning of the death of a crew member on P&O Arvia on its crossing from Southampton to Barbados on its positioning cruise for its winter season in the Caribbean. The ship sailed late on Friday afternoon for its first port of call, Tenerife, before embarking on its transatlantic crossing. Little is known about what happened, only that it was a work-related accident on Sunday and involved a lift shaft. A full investigation is taking place, and British police are boarding the ship in Tenerife.

Here’s an interesting little rumour I have come across today. It is that Liebore MPs and ministers have decided not to push too hard for Legohead to go now. They argue that if he were to go now and be replaced by someone they like better, when they get hammered in the May local, Welsh and Scottish elections, their favoured candidate might be forced to step aside. Much better not to push for him to go until after the May elections and have a new left-wing PM then. There were three more opinion polls out over the weekend, two with Reform 10% ahead and one with them 15% ahead. I think I can see the logic of letting Legohead lead them into a battle he is likely to lose, with the hope that a new PM just might win the war.

Tuesday

Hi folks, well apart from it being cold and dark, it was at least dry when I went for my constitutional. Well, I see the media got it only half right with its story on the sale of Typhoons to Egypt. Yes, we have sold them 20 new planes with deliveries starting in a few years, but it looks like the loan of RAF planes is off, and they will be buying second-hand from Qatar and Oman. Still, it’s a good deal for British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce.

I see the Commons Home Affairs Committee has been scathing about the performance of the Home Office, particularly over immigration hotels. It has revealed that under escalation clauses, contracts to operate the hotels have gone up from £4.5 billion a year to over £15 billion a year. Of course, that is you, my happy readers, who are paying for this incompetence via your taxes.

I have been reading about Scooby the therapy dog, who works at Mount St Catherine’s Primary School in Northern Ireland. Scooby is a Labradoodle and a much-loved member of staff, adored by teachers and pupils alike. The dog is available for all pupils who need him and loves to be petted and brushed, or just to sit with a pupil who is down. Scooby lives with one of the teachers, who takes him home every evening and brings him back in time to greet all the pupils at the gate as they arrive in the morning. But the interesting thing is that school attendance has leapt since Scooby arrived.

I knew that there are a lot of things that will get you a fine on London’s Underground, but sometimes I think they prosecute for the slightest thing. I have been reading about a man who entered Whitechapel Tube Station on roller skates and was stopped at the ticket barrier and told he was in breach of a byelaw. Rather than taking the simple solution and getting him to remove his skates, he had his details taken and was reported for prosecution. I see he has been fined, levied court costs and a victim’s surcharge, which came to £550 in total, for simply roller skating. How stupid, when he could have been just asked to take them off.

Next month Ryanair is doing away almost completely with paper boarding passes. Passengers are told that from 12 November they must check in online and have a digital boarding pass on their smartphone. There are two exceptions, passengers travelling from Morocco or Albania. They don’t give a reason, but I suspect they don’t have the technical ability in those countries. But what about people without a smartphone, or those with a flat phone battery or who lose their phones? Perhaps more importantly, what happens if the system goes down, like AWS last week, or gets hacked like M&S? I feel Ryanair could live to regret trying to save a few quid.

I was intrigued to see a Survation opinion poll on voting intentions for the upcoming May Scottishland Parliamentary election out at the weekend. The vote in Scottishland comes in two parts, the Constituency Vote and the Regional List. The poll has SNP leading on both parts, but Reform is second in both parts, having pushed Liebore down to third. Converted into seats it gives SNP 55 SMPs, Reform 22, Liebore 19, Tories 12, Limp Dumps 11 and the Greens 10. This would mean that the SNP could only form a minority government, even in coalition with the Greens, as they could be outvoted by a combined Reform, Liebore, Tories and Limp Dump grouping. Mind you, with more than six months until the vote and the rapid advance of Reform, this could easily change.

I read that the Isle of Man’s Steam Packet fast boat crossing from Liverpool on Sunday evening was beset with problems and badly delayed, not arriving on the island until 2 a.m. The weather was forecast to be bad, but within the fast craft Manannan’s operating limits of nine-foot waves. However, reports say actual waves were higher, resulting in carnage on board. Passengers were injured, cars damaged, ceiling panels fell, and one of the engines had to be shut down. I can only say I would have hated being the ship’s cat.

Wednesday

Good morning everyone, not only was it wet and cold when I went out this morning, it was dark. How I hate winter. So, our Home Secretary is crowing about how she has pulled out all the stops and deported the Epping sex pest. Well, it’s good that he is no longer in this country to attack our women and children, but has justice been done regarding the women he attacked? He had only served a tiny portion of his sentence and is now in Ethiopia, with £500 resettlement money in his pocket. Apparently, he kicked off last night, and they decided it was better to pay him the money to go. Will they pay me £500 if I kick off and threaten to scratch Legohead? Will he be jailed in Ethiopia? I doubt it. He will be free to attack local women and to use our money to come back here on a small boat.

So, the Government has decided to move some of the 32,000 illegal immigrants currently housed in hotels into accommodation on old military bases. The first two bases are in Inverness, Scotland, and Crowborough, East Sussex, and are expected to house a total of 900 immigrants in Nissan huts. Nine hundred is a pittance when 2,000 are arriving a week, sometimes a day. Well, if it works, it must be cheaper than the £145 a day it costs to keep a single illegal immigrant in a hotel. But it must be cheaper still to deport them.

It is beginning to look like Sad Dick, the Mayor of London, could be in trouble over his continual refusal to admit to there being rape gangs in the capital city. Both he and the Metropolitan Police, of which he is in charge of its governance, have been doing their best not to talk about and answer questions about gangs in London, but the press have been dragging out the facts by using Freedom of Information requests. Now the Met has had to admit it is reinvestigating some 9,000 cases. I’m not sure if this is 9,000 people or if multiple people are included in each case. In most of the cases that have gone to court, many men, and a few women, have been found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting multiple women and girls, so there could easily be ten times or more criminals involved. Of course, Sad Dick has no knowledge of all this police activity despite being in charge.

It has been revealed that the Covid Inquiry has already cost £192 million and is costing nearly £150,000 a day. It is said it will run until the middle of next year, and God knows how much it will have cost by then. But a bigger point is that we will have forgotten the horrors of lockdown and wearing useless face masks by the time it reports. Other countries have had their inquiries and reports, acted on them and forgotten them. We have only just started.

One of the Russian ‘shadow fleet’ of tankers blocked the Suez Canal for six hours yesterday. The 160,000 DWT vessel had loaded at Murmansk and was headed to China, last in a convoy of 19 vessels, when it went aground. The ship is understood to have suffered engine failure but was refloated after just six hours. You probably remember the Ever Given container ship blocked the canal for six days back in 2021 when it too was grounded. However, the Suez is not so busy these days, as many ships go right around Africa to avoid the Houthis’ attacks on shipping.

I am sorry to report that my favourite takeaway, KFC, is suffering a bit of a decline in its US sales. There has been a change in the US market, with customers now preferring boneless chicken and chicken sandwiches rather than the traditional ‘bone-in’ pieces offered by KFC. But KFC has just hit back with a big shake-up of its US offering by introducing more of what the Americans call ‘sandwiches’, but we would call chicken burgers, chicken nuggets and ‘chicken tenders’, which we would call goujons. Sales of traditional ‘bone-in’ have held up in the rest of the world, so the guys in the office are still OK getting an occasional Friday night couple of 10-piece buckets.

The American on-off and now back-on-again purchase of the E-7 Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning and Control Aircraft by the US military is causing the Democrats palpitations in the States. But it isn’t the fact that Trump has decided to spend money on replacing the ageing E3 fleet that has them annoyed, they have reluctantly agreed that it is necessary. What has upset them is that the first few American planes will take advantage of the line set up to convert the Boeing 737 into the RAF’s E-7s in Birmingham. That is ‘supporting the British at American taxpayers’ expense’, according to the Democrats. They forget we have paid to set up the line for our aircraft, and by taking advantage of our taxpayers’ money they are actually getting their first aircraft early and making use of our skilled workers.

Thursday

Hello folks, it had stopped raining and the sun was coming up when I went out this morning, but it was chilly again. More trouble for Liebore this morning with the Mail revealing that Robber Reeves had been renting out her house without the proper licence. It seems that in some areas of Southwark the council requires landlords to buy a licence to rent a house. OK, this is not normal, just a lefty council looking at a way to raise money, and I can understand her not knowing, but the letting agency she used should have. But in the end, ‘Ignorance of the law is no defence.’ She has written to tell Legohead about it and coughed up for the £900 licence.

This emerging story of a man being stabbed to death in a suburban street in Uxbridge is nasty on several levels. Two men were seen to be in a row in the street, and a passing dog walker tried to act as a peacemaker, only to be attacked and stabbed to death by one of the two men. The attacker has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, as he apparently also attacked the other man and a fourteen-year-old boy. But what has also emerged is that the arrested man is a 22-year-old Afghan national who arrived in the country in the back of a lorry and was granted ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain.’

Probably my favourite story of the day is that Steptoe, the Magic Grandpa, or whatever you wish to call him, is to appear in a pantomime. The raging lefty is to play the Wizard of Ozlington in a parody of The Wizard of Oz in something called The Wicked Witches. Apparently, he is going to be on film, so he won’t have to appear in person every night and can continue to represent ‘Your Party’ in Parliament. This shouldn’t be a pantomime. A farce is more like it.

Red Ed Millipede has finally admitted that wind turbines have been a disappointment and not worked out as he expected. So, they are reducing the amount of power they produce by 25%. His energy policy of focusing on renewables has proved an utter disaster. He still refuses to consider exploration drilling in the seas around our island, instead overseeing the import of oil from Norway from fields adjacent to our section of the North Sea. But perhaps worse is his refusal to allow fracking for gas in this country, where we have several shale gas fields. If you take just one, the one under Lincolnshire, there are 50 years of proven gas reserves for the whole country. What would exploiting that do to the sky-high cost of electricity in this country?

The latest rumour is that the OBR says we now have a £50 billion black hole in our national accounts. This is supposedly up from £20 billion at the last budget, when taxes went up in a ‘one-time event’ according to Robber Reeves, who repeatedly promised that she had fixed the foundations and would not have to come back for more money. But the Financial Times said it couldn’t see any black hole at all last year and that the government had simply invented it to raise money for its own projects like climate change, massive wage increases for train drivers and doctors, and housing illegal immigrants. So, in effect, Reeves’s budget last year has produced a £50 billion black hole. So, what is the answer? According to predictions, it is more of the same, more taxes. Something that was an utter failure last time and will only do the same thing again. Why can’t the government learn from its mistakes?

I hear that 8,232 asylum seekers have been arrested for working illegally in the last year in a crackdown by the authorities. But only 1,100 of them have been deported. Why are we so soft? The Home Secretary has gone on record saying if you break our laws you get deported. This is clearly not true, as only about one in eight were in this group. Not only is the government not doing what the people of Britain want, they are telling lies.

I see that the Army Training Camp in Crowborough, East Sussex, was considered by the Tories as a camp for illegal immigrants but dismissed as unsuitable. So, what has changed to make it suitable under Liebore? Well, it’s still the same camp for Army Cadets, nothing has changed physically, only the government’s desperate need to close migrant hotels to make it look like they are doing something and saving money.

Friday

Hi everyone, it’s back to the wet and cold this morning, not Larry weather. Today I read that the other leader of the ‘Your Party’ or whatever it is being called today, that Raisin woman, has declared that Nigel Farage is ‘literally Hitler’. What a stupid little girl. She seems to operate in the same realm as the Doom Goblin, they both have silly voices that drive me potty.

Earlier this week I heard that in the US they celebrated National Cats Day, and I hope all American cats had a lovely day with lots of Felix Chicken and cat treats. We don’t have a National Cats Day here in the UK. But we have a National Cat, namely me.

Do you remember the asylum seeker who was deported to France under the ‘one out, one in’ scheme who came back on a small boat? Our Home Secretary crowed about how he had been detained and would be deported again ‘immediately’. Well, I hear that is not the case, he is still here. The Government was fast enough to deport the Epping sex pest because it suited them and was easy, as we have a returns agreement with his native Ethiopia. But not this illegal immigrant. Why? Do they hope we have forgotten about him, or has he suddenly claimed asylum? When are we going to be told?

Further to yesterday’s news on wind turbines, I have heard a little more about the green insanity. It seems that a major problem is that the wind turbines only last for a maximum of 15 years in the middle of the North Sea, and probably only 10 years. But Red Ed, the Net Zero fanatic, is looking to hand out 20-year contracts in the current licensing round. Does this mean that we pay operators for producing nothing for five to ten years? This is money for old rope. Then there is the problem of what to do with the decommissioned turbines. But it is not just in the UK where people are waking up. I understand that Danish company Ørsted A/S, the world’s biggest offshore wind farm operator, is in dire financial trouble and is looking to raise £8 billion.

Boeing’s latest set of financial results reveal yet another delay with its 777X programme. It now won’t be available before 2027. It was originally due to be handed over to its first customer in 2020, so it’s amazing to see the plane still has a large backlog. It also took another $5 billion impairment over the jet, to add to the previously taken charges of a total $10 billion. I wonder if the plane will ever make money for Boeing.

I read that Airbus has at last managed to reduce its stock of engineless planes. Back in July they had 60 completed airframes that were waiting for engines to be delivered from the manufacturers. In the September numbers, this had been reduced to 31, and Airbus say there are some signs that more engines are being delivered, and they hope to have reduced their stock of gliders to zero by the end of the calendar year. Consequently, they have kept their target of producing 820 planes this year the same.

While on my favourite subject, me, I overheard something I didn’t want to hear this week. Apparently, the Government have created an official plan on how they will announce my death to my adoring public. They even have a codeword, like they had for the Queen. Do you remember ‘London Bridge has fallen’? Well, I have yet to hear what it is, I am all ears. Unlike the Queen, I have not been involved in the planning of my own funeral. But just in case Legohead is reading this diary, I would like to have a lying in state, followed by a service in Westminster Abbey, and to be buried in the Pets Cemetery in Hyde Park.

Saturday

Good morning people, being Saturday my feeder is always a bit later, so I didn’t bother to venture out until it was light, and the sun was out, but it was still chilly. I see Randy Andy is to be given a house to live in on the Sandringham Estate. At least this is an estate owned by King Jug Ears, so the taxpayer will not be supporting him. I also hear he isn’t expected to move until January. This is rather convenient for both King Jug Ears and William and Kate, who will be spending Christmas there, and Randy Andy isn’t invited.

The Office of Rail and Road has approved Virgin Trains’ application to use spare capacity at the Temple Meads Depot in East London, the only depot accessible from HS1. This does not mean that Virgin Trains will immediately start services through the Channel Tunnel, only that it is a big step on the way, as without this permission operating the service would be almost impossible. This means that Virgin is planning to start competing with Eurostar from London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam from 2030. But Virgin has other plans, to reinstate the weekly service directly to Euro Disney and is in talks to run a direct service to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. This would be important to the Virgin Group as they want to run European short-haul services and don’t have the slots at Heathrow. However, Virgin Atlantic is looking to work with Air France, who are based at CDG.

If you live in Texas, a recent court ruling may mean you can no longer buy Dr Pepper alongside Coca-Cola in many outlets. In Texas, Dr Pepper had a marketing agreement with Coca-Cola, which Dr Pepper was trying to end, hence the court case. The judge has ended the agreement, and Dr Pepper will now be free to do its own marketing as it wanted. What of Coca-Cola? Well, they have gone back to an old drink called Mr Pibb, which is a spicy cherry-flavoured, high-caffeine drink and is available nationwide in the US.

Excellent news for the Airbus wings factory in Wales. VietJet has firmed up the Memorandum of Understanding placed back in June and made a firm order for 100 Airbus A321neos. The A321 is the best-seller in the A320 family, with an outstanding order book of over 7,100 aircraft. But it was also good news for Rolls-Royce, who will be supplying 92 Trent 7000 engines for the 40 A350neos that VietJet has on order. A good week for the UK’s aerospace industry. A350 wings are also made in Broughton, North Wales.

A good week for the Airbus A350F, the upcoming freighter version of the A350-1000. Earlier, Air China Cargo announced six firm orders and four options for the aircraft. Now Korean Air has placed a firm order for seven. Korean already has an outstanding order for eight Boeing 777-8F, but the delivery of these planes seems to keep being pushed further and further back, so Korean has decided to order its rival that is actually being manufactured. The first A350F is nearing the end of its manufacture and is expected to fly this year, with delivery to the first customer late next year or early 2027, depending on it reaching certification. The Boeing 777-8F is currently known to be around two years behind the Airbus, but Boeing recently announced delivery of the first 777-9 passenger aircraft had been delayed another year, so the -8F will almost certainly follow.

The Dutch Government has a small problem in that not a single company has bid to build and operate offshore wind turbines in its latest bidding round. The Dutch Government no longer offers subsidies for wind turbines, and consequently, the builders and operators no longer find new ones profitable. Our Government claims that offshore wind is the cheapest of all electricity generation methods, but this seems to rather show what the anti-wind turbine people say, that without a subsidy, wind turbines are not cheap.

Portugal is reconsidering buying the F-35 as a replacement for its ageing F-16s. The plan was to replace the 30-year-old F-16 fleet with 27 F-35s. Portugal has been rethinking buying the F-35 mainly because of what Trump has said about NATO and the imposition of sanctions. Consequently, Airbus is pushing the Eurofighter Typhoon. Airbus owns 46% of the Eurofighter consortium, as it represents both Germany and Spain, but has signed an MOU with Portuguese aerospace companies to supply components in the event of an order.

That’s me done for the week, and it’s still beautifully sunny here in London this afternoon. It’s not so chilly out there in the sun, so I’m going to try a snooze on my favourite windowsill, which is in the sun. Of course, it will get dark early today as the clocks went back last weekend, much to my confusion over feeding times. Chat to you all next week.
 

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