Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Five

Monday

Good morning, my friends. Back to the old routine, a trip down the chilly garden before my Felix. The Robber Reeves house rental saga got a bit worse over the weekend when it emerged that she had lied in her versions of events. Firstly, she told Legohead that she had no idea that you needed a licence to rent out a house in the area her house was located in. Then it was the fault of the letting agency for not telling her. But an email about the need for a licence from the agency to her husband was revealed, so she passed the buck to her husband. However, the agency also sent the email to her. Now it seems she had initially approached a second agency about renting the house, and they had also told her personally that she needed a licence. It’s not the incident that gets them, it is the cover-up.

The stabbing on the train in Cambridgeshire was badly reported straight from the start. Why can’t the media get the simple details right? It makes you ask questions about everything they tell you. The first thing I heard was that the incident occurred on a service from Doncaster to London, but the service was from York to London. OK, it had stopped at Doncaster, but it had also stopped at Retford, Newark, Grantham and Peterborough. As usual, the authorities didn’t want to tell us anything about the man with the knife, even though an eyewitness told us he was black. Then there were nine people with life-threatening injuries, but four of them were released and went home. It wasn’t until 10:30 on Sunday morning that the police managed to announce that he was a black British citizen, which was about as much use as telling us that the Southport murderer was a Welsh choirboy.

Last week, much to the delight of The Guardian and Dale Vince, a team of academics at University College London published a paper claiming that wind-generated electricity has saved British consumers £104 billion since 2010. However, experts have thrown buckets of cold water over the report. Firstly, none of its authors have a background in wind generation, green power or even engineering. Two are from the geography department, and the third writer works for a hedge fund. But the biggest problem with the report is that it says in its own words, it “does not include all system costs”. In fact, it doesn’t include extensions to the grid to connect offshore wind farms to where the electricity is needed, storage systems to keep the lights on when the wind does not blow, and backups such as gas-fired power stations that will run only occasionally. It also misses the huge payments made to wind farm operators not to generate power at certain times. The paper also claims that part of the £104 billion comes from gas bills being lower than they might have been because of wind-generated electricity, something that is clearly ludicrous.

Mad Red Ed Millipede has proudly announced that we are giving, or have given away, a further £200 million we can’t afford, on climate change projects. £50 million went to Brazil to help build the infamous road through virgin jungle to get delegates from the airport to the climate change conference. Then we are spending another £50 million on condoms for the Congo, with the idea that fewer people will mean fewer trees cut down for firewood. But perhaps the most ridiculous is giving money to landlocked African nations to reduce plastic pollution in the oceans.

The Australian airline Qantas has long wanted to operate non-stop flights from Melbourne and Sydney to the likes of New York and London for what it calls Project Sunrise. But this is a huge distance, and Qantas had a few specific requirements. Among them were the need to carry sufficient passengers to make money, but to allow all classes of passengers to use the service. So Qantas asked for proposals from Airbus and Boeing for aircraft to meet their specifications. Boeing offered the Boeing 777-8, a smaller but longer-range version of the long-delayed 777-9, which is currently undergoing certification and is now expected in service in 2028, with the -8 two years behind. Airbus offered a version of its existing A350-1000, the -1000ULR (ultra-long range), a special design for Qantas. The ULR is the same as the -1000 but with additional fuel tanks, so it is a simple task to get certified and would be delivered in 2026. Guess which sensible choice Qantas ordered. You’re right, the Airbus A350-1000ULR, and non-stop services could well start next year.

Over 38,000 prisoners have now been released from prison early under the government’s early release scheme, but what effect has it had on reducing prison numbers? Well, the total number in prison has fallen by only 1,000. Why? Over 11,000 of those released have been recalled to prison, and more people are being sent to prison. Now I hear that one of those released has been charged with murder. As yet, the name of the released prisoner has not been made public, so I guess we will have to wait to find out exactly what has happened.

The man in charge of Disney Cruise Line’s private island, Castaway Cay, in the Bahamas has been arrested and charged with the rape and sexual assault of a 19-year-old girl cruiser who visited the island. Director Gursel Sahibas, 65, appeared in court and was released on $15,000 bail. He has been sacked by Disney, and it is reported he has fled to his native Liverpool but says he will return for the court case.

Tuesday

Hi folks, a bright and sunny but chilly morning when I went out for my constitutional. I wonder what Legohead will say about the latest BBC news, that they doctored a video to try to show the Donald inciting the crowd to attack the Capitol on Inauguration Day. On the unaltered video, he clearly tells the crowd to walk to the Capitol and peacefully support the Senators and Congressmen. But the clip they broadcast was made up of three different bits of the speech, some from an hour later. How can they get away with this blatant bit of bias?

Thirty-two-year-old Anthony Williams, the man who was arrested for the knife attack on the train passengers on Saturday evening, appeared in court yesterday lunchtime, where he was accused of ten counts of attempted murder and one of possessing a bladed weapon. He was also charged with one count of causing actual bodily harm, a broken nose to a custody officer. But as a bit of a surprise, he was also charged with additional counts of attempted murder and possessing a bladed weapon at a Docklands Light Railway station in London early on Saturday morning. All of this is a little strange, in that Williams lives in Peterborough and is understood to have got on the train when it stopped there. The police say they are investigating other related offences, so this tale has a long way to go yet.

I read an interesting little story over the weekend. Apparently, the recent increase in typhoons and hurricanes has been caused by increased sea temperatures. But the reason for the increase in water temperature has come from the water clean-up initiated by the green/climate change lobby. It seems that sea water has become clearer, and clear water takes heat from the sun more easily, and the warmer the water, the more likelihood that a hurricane develops. So, there you have it, the greenies are causing climate change.

In a survey of incidents of multiple stabbings across the country, there have only been ten cases where three or more people were attacked. But what is interesting is that, of those ten cases, only two were committed by white men, but six were committed by black men. It doesn’t say who committed the others. This rather supports the emphasis that police had on stopping a higher percentage of black people when conducting stop and searches. But here’s another statistic in favour of stop and searches which you may or may not like to use. Since Sad Dick came to power in London and banned stop and search, the number of violent incidents on the Tube has gone up from 11,000 a year to 23,000 a year.

If you have booked to go on a seven-day Norwegian Star cruise from Southampton departing on 27th September, I have some good news and some bad news for you. The cruise has been extended by three days and will now end in Lisbon on 7th October and will cost you no extra. The bad news is several new ports have been added, but the ship will no longer be visiting Oporto. It seems that the ship was due to go into dry dock at the end of the original cruise, but the shipyard can’t take the ship on that day due to ‘congestion’, and the docking has been moved back three days. Hard luck if you can’t get the extra three days off work.

I hear that there is a big hunt on down in the South West, where Frankie the Flamingo is missing from her home in Paradise Park in Hayle, Cornwall. Frankie is an unusual flamingo in that she is not the usual bright pink; in fact, she is mainly dapple grey, but she does have a pinkish head. Frankie and all her companion flamingos live in a high-walled courtyard where they roam free and don’t fly away because they have had their wings clipped. But somehow Frankie managed to take flight and was last seen flying over a local river. I wonder if, as winter approaches, she has just decided to fly south for the winter. I wouldn’t blame her.

This year Boxing Day falls on a Friday, and the Premier League has decided not to have its usual round of fixtures on that day. Instead, they are going to hold most of that week’s fixtures on the 27th and 28th, with only one match, Manchester United vs Newcastle, on Boxing Day. I know my scribe used to hate Boxing Day home fixtures because there were no trains to get him from the South Coast to London. Not that it has bothered him much more recently, when he has been on a Christmas cruise, as all of the matches were shown on board ship.

Wednesday

Good morning everyone. Well, it was another chilly morning when I went out. I am delighted that Legohead has disappeared to the COP in Brazil, it’s yet another chance to skip out on PMQs where, in recent weeks, he has suffered a bad mauling from Bad Enoch. I hear that the Tottenham Turnip is standing in. I’m rather looking forward to lamentable Lammy making a fool of himself.

Yesterday I told you that the Cambridgeshire police were saying they were investigating further cases related to Anthony Williams, the train stabber. More has emerged about these cases, and it seems the investigations are linked to him possibly being involved in attacking a 14-year-old boy and then waving a knife around in a barber’s shop. When this second incident was reported to the police, they didn’t attend but asked for CCTV to be uploaded to them. Then the same knifeman returned to the barber’s the following morning. Did the police miss three opportunities to arrest this knifeman?

I watched Robber Reeves’ much-heralded pre-budget speech yesterday, and what a waste of time. She spent 25 minutes telling the audience that everything in the economy was someone else’s fault. It was the Tories, it was Brexit, it was Reform, it was Russia for invading Ukraine, it was Trump tariffs. Just about the only person she didn’t blame was William the Conqueror. But after this tale of woe, what is she going to do about it? Well, after nearly half an hour of waffle, I am none the wiser.

I see the Christmas TV and radio advertisements have started being played a mere two months before the big day. Dawn French is back for M&S, and the BFG is back for Sainsbury’s. But this year’s important news is that Kevin the Carrot has got engaged. OK, it’s not real, but it does rather stretch the imagination. Kevin has been about a few Christmases now and should at least be an old and wrinkled carrot, if not mouldy. But he is portrayed as a young carrot. I wonder if Kevin gets eaten each Christmas and what we see the next year is a pretend Kevin the Carrot.

Strangely, the media seem to have missed out on reporting that the French taxi driver accused of stealing money and luggage from the Tottenham Turnip has been acquitted and the case thrown out. The case revolved around the Turnip taking a pre-booked taxi to a skiing break in France after an official visit to Italy. The case revolved around the taxi driver asking for about £500 on top of the fee he had been paid by the booking service to make up the fare. According to the driver, the Turnip became abusive and threatened violence, so he drove off and handed the luggage in at a local police station. Apparently, there was a lack of evidence of theft.

Do you remember me telling you about the cars trapped in the stacking car park in London’s Rathbone Square, near Oxford Street, after the stacker broke down? The buck over responsibility was passed around the owner, the operator, the stacker maker, and the maintenance company for months after the machine had been fixed, resulting in the vehicles being held for several extra months. The vehicles were eventually released last April, but now, 28 months after the stacker first broke down, not a single one of the vehicle owners has received a penny in compensation. I wonder how long it will be before the owners club together and launch a class action.

While talking about compensation, I hear that Alan Bates, the leader of the sub-postmasters who were wrongly accused of stealing money from the Post Office, has finally agreed a compensation deal. Over the years, what he was being offered to settle has slowly crept up. His first offer is reported to have been just one sixth of his claim, the second offer was about a third of the claim, and that had more recently gone up to just under half of the claim. Now I hear he has settled for a seven-figure amount. So that means at least £1 million, but Sky News says it is nearer £10 million. Well, I say good luck to him and all those other sub-postmasters who are waiting for a settlement.

Thursday

Hello folks, grey this morning and a little damp first thing, but the air is a lot warmer and the forecast for later is sunshine. I saw some snips on the TV yesterday from Prince William in Brazil. Fortunately, Legohead and Sad Dick were not to be seen. But it tickled me; instead of a red carpet, he was on a green carpet (I wonder how much that cost). And who was with William? Only Kylie Minogue, who was looking very old and surprisingly small.

Yesterday’s PMQs was quite enlightening. With Legohead away overseas again, it was the Tottenham Turnip up for the Government and James Cartlidge was up for the Opposition. On at least five occasions the Turnip was asked about his knowledge of prisoners released from prison by accident since the Epping child molester. The Turnip just wouldn’t answer the question, no matter how hard Cartlidge tried. But it seemed the Tories knew about an event that the Turnip didn’t want to talk about. Immediately after PMQs it emerged that an Egyptian man, another sex offender, had been wrongly released from Wandsworth, and the Turnip had been told last night. But the equally awful thing here is that the Prison Service only told the police six days after the release. It was a pleasure to see Lammy scuttling out of Parliament when Cartlidge raised a point of order.

Eight months ago, Wes Streeting announced the abolition of the quango NHS England to save money by eliminating duplication. But right now, not a single pound has been saved. In fact, I hear the wage bill has actually gone up. But as I hear it, there was supposed to be a voluntary redundancy scheme for employees who didn’t transfer over to the Department of Health, but all this time in and nothing is happening. The story I hear is that the Treasury is withholding the £1.2 billion needed for the redundancy fund until Streeting agrees to increase the money paid by the NHS for American drugs, as agreed with Trump.

This morning, I hear of another sub-postmaster who has agreed a settlement with the Post Office. This time it is 92-year-old Betty Brown, who, along with her husband, used over £50,000 from their savings to try to balance the books messed up by the Horizon computer system. Once again, the Post Office have made a series of derisory offers which were all turned down for various reasons, including understating the money she made from the branch and downgrading a specialist’s medical diagnosis. She was one of the sub-postmasters who declined the £75,000 fixed payment and pursued her own settlement. It has not been revealed how much she has settled for, but you can bet it was well over the fixed £75,000.

I see that Tommy Robinson has had the case against him for not giving the police the passcode to his mobile phone dismissed. Under the Terrorism Act, police are entitled to ask for it in terrorism cases. But Robinson was stopped at Dover, driving a friend’s silver Bentley, and was found to have several thousand pounds in cash in the car. The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that the original stop was probably illegal, as it appeared that the grounds for stopping Robinson were simply that it was Tommy Robinson, making the search illegal and hence anything found unusable.

Last month, Microsoft ended support for Windows 10 and is now fully behind Windows 11. Interestingly, I hear that the result has not been quite what Microsoft wanted, an uptick in sales of Windows 11. Instead, the result has been an increase in sales of Apple Macs. I suspect Apple are more than happy with this result. I know my scribe moved from a Windows 10 PC to a MacBook a couple of years ago and is more than happy to have done so.

Another thing has emerged after PMQs, the Tottenham Turnip was about the only person in the Chamber not to be wearing a Remembrance Day poppy. A statement from his department explained that it was a brand-new suit and he hadn’t transferred the poppy. I say poppycock. Oh, and later yesterday afternoon it was announced that Wandsworth had released yet another prisoner. This one had been in court on Monday, being sentenced to 45 months in prison, and was released accidentally the same afternoon. Can Lammy survive, as he clearly misled the House and can’t do the job?

Friday

Hi everyone, back to rain this morning when I went out for my constitutional. I do so hate getting my fur wet. The Tottenham Turnip’s Justice Department has come out with all sorts of excuses for him not answering the opposition’s questions at yesterday’s PMQs, but really, they are pathetic. But when Mr Squeaker asked him to return to Parliament to make a statement, he refused on the grounds that it was likely to be “career-ending”.

Well, I see there is a little bit of good news. One of the two criminals accidentally released from Wandsworth is back inside. But in my opinion, it was the wrong one. The British man who had been sentenced to 45 months handed himself in. I wonder what he will be charged with; it can hardly be escaping from prison when he was just let go.

It has emerged that the Chancellor is planning a nasty little surprise for EV owners in the budget. The word is that Robber Reeves intends to introduce a 3p-a-mile charge on EVs in the budget. The idea is that now there are over one million EVs on the road, they are missing out on a whole load of fuel tax, and this is a way of recovering some of the money. When the government was first pushing EVs, some of the bonuses were the savings on fuel, an EV grant and the zero-rated road tax, offsetting the high cost of the EV. EV buyers have already lost the grant (now reintroduced on cheaper models) and now must pay road tax. Now they are to pay a road usage fee. But the worst bit is that it is rumoured you will have to estimate how many miles you are going to drive in a year and pay the government in advance, even if the miles driven are not in the UK.

While on the subject of green things, I hear that early adopters of heat pumps are getting a shock when their current one dies of old age and needs replacing. At the moment, you can get up to £7,500 off the cost of an air source or ground source heat pump. Obviously, the actual cost you end up paying depends on whether you choose an air or ground system, the size of your home and how well insulated it already is. But I hear a three-bedroom semi is likely to cost around £8,000 after the grant for an air source system. The problem is that the grant is only available once, and when your 10- or 15-year-old heat pump needs replacing, you will be paying out another £7,500 for a new pump. Compare that to £1,000 for a new gas boiler.

Up in Scottishland, I hear that a Limp Dump councillor has just been suspended from the Highland Council for the second time this year. Earlier this year, he was suspended when the Standards Commission found that he was “disrespectful” towards the chair and committee of a local community group. This time, the Standards Commission suspended him for two months when Michael Baird was on a committee and failed to reveal that he was a friend of an applicant for a council grant for funds and had written him a letter of support. Surely it’s time for the Limp Dumps to dump this man.

I am delighted to see that BT/EE, Virgin Media O2, Vodafone, Three, Tesco Mobile, TalkTalk and Sky have got together and agreed to introduce technology that will intercept and block calls from foreign scam call centres that appear to have originated from a UK phone number. The only problem is that it is going to take a year for them all to have got the technology in place. When Virgin admit that they intercept 50 million scam calls a month, it makes you wonder how many they don’t intercept.

In Oxford, they have introduced a trial congestion charge scheme. Unlike other schemes that cover an area, like a city centre, and have cameras to control who enters the area and charge them, Oxford has put cameras on five fixed points and is charging people who simply pass one of these cameras. But it is supposed to be possible to get to places without passing a camera. However, it is impossible to get to Oxford’s main railway station without passing a camera. How stupid, when people are being encouraged to travel by train.

Saturday

Good morning peeps, it’s a dry and sunny one for a change, but it was rather damp from a heavy dew when I went out. There’s hardly a day goes by without me posting bad news for Legohead. Today it’s Liebore dropping to fourth in an opinion poll behind Reform, Greens and the Tories. It is now 158 opinion polls since Liebore was in the lead, and that was by 1% back in April.

More problems for Legohead. His Secretary for Media, Culture and Sport, Lisa Nandy, has admitted that the new Football Regulator, whom she appointed, had contributed to her leadership campaign. Of course, she wrote to Legohead to say it was all above board and she was sorry. He wrote back immediately, saying nothing to see here and accepting her apology. However, it has since emerged that the same man has contributed £3,000 to Legohead.

The BBC has dropped itself in it once again. This time it has censured BBC News Channel newsreader Martine Croxall. Her crime was to change the script on the teleprompter, so when she read a report last summer from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine that said 600 people were going to die from heat last summer, the worst affected would be ‘pensioners and pregnant people’, she had the audacity to correct it to ‘pregnant women’. Interestingly, the original report referred to ‘pregnant women’, and the BBC had altered ‘women’ to ‘people’. This just shows where our state broadcaster stands.

The owner of Sky TV, Comcast, is in talks to buy ITV’s free-to-air TV stations and ITVX. However, the deal, said to be worth around £1.6 billion, does not include its programme-making business, ITV Studios. With advertising across the whole of Europe falling, the joint company would have around 80% of the British TV advertising market. For that reason, the Monopolies Commission might not like the idea of such a huge undertaking. I’m not sure which I watch less, ITV or BBC.

Rolls-Royce has announced that from now the engines it delivers for the Boeing 787 will be a new build standard called the Trent 1000XE (Ten Enhanced). The new engine has a time on wing that has been doubled by redesigning the high-pressure turbine blades to have 40% more cooling. Blades operate in a very hot environment and are cooled by colder air being passed from the blade hub internally through passageways in them and then out to the surface through tiny holes. The longer between having to remove the engine from the wing for maintenance, the better, as it makes it cheaper to operate. Other improvements are updates to the combustion system, fuel spray nozzles, and engine electronic controller software. I understand that other improvements will be released next year that add another 30% to on-wing time.

An interesting survey of 800 cruise ship passengers has thrown up some interesting results. Some 86.3% said that after going on a cruise they no longer thought of it as something for old people. And 58.3% said that cruises could be improved by offering all-inclusive pricing and packages. As a cat, I have never been on a cruise and almost certainly never will, but I can see why you humans would like to pay up front and have nothing else to pay for — accommodation, food, drink, entertainment and excursions. I understand that most cruises already include accommodation, food and entertainment but charge extra for drinks and excursions. I suspect that cruise operators fear that to offer an all-inclusive product would push the initial cost up and put people off.

Last Tuesday, a UPS cargo jet burst into flames as it took off from Louisville Airport in Kentucky and crashed into buildings. The plane was full of 38,000 gallons of fuel as it was carrying a full load of cargo to Hawaii. Initial reports say an engine burst into flames and fell off the wing, spilling burning fuel. I now hear that UPS has grounded its fleet of MD-11 three-engined jets while the investigation takes place. They have been joined by FedEx, who operate the same plane. The MD-11 is an old design of aircraft and has long been withdrawn from passenger service. Perhaps it’s time to withdraw it from freight services too.

That’s me done for the week, and it’s another beautiful sunny day here in London this afternoon. Of course, it’s not a summer’s day, but I think, just like last Saturday, it’s decent enough for me to nap on the windowsill. Chat to you all next week.
 

© WorthingGooner 2025