Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Eight

Monday

Good morning my friends, and welcome to another week of my musings. Bright and sunny this morning, but it is colder than yesterday. So Legohead thinks that being critical of Robber Reeves is sexist. Well, I have news for him. Being critical of her is not sexist, it is just plain right. She claims to be a trained economist, but Bozzie was supposed to have a trained dog, but it peed all over the No 11 flat. I wonder how well she has been trained.

I had to laugh when I read that Legohead was announcing that Britain had signed a £4 billion deal with Indonesia at the G20. As I read a bit more it became apparent that it was really Babcock International who had struck the deal with Indonesia. Babcock already has a deal with Indonesia to help them build two Arrowhead 140 frigates, and this deal is for Babcock to help expand the Indonesian maritime industry and to help them construct 1,000 fishing boats. This project should create 1,000 jobs at Babcock, mostly at Rosyth. But a little bit deeper in the Babcock statement it implies that they are talking to Indonesia about increasing the frigate order. Also, in Babcock’s six month report that was released last Friday, they stated that they were in talks with three other countries to build Arrowhead 140 frigates. How typical of Legohead, trying to steal the glory.

I saw a story at the weekend that said that Boeing has already produced 27 × 777-9 aircraft. They are flying four in the type certification programme, and the other 23 are sitting on an airport, engineless and sealed up against moisture. Engineers board them regularly and check them out to ensure that everything is OK. So why are Boeing manufacturing so many planes before they are certified, risking having something crop up and the planes having to be modified? The answer is simple, money. Boeing is something like five years late with its 777 project, a lot of it caused by a faulty engine pylon that had to be redesigned. The production line was ready, and engineers trained, so it was a question of starting production on a slow cycle or mothballing the line and laying off the staff. Starting the line was cheaper. The only problem now is the planes they have built are pre production models and will have to be sold at a discount.

Today I have a ‘you couldn’t make it up’ story for you. A street preacher was arrested for saying ‘God bless you’ to someone. Apparently after a single phone complaint, the police handcuffed him, and he was charged with incitement. However, after a six day trial he was found not guilty by a jury after just 90 minutes, and that included their lunch break. Why on earth is saying ‘God bless you’ considered incitement, could he have said it to a Muslim? But every week Muslims march through our streets shouting ‘Allah Akbar’, but they do not get arrested for incitement.

At the end of last week there was a huge fuss about Ukraine signing a memorandum of understanding with France to buy 100 Dassault Rafael jet fighters. This would be a huge leg up for the Ukrainian Air Force, as this is a proven fighter aircraft and comes with the MBNA, beyond visual range, Meteor missile, which is reputed to be very good. But what seems to have slipped below the radar in the same announcement from the French was a firm order for 55 new electric railway locomotives for £415 million. These are heavy freight locomotives made by Alstom. These TRAXX, dual voltage locomotives are to be built in Belfort, France, and supposedly will revolutionise Ukrainian freight services when they arrive.

On Friday, the last day of the Dubai Air Show, there was a nasty crash of an Indian Air Force Tejas fighter plane, killing the IAF pilot when it pancaked into the ground. The Tejas is a 4.5 generation plane made by HAL in India with an American engine. I understand that the IAF has around 40 Mk 1 delta wing jets in service and have ordered another two batches of Mk 1A aircraft (83 and 97). The Mk 2 is under development. The Indians have great hopes for exporting the plane but have so far failed to land a single order despite it being very cheap. This accident will put a halt to any overseas sales before the cause is discovered.

I had to laugh at the latest tweet by Tory Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake, in which he has compared the new black and gold Reform Party badge with the medal given by Nazis to the first 200 members of the Nazi Party. When you look at the two, the only thing they have in common is that they are both circular and have some black and gold on them. Is there not an internet rule, Godwin’s Rule, that says in an argument or Twitter spat, the first one to imply the other is a Nazi loses the argument? Hollinrake, you lose.

Tuesday

Hi folks, it was a tiny bit warmer when I popped out this morning and at least it wasn’t raining. I saw some of the Commons Committee questioning the BBC big wigs on an office TV yesterday. The BBC lot probably think they came over well, but I thought they were an arrogant shower. They made another one of those tepid apologies over the ‘Trump Tapes’, once again calling it a ‘mistake’. A mistake is something you do by accident, and this was clearly deliberate. Then when discussing if they were biased, one said he had never agreed on a single thing the Donald has done, so they are clearly biased.

What is this I hear about asylum seekers being kept in an old Army camp and being treated to all sorts of extras on top of three square meals a day, hot water and a bed. I hear of free health care, free dental care, English lessons, football machines, art lessons, karaoke machines and trips to Premier League football matches. Then I hear that at one camp the Army Cadets had to be moved out because it was considered the female cadets wouldn’t be safe.

Saudi Arabia has four state airlines, Saudia which has been the main carrier for many years, Flynas, Flyadeal and the newcomer Riyadh Air that started operations only in the last few months. Now I hear that Saudi Arabia is planning to establish another three carriers. One will be a scheduled carrier based in the city of Dammam at the King Fahd International Airport. It will have a fleet of 45 aircraft and fly on 24 domestic and 57 international routes. The second airline will be based in the city of Medina and target religious tourism. At the moment religious tourists fly to Jeddah and then travel on to Medina by high speed train. The new airline will allow them to fly in directly. No details have been announced of the third airline. In addition, no details of what aircraft they will use has been announced, but expect the usual Airbus vs Boeing battle.

Air India has recently discovered that it had an old Boeing 737-200 stored in a remote corner of Kolkata Airport. The airline via its predecessor airline first purchased the plane as new from Boeing in September 1982 when it was delivered to Indian Airlines, who were merged into Air India. In 1998 it was moved to Air India Regional where it flew until 2007. It was then converted into a freighter and operated by Air India for the Indian Post for a short while before being preserved as a restaurant in 2019. Air India seem to have forgotten that they owned the plane and it wasn’t initially recorded as an asset when the Indian Government sold Air India to TATA Group. When it was realised it was owned by Air India the plane was put on a low loader and sent to Bengaluru where it will be used to train engineers.

Do you remember a few years back when a group of the top European football teams were on the brink of leaving their national leagues and setting up a European Super League. They were threatened with expulsion from UEFA if they proceeded to, and even the U.K. government got involved threatening the U.K. clubs who were involved. I hear the whole thing has moved on and A22, the management company that was to run the ESL, has won a series of court cases against UEFA and the planned league would now appear to be completely within the UEFA rules, and A22 has written to UEFA giving them eight weeks to ratify the competition. The one big difference between this competition and the current UEFA competitions like the Champions League is it would be streamed free to air supported by advertising. There would also be a subscription version with no advertising. In Spain, Real Madrid, one of the few clubs to still openly support A22, is talking about suing UEFA for loss of what it could have earned if the new ‘Unify League’ had been allowed instead of UEFA saying no, a mere €4.5 billion. This could be fun.

The news has come out that ‘luxury’ cars are to be removed from the list of those made available on the Motability Scheme. The scheme is said to be responsible for the sale of 150,000 new cars in Britain every year and is supposed to allow those receiving Personal Independence Payments basic transport. But in recent years recipients have been able to sacrifice more of their PIP payments to upgrade to the likes of a Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Lexus or Alfa Romeo. I hear that this is to stop immediately, and the aim is to at least double the amount of British made cars supplied from the current 7%. This can’t say that the cars supplied should be 100% British made unless there is a very good reason for an import.

My scribe has brought me a story about his local council Worthing. It seems that a second Conservative councillor has quit the party and joined Reform UK. Under the council rules two members means a party they can officially register as a ‘Group’. On the council a ‘Group’ gets extra recognition like places on committees and precedence in being invited to speak in debates. I understand that one of the defectors will be the Reform Group leader and the other the deputy leader. It is only a matter of time before others join them.

Wednesday

Good morning everyone, it is still cold outside but I understand warmer air is on the way for tomorrow, but it will be wet. It is budget day today and Robber Reeve is coming for your money according to the media. She has locked herself away in Number 11, just popping out to regularly float an idea and see it either sunk by the city or the Liebore back benchers. I hear she has managed to increase the size of the black hole by last year’s inept budget, so I expect it only to get worse. How long does she have in the job.

Interesting news coming out of France. It seems that they have been tentatively looking for white ‘natural’ hydrogen and have hit it big. An exploration well has hit a pocket of hydrogen at a depth of 1,250 metres under Lorraine. Initial results say the formation containing the gas goes down to 4,000 metres and reaches from Bar-le-Duc to Metz, including Folschviller and Pontpierre. The gases flowing contain 20% hydrogen and the current estimates say there are 46 million tonnes of hydrogen to be recovered. This is a vast amount of the gas as hydrogen weighs 0.082 kilogram per cubic metre. Mind you I bet that if we found a similar pool of gas in the U.K. Ed Millipede would have it filled with concrete and a wind turbine built on top of it.

In Hove they were having a problem with children hanging about in the lobby of a block of council flats smoking and drinking. Consequently the council changed the intercom access to the flat so that it was only open to tradesmen between 9 am and 1 pm. Unfortunately this meant that nobody in the flats was getting any post delivered as the post for the block does not arrive until 3:30 pm most days. Residents complained to the council who said they could not change the access time unless every resident agreed. However, after the local paper got involved the intercom now admits people between 9 am and 5 pm.

The nation’s highest ‘ice rink’ has opened for the winter season on top of the Bussey Building in Peckham, south London. It is said to have great views and even a heated snack bar selling pizza and hot chocolate. But customers are not happy after paying £14 per person for a skating session, because there is one essential thing missing. There is no ice. Apparently this is because you skate on an artificial ice surface which according to the company running the rink is better because it is lighter, warmer and better for the environment as it does not need to freeze water. It seems the customers do not agree as many have been demanding a refund as what is sold as an ice rink is no such thing.

International airlines have cancelled all flights to and over Haiti. This is because several of them have been shot at and at least one hit by fire from the ground while trying to land at Port au Prince airport. It seems a battle has been going on between the government and rebels for possession of the airport. I wonder how this will affect the Dominican Republic who share the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

I am not sure how serious the chance of it coming true, but I hear that an investigative journalist and the co founder of ‘Looking for Growth’ have come up with the idea of building a new 1 million person ‘Forest City’ on 45,000 acres between Newmarket and Haverhill. But it is the plan to construct the city from wood that I find ridiculous. I hear the inventors want to have a city the size of Bristol, with a 6G network and a multi line tram and metro system, powered by solar and small modular reactors and to be surrounded by 12,000 acres of deciduous woodland. But it is the idea to construct wooden skyscrapers housing 1,000,000 people in 400,000 homes I find plain daft. The last time we had a wooden city in the U.K. it was destroyed by the Great Fire of London.

Apparently the recent retirement of Windows 10 and the attempt by Microsoft to get the users to migrate to Windows 11 for free is not going very well. In the last month an unprecedented 1,000,000 people have downloaded the Linux operating system Zorin. The numbers come from telemetry that also reports that 78% of those download requests came from Windows computers. Interestingly the Zorin operating system still lets you run the likes of Office 365, Teams and Google Docs.

Thursday

Hello folks, well it is warmer this morning, but damp. I have said it before, I hate winter. It was budget day yesterday and as usual it was a black day for most people in this country. The only ones doing OK from the budget were those on benefits and those with more than two children. I hear the surcharge on high value homes was originally going to be set at £1.5 million, but it was changed to accommodate Legohead and the Tottenham Turnip who both own houses valued over £1.5 million but below the £2.0 million set in the budget.

I am reluctant to say it, but I really enjoyed Bad Enoch’s reply to Robber Reeves’ budget speech. Of late she seems to have improved at PMQs, but she was on top form in her reply yesterday. I guess it helped her speech writers that the OBR report on the budget was leaked 30 minutes before the Robber stood up, but it still had to be delivered. What was interesting was that it shut up the government benches.

News coming to me from the United States is that they have cancelled their Constellation Class Frigate programme. The Yanks took ages to choose their next frigate and after an international competition chose the Fincantieri FREMM to be built in the US. But there the problems began. The tendered ship was 85% the same as the frigate being built in Europe, but the Yanks wanted to make a few minor modifications. The changes have included making the class 30 feet longer, completely changing the superstructure, fitting US weapons and US electronic systems. This redesign has taken three years and the build of the first two ships in the class is even more delayed. Consequently the two ships under construction will be finished and the following four cancelled. The Yanks are now looking for a ‘quicker solution’. That is OK if they do not mess about with the chosen design again.

In the small German town of Kempten, a bank became suspicious when lots of coins were being paid into an account and a money laundering investigation was launched. The result has been the discovery that the town’s parking inspector was embezzling money from the town’s parking meters. It seems he was skimming the meters and paying the coins into his wife’s bank accounts. The man is now facing 720 cases of theft and his wife 720 cases of aiding and abetting. It is believed they took over €1 million. I must say I am surprised the town never noticed the fall in revenue.

In Cambridgeshire the Cambridge City Council have just sacked a worker for gross misconduct after they falsified a document and cost the council £93,000 in a scam. The council received an email from a subcontractor telling them that they had changed their bank and asking them to make payments into a new account. The council have a written procedure for this which involves working through several steps, one of which is phoning the company’s accounts department to confirm the change. Each step is recorded on a document. Sometime later the company queried why they had not been paid and the scam emerged, including the fact that the employee had signed off on phoning the company when they had not. It was now too late to recover the money as the scammer had withdrawn it and skipped abroad.

Back on the 11th of November a pool of fuel oil was spotted in a ditch on a blueberry farm between the Washington towns of Everett and Snohomish. It was quickly realised that the oil was leaking from the Olympic Pipeline operated by BP. The pipeline is actually two pipelines, a 20” and a 16”, and both were immediately shut down causing problems for the states of Washington and Oregon as the lines carry gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products to both states. The state of Oregon was hit particularly hard as the pipelines carry 90% of its transportation fuel. Well, the good news is that two weeks later BP have found the leak in the 20” pipe and the 16” has been reopened. However, BP are said to be still working on a fix.

Do you remember how back in the summer a power surge caused by intermittent electricity supply from wind turbines crashed the grid in Spain and Portugal. I now learn that Airbus was on the verge of a complete production shutdown in Europe. The crash killed the power supply to its central data centre in Madrid and it seamlessly switched over to its diesel generators. The only problem was they only had a limited supply of diesel and could not get any more because the supplier was swamped with similar desperate companies and were themselves suffering from the power cut. Fortunately the power came back about an hour before the diesel ran out. I wonder if they now have more on site storage.

Friday

Hi everyone, it has been raining overnight but had stopped when I went out. Another lot of bad news for Legohead this morning. It seems Liebore have lost 53,000 asylum seekers, how can that happen. Well, I think it is fairly easy to understand when you realise that most of the cabinet are in favour of open borders. But it gets worse when it is revealed that they have also let 700 criminals awaiting deportation abscond and this only emerged thanks to a ‘freedom of information’ request.

The Franco German ‘Future Combat Air System’, a fifth generation fighter aircraft project being developed by Dassault and Airbus with minor Spanish input, is on the point of collapse. The problem that seems to be hard to settle seems to be the usual one when anyone gets into bed with France on an aircraft project, the French want design leadership and the majority of the work. Exactly the same thing happened with the Eurofighter, until the French withdrew to do their own thing. This time the Germans keep telling the French to stick to the original agreement, but the French do not want to. I can see one or the other withdrawing from the agreement very soon now.

The U.K. order for 48 Lockheed F-35B Lightening jet fighters was supposed to be completed with the final seven being delivered by the end of this year. Now I hear that four of the jets will not be arriving until March next year. So we will not have the full complement of four squadrons available as planned. We have also committed to buying 12 F-35A fighters to carry nuclear weapons, supplied by the US, as the F-35B is incapable of carrying them. But are we to be compensated for the late delivery, are we hell.

So, the budget announced that the DLR is to be extended to serve Thamesmead via a new tunnel under the river Thames. Funding is to come from Transport for London and the Greater London Authority, by borrowing. But TfL is run by the GLA all under Sad Dick who is always looking for more money. The extension will come off the line that serves the City Airport and Canary Wharf before looping round and diving under the river. This should be handy for people living in Thamesmead. Robber Reeves says it will bring 25,000 new homes to Thamesmead, 10,000 new jobs and is expected to cost £1.8 billion. I expect you can double that costing.

The American bank J P Morgan want to build a new 3 million sq. ft tower block in Canary Wharf for its UK headquarters. The building will house 12,000 employees and is currently estimated to cost £3 billion. JPMorgan Chase has 13,000 employees in London in a building in Canary Wharf and one in Victoria. The plan is to retain the one in Canary Wharf for the six years while the new one is being constructed and fitted out. Of course, all this is subject to planning permission.

I hear that Chelsea FC have a new problem. For years it has been obvious that they need a larger stadium. London rivals Arsenal, Tottenham and West Ham have all bit the bullet and moved into bigger venues. In fact, Arsenal is even looking at expanding their 60,000 capacity stadium to 80,000. But Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge only has a 40,000 capacity so loses out on ticket sales compared to the other London clubs. They have been developing plans for some time now and one that has been favoured by the club has been building a new stadium on the old Earls Court exhibition hall site. This possibility collapsed on Wednesday evening when the council approved planning permission for an alternative scheme that includes a mix of new homes, retail and hospitality, and workplaces. It is back to the drawing board for Chelsea. Could they now have to redevelop on their existing site even if they must move to somewhere like Wembley while work takes place.

I was intrigued to read that the latest customer to acquire the Airbus A321XLR is not an airline. The Royal New Zealand Airforce has just leased two of the planes from the Air Lease Corporation. The RNZA has been operating a pair of Boeing 757s for many years, and the time has come for them to be retired. The plane has not been manufactured since 2004, so New Zealand planes are at least 21 years old. The A321XLR has been designed as a replacement for the 757 and has a long range, a much reduced fuel burn and something like twice the cargo load. The RNZA regularly used their 757s for disaster aid in the region so the extra cargo load should be handy.

Saturday

Morning my friends, dark, wet and horrible this morning. This morning the government is in deeper trouble than ever. The OBR wrote to MPs yesterday telling them that they told the Chancellor that the economy was in a better condition than expected and that there was no black hole. Robber Reeves then lied to the nation telling us in her ‘emergency speech’ two weeks before the budget that there was a £22 billion black hole and we were in for a tough budget. Can Reeves cling on to her job. Well, this cat says she should go, but she will not, because if she goes Legohead will come under immense pressure to go and he will protect her.

So Liebore has decided to change its employments rights bill. It hit a wall of complaints from employers over its plan to give everyone employment rights from the first day of employment. The current law means that rights do not start until someone has been employed for 24 months for unfair dismissal. But now it looks like unfair dismissal will not kick in for six months. The unions are not happy.

Tucked away in the budget was a slight change of policy on North Sea gas and oil which I bet was not approved of by Mad Red Ed Millipede. The complete ban on new exploration has been scrapped. Instead, if someone is already extracting oil or gas from a field, they will be allowed to look for new deposits next to the existing field. No mention of how close the new well must be, but I wonder if this is a way to get around some of the operators who say they have large deposits next to existing ones which they could process through existing facilities.

I was not really aware, but it seems that the design of UK passports is updated every five years. The last update was in 2020 when we dumped the EU burgundy and returned to the traditional dark blue. The next version comes out next month and the most noticeable thing is the change of crest on the front cover from the old Queen’s one to King Charles’ crest, but the most noticeable thing is that the lion and the unicorn are a bit smaller. Inside, the geometric images on the pages are changing to watermark style marks that represent the Giants Causeway, Ben Nevis, Lake Windermere and Three Cliffs Bay in Wales. If you have just renewed your passport, hard luck.

Last week the first standalone plug-in box for the Freely TV service went on sale in the U.K. for £99. If you have problems with your Freeview signal but have a decent internet connection, this could be a product to buy. But I am sorry to have to break the news to you that the Netgem Pleio box sold out on the same day that it went on sale at Amazon, the only place you can buy it. However, more stock is expected soon and there will also be boxes from several makers on sale soon. So keep your eyes peeled if you want one.

Last week I told you about FlyDubai ordering 150 Airbus A321XLR jets. Until then FlyDubai have been an all Boeing airline and had a fleet of 97 Boeing 737s, a mix of brand new 737 Max 8 and older 737-800s. But this gave FlyDubai a bit of a problem, they have a much shorter range than the A321XLR, up to 1,000 miles less. The Boeing 737 Max is based on a very old design and has already been stretched to the maximum. Any operator of single aisle planes who wants a long range now only has one choice of aircraft. Boeing has long talked of a Boeing 797 that will relieve the problem, but it is many years away. In the meantime Airbus will be happy to take in the orders.

England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have made a joint bid for the 2035 Women’s World Cup. They have put forward a short list of 22 stadiums, with 16 in England, three in Wales, two in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland. The 2031 Women’s World Cup requires 15 stadiums, so the chances are the list will be cut back to a similar number. But that is hardly surprising as the list put forward includes several stadiums that are yet to be built and one or two that do not meet the minimum FIFA standards, including Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge. However, I see Wembley is on the list so if we are granted the tournament I guess it is a certainty for the final. At the moment we are the only bidders and the award is to be made next year.

That is me finished for yet another week and it is still wet and horrible here in London this lunchtime and it does not look like stopping raining. Legohead has gone to Chequers this weekend so it is nice and quiet here. I have already checked it out and Legohead’s bedroom door is shut so I will have to find somewhere else to snooze this afternoon. Maybe even my own cat basket, it is right by a radiator which is rather nice. I can curl up in peace until my feeder turns up with my tea. Chat to you all next week.
 

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