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

Monday

Good morning, my friends, from a dull and misty Downing Street. It is very quiet here today. It is the Spring Bank Holiday, so there is only a skeleton working crew in the office. Legohead has gone to Armenia to give away more of our money. He is talking to EU leaders about contributing to their £78 billion loan package to Ukraine. If he wants to loan money to Ukraine, why not just do it directly and cut out the middleman, who will be charging for handling our money.

Lots of stories to tell you today, I am not sure where to start. Firstly, there are two conflicting rumours going around Number Ten this morning, and I will leave it up to you to decide if either is true. One is that Lady Victoria Sponge has moved out of Number Ten because she hates the accommodation, hates living in a goldfish bowl, and misses the children, who are rarely ever here. On the other hand, I hear she had an almighty row with Legohead over the Ukrainian rent boys. The choice is yours.

We all know that Legohead is a Europhile and would love nothing more than to rejoin the EU. However, he knows the people of the UK do not want that, so he is doing his best to edge closer to them. The latest wheeze is to join the single market as a half measure. There are several things problematic about this. We would have to give up the trade deals we have done with the likes of India and the US. We would have to accept EU standards. We would be back to the common fishing policy. They want to kill off our AI, where we are years ahead of them. They would bar our gene research, make us join their net zero policy, and the EU wants £1 billion a year from us for the privilege.

Zia Yusuf was on the radio this morning announcing a new policy for when Reform are in power and he is Home Secretary. I am sure you all know that Reform plans to deport loads of illegal immigrants, but they are now talking about how this would work. They reckon that, from rounding up the illegals to putting them on a plane to the right country, it would take a little under six weeks, so they will need to build secure accommodation for them in the meantime. Six weeks’ deportees amounts to about 24,000 people in detention at any one time, but where to put them? What Zia announced was that they will be built in areas that vote Green.

Back in the early 2000s, China bought a fleet of Airbus A320s. Shortly after they were delivered, one A320 disappeared off the face of the earth. It was not used for scheduled flights, it did not appear on maintenance schedules, it was just never seen again. Shortly after the disappearance, China announced a home-built rival to the A320 and the Boeing 737, the COMAC C919, which looked suspiciously like the A320. It now seems that the disappeared plane was stripped to its component parts and they were copied to make the C919. However, the Chinese went all over the world, mainly the USA, for the manufacture of parts. On paper, the new plane was to be a decent rival to the Western jets, but it did not end up that way. The Western companies saw how China reverse engineered everything, so what China got was all the old stuff that had been superseded in modern Western jets. For example, they got the original CFM56 that powered the first A320, while Airbus had moved on to the Leap 1A engine. The result is that, of the 895 planes on order, all have been ordered by state-owned Chinese airlines, as the plane is only certified by the Chinese authorities.

I understand that, from today, about 15,000 NHS cancer patients will be eligible to be treated with a new version of Pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug. Up until now, Pembrolizumab has been administered as a drip in a clean room, and it has taken two hours at a time to drip in, plus the time it takes to prepare. The new version is injected and takes around one or two minutes to administer. This alone will save the NHS 100,000 hours of preparation and treatment time a year.

In the Persian Gulf, the US Navy has announced that they will be running escorted convoys of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to get shipping to and from the Gulf ports. The Iranians have not taken this news well and have said that, if the Americans carry this out, they will attack them. If the Americans have not been lying to us, then I do not expect it will be with their navy or air force, as the Yanks say both have been decimated. I suppose it will be shore-based rockets, missiles, or artillery. The Yanks are used to intercepting these, and it will expose the launch sites to the USAF. It is going to be an interesting week.

Tuesday

Hi folks, it is a strange morning, still warm, but not so much sun as yesterday. I hear that the 2024 intake of Liebore MPs are getting more and more peed off with Legohead. They are composing a letter to him telling him that he must go. The last time backbenchers sent a similar letter, it was to B Liar, telling him he had to resign in favour of one-eyed George Brown. The problem today’s lot face is that there is not an obvious replacement sitting in the background waiting.

Is the Iran war back on? The Iranians have shot missiles at the UAE, and the Americans have hit seven small Iranian gunboats. The Donald says it is the only boats they have left. The Yanks claim to have intercepted three ballistic missiles, but one got through and hit a petrol facility. Apparently, the US used Sea Hawk and Apache helicopters to hit the boats.

I see that the ToryGraph is reporting that the Met feel they have enough evidence to put German Christian Brueckner on trial here for the murder of Maddie McCann. There is one major problem. Brueckner has recently been released from a German prison after serving time for a rape conviction and would have to be extradited from Germany. However, the Germans have a policy of only extraditing their citizens to other EU member countries, so he will not be coming here to stand trial. Mind you, if we have enough evidence for a conviction, I suggest we do a deal with Portugal. The crime occurred there, and they are an EU member.

Liebore has been boasting that the number of illegal Channel crossers has dropped to lower than last year, saying that the number of boats is lower because they have managed to get the supply of outbound motors coming from China down. That argument seems to have fallen apart this weekend, when the weather in the Channel has been in favour of the small boats and over 900 have crossed on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. It could have been even worse, as I hear that one boat carrying 82 ran ashore on the north coast of France. When the boat was emptied, there were two dead women left behind who had not drowned but had died by being crushed.

The E-7A Wedgetail AWACS aircraft has had a strange life so far. The Australians ordered four and three options, two of which have been converted into orders. Turkey has ordered four and two options. South Korea has four in service but has since bought four L3Harris Gulfstream-based variants, complaining about the E-7A’s amount of downtime. We originally ordered five, but this was cut to three to save money. The first is due to enter service any day now. I hear we still actually need five, and we could reinstate the two cancellations if money can be found. As for the US, they have a need for 27 to replace the ageing E-3D AWACS aircraft their forces rely on, but the cost is prohibitively expensive. They ordered two E-7As back in 2023, but that was it until recently, when they lost an E-3D in Iran and the AWACS cover has been showing its age. The USAF is now looking to order five more.

Yesterday I told you about the Chinese plane, the COMAC C919. Today it is the turn of the Russian twin-engine Yakovlev MC-21. The MC-21, like the C919, was designed to take on the Airbus A320 and the Boeing 737. At first, it looked very competitive on range and economy. It was designed to use Pratt and Whitney PW1000G engines and many systems and parts from the West. It was also priced about £20 million less than an A320neo or a 737 Max. Six aircraft were built with P and W engines before the war against Ukraine started and the West put sanctions on Russia. This meant that Russia had to Russify the plane, with home-made parts and engines. The replacement domestic PD-14 engines have been problematic, not so much in thrust but in fuel consumption and availability. The new version of the plane is eight tonnes heavier than the original version. This reduced its official range from 6,000 km to 3,830 km, but many commentators say it is down to about 2,500 km. The other big problem is that Yakovlev planned to produce 72 aircraft a year by 2029, but the Russian paper Kommersant said production would not hit 35 a year until after 2029. However, this is in serious doubt, as the same paper said in January 2025 that 24 PD-14 engines were planned to be produced in 2025, but that this was then reduced to seven units for the whole of 2025, and only nine are expected this year. I wonder when the 175 on order will be delivered.

In 1999, the Republic of Ireland passed a law banning the building of nuclear power stations. It was in the era of lots of protests about nuclear power and few being built around the world. In 1997, the Electricity Supply Board of Ireland announced they wanted to build a nuclear power station, and in 1998 they said they had identified a site at Carnsore Point in County Wexford. It was then that the protests started, and the law was changed a year later. Now there are protests in Ireland about the cost of electricity, with about 40 percent able to be provided by renewables on a good day. But Ireland has a problem. It has a declining natural gas supply and mainly relies on an interconnector from the UK. About 2 percent of Irish power is generated by imported coal and another 2 percent by imported oil. With the rise of SMRs, Ireland is looking at them to take the base load and would like to have around 600 MW generated in this way. That is about one RR SMR.

Wednesday

Good morning, everyone. Well, the sun was trying to come out when I went down to the bottom of the garden. By the time I had finished my breakfast, it was fully out and very pleasant. Has the bubble burst for Zack Polanski, who I will be calling by his real name, Dave, from now on? He was on the radio this morning, spreading more of his rubbish. This week, I see he has claimed the Golders Green attacker was handcuffed when he was kicked, which is wrong, and that he had been a spokesman for the Red Cross, which they denied. This morning, it seems that 30 Green candidates in tomorrow’s election are being investigated for antisemitism.

Have you noticed that Legohead has been nearly totally absent from the Liebore local election campaign? I have it on good authority that candidates do not want him appearing in their campaigns, as he is considered toxic and a vote loser. In the last two months, he has appeared in just 11 constituencies, while Bad Enoch has been in 43 and Farage in over 80. Apparently, his name is not appearing on Liebore candidates’ literature, and in some cases the fact that they are standing for Liebore is only in the small print. I hear that in my scribe’s constituency he has so far received one Tory leaflet, and the Tory candidate on his doorstep, one Limp Dump leaflet, six Reform leaflets, and zero from the Greens and Liebore.

Yesterday, the number of illegal immigrants arriving in small boats hit 200,000 in the last eight years since the boat crisis started. Unfortunately, this number does not include those who came in the backs of lorries or in freight trains through the tunnel. Liebore claims that, since coming to power, they have returned over 63,000 people living here illegally, but only 7,613 of those came in on small boats. The remainder were mostly people who had overstayed their visas, and many of those went voluntarily. There are no confirmed numbers for illegals in the country because it is impossible to count those who are not caught. The estimates, based on things like food sales and power and water usage, say the number lies somewhere between 1 and 2 million.

We have a strange development in the Russian war with Ukraine. They have both announced a short ceasefire to commemorate the end of World War 2. Ukraine’s ceasefire started at midnight last night, 21:00 hrs GMT, and will last all day today. While Russia has declared a ceasefire on May 9th, when it will hold its Victory Day parade. In the past, this has had a mass of Russian tanks, missiles, and guns paraded through Red Square. This year it is only going to be troops and civilians because of “the threat of terrorist drones”. I wonder if this is the real reason. Could it be that they cannot spare the hardware from the front, or simply do not have the hardware to show off? What I want to know is what happens if the Russians break the Ukrainian ceasefire today.

I see that, ahead of Pride Month in June, Apple has released a Pride watch strap in the US. The multicoloured band is on sale for $49. There will also be a free Pride watch face and Pride wallpaper for the iPad and iPhone in the next software update. I wonder how much money has been spent developing this.

My favourite bit of video for a long time shows a South African policeman dangling on a rope under a helicopter, with a huge crocodile hanging beneath him. The story was that a South African hotelier had gone missing after being swept away in a flood, and it was believed he had been eaten by crocodiles in the Komati River. A huge croc, thought to be the man-eater because of its hugely bloated stomach, was sedated by dart gun and a brave policeman lowered to attach a rope, before both were flown away. The theory has proved right, as veterinary surgeons found two arms and a ribcage in the 15-foot croc’s gut. A ring on one hand has been identified as belonging to Gabriel Batista, but it will need a DNA test to be certain they have got the right crocodile.

I have been watching a video talking about how we gave away all our AS90 155 mm mobile howitzers to Ukraine. They were old and did not have a modern digital control system, thicker armour, or the range of more modern guns, but the Ukrainians love them for their rate of fire, accuracy, and simplicity. The guns were a compromise, bought after the collapse of a joint European howitzer programme that failed to meet its targets and whose cost spiralled out of control. Vickers had developed the turret as a private venture, it was matched with an existing chassis and procured by the Army. It only ever had one active deployment, in the Gulf War, where it was highly praised. The 68 we sent to Ukraine have been reduced by a few, but not by counter-battery fire. All seven lost have been to Russian loitering munitions.

Thursday

Hello folks, it is nice and sunny here, but there are showers forecast later, so I might get some windowsill time in, or I might not. The big election day has finally arrived, despite Legohead’s best attempts to stop it. I have been avoiding him recently, as he has been in a foul mood. The results will not start coming through until well after my bedtime, and I will not be missing out on my beauty sleep, as it will still be the same tomorrow.

Over the Channel, in Frogland, I read they have recommenced manufacturing the naval version of the cruise missile it calls SCALP, we call it Storm Shadow. The naval version is called MdCN, and the Frogs built up a stockpile before serial production stopped in 2021, and only three have been fired in practice. The 1,000 km range missile is carried on French FREMM frigates and its Suffren-class submarines. It is fired from vertical launch tubes on the frigates and 21-inch torpedo tubes on the submarines. It can be used in both ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore modes. It sounds a bit like a froggy version of Harpoon.

I find the story of the small adventure cruise ship, MV Hondius, which has been hit by an outbreak of hantavirus, interesting. The virus is normally caught from rodent urine and is more common in South America, where the ship sailed from. The ship is said to be rodent-free, but three people on board have died from the virus during its transatlantic voyage. A man has been evacuated and is being treated in a South African hospital, and several others, including crew members, are understood to be suffering from the virus on board. This seems to indicate the virus has learned how to pass from person to person, which is worrying. Consequently, the ship will not be allowed to dock in the Canaries.

It was before I was born, but I understand there was a popular programme on ITV called “Name That Tune” that finished in 1988. It was then revived by Channel 5 for two seasons in 1997 and 1998. The programme started as a radio programme in the United States before becoming first a 15-minute slot on an ITV midweek variety show, before becoming a 30-minute programme in its own right. The new programme will be presented by Alison Hammond.

I read that Whitbread is to close all its Brewers Fayre and Beefeater restaurants, making 3,600 redundant. Many of the restaurants are co-located with a Whitbread Premier Inn hotel. For some time now, new Premier Inns have been built with their own in-hotel restaurants called Thyme. I wonder if any of the restaurants being closed will be converted to the Thyme brand, or whether those Premier Inns will simply not be offering food.

The boss of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, has appealed for the banning of early morning drinking at airports before flights depart. He complains about drunk passengers on planes. He already has an answer to that problem, his airline can legally reject passengers who are drunk. But why would he want to ban drunk passengers? They spend more money on drink during their flight. I guess it is because, if they come on board sober, they will buy even more of his overpriced alcohol on the plane.

Every day, I read of Ukrainian drones hitting targets ever deeper into Russia. It seems that Ukraine has been regularly increasing the range of its drones and now is hitting electronics factories, refineries, and even Russian Air Force stations over 1,500 km from the border. In what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War, and we call World War 2, the Russians moved many of their factories back into this zone, 1,000 miles into Mother Russia, because they knew the Germans could not reach them. They seem to have made the same assumption about the Ukrainians. This might have been true 12 months ago, but from the number of burning oil refineries I see daily, this seems to have changed.

Friday

Hi everyone, it is dry at the moment, but it might be wet this afternoon. Legohead slipped out of the back door just after seven this morning and has not been back since. I think he is in hiding. Some of the local elections have counted overnight, but most will not be counting until later today or even Saturday, and possibly it could be Sunday, with a recount, before some remote constituencies declare. But as I eat my breakfast Felix and listen to the radio, the big winner is Reform, who are up over 330 seats, and Legohead’s lot are trying to put a spin on it that it is not as bad as they expected. What a load of rubbish. Labour have already lost eight councils, and only about 40 of 136 councils have declared, with Scottishland and Wales still to come.

Today I hear that a big order has come the way of Airbus. They have been negotiating a deal with AirAsia, already a big Airbus A320 operator, for some time. But this is a bit different in that AirAsia is looking to start services to what it describes as secondary cities. These are cities that are not big enough to support regular A320 services. So, AirAsia has been looking for a smaller regional jet that offers the passenger comfort and ability of the A320 family. The answer seems to be a massive order for the Airbus A220-300, the bigger of the two versions of the plane, normally seating 150 passengers. But the version of the A220-300 AirAsia is buying will have double the number of overwing exits, allowing two extra rows of seats and pushing the capacity to 160. It also looks like they have ordered 150 aircraft costing $18 billion and, for good measure, have taken options on another 150 aircraft.

Sky has announced it has signed a five-year extension to its current deal to broadcast Formula One in the UK. The new deal means they have the right to broadcast F1 in the UK until 2034, but to do so has cost them £1 billion. The new deal allows them to broadcast not just F1 but F2, F3, the F1 Academy, and Porsche Supercup. Like most sports broadcasting these days, both Apple TV and Netflix made offers. The British F1 Grand Prix is a legally “protected sporting event” and will remain available on terrestrial TV.

I have just been reading about the Bahamas, and that they are having a general election on 12th May. On that day only, there will be a complete ban on the sale of alcohol. The ban is not just on bars and restaurants but will affect cruise ships docked in the Bahamas on the 12th. Consequently, some cruise lines have changed their schedules so as not to visit on that day. This is a big problem for some. Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas will still be stopping at their private resort, Royal Beach Club Paradise, but passengers have been told no alcohol will be served. On the other hand, NCL has swapped their itinerary so they call on the day after the election. I hear that two Disney cruise ships are still due at Disney’s private resorts on the 12th, but passengers have not been told of the ban yet. Should we ban alcohol on polling day?

Up in Scottishland, their government is planning to push some new ship orders towards the state-owned shipbuilder, Ferguson Marine. This comes after the continuing disaster that has been Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa. The Scottishland government proposes to directly award two ferries under Phase Two of the Small Vessel Replacement Programme. It also proposes ordering replacements for the marine research vessel Scotia and the marine protection vessel Minna. These four ships should provide five years’ work for the yard. I suppose this is cheaper for the government than closing the yard down and making everyone redundant.

It is almost too much for my little cat brain to understand, but I hear that researchers at the University of East Anglia have discovered that light can twist and spin. Apparently, they think this newly discovered property can be used to make it travel faster through fibre optic cables. With the plan now coming to fruition of replacing the copper cable to your home with fibre optic cables, the speeds offered by internet providers have already gone up to make hundreds of megabytes to low gigabytes available for domestic use. But the experts say this new technology could make the same cable capable of carrying terabytes of data. I have a question, do we need this kind of speed to download the latest film or watch Netflix?

It is nearly time for my lunchtime Felix, and it has got no better for Legohead. Here in London, his lot have now lost Westminster to the Tories. Reform has won its first council of the election, winning Newcastle-under-Lyme by taking 27 seats, up from zero seats. I am off for my tea, with Reform being the clear winner in England today, with a gain of about 1,100 seats and a lot more still to come.

Saturday

Morning, my friends. It is nice and warm and sunny here today, but with one big problem, Legohead is in residence. He seems to be beginning his promised reset. Harriet Harperson has been appointed as the Prime Minister’s adviser on women and girls. I suppose she is the one who tells him if they have a penis or not. Gordon Brown has been appointed Global Markets Envoy. Wasn’t it him who sold off all our gold on the cheap?

The local elections in England and the national elections in Scottishland and Wales have been an absolute disaster for Liebore. As I write this, Liebore have lost over 1,400 councillors, while Reform have gained over 1,400. There are still five councils to count the votes in their boroughs this morning, with three of them in London. If they could count the votes in rural areas yesterday, why are they counting Croydon today?

Strong rumours this morning that Airbus is going to announce a stretched Airbus A220 at the Farnborough Airshow in July. The new plane, believed to be called the A220-500, is expected to have 185 seats. Airbus is understood to have been in talks with several of the big users of the A220 about a bigger plane to see if there is a market. I hear that Air Canada, Delta, and several others are interested if the -500 is launched, but the number of commitments has not been enough to proceed with the project until now. What seems to have swung Airbus into pressing the go button is that, when AirAsia announced the purchase of 150 A220-300s earlier this week, they placed another 150 options. But they said that, if Airbus went ahead with the -500, they would convert those options into orders for it. That has clearly taken Airbus over the number it needs to launch the model.

Down near Redruth in Cornwall, I understand there is a new geothermal power plant called United Downs. A well has been drilled there, down about 3.5 miles, to hot rock. Then brine is being circulated from the surface to the bottom of the well, where it is heated to 338° F. The heat is extracted and used to generate 3 MW of electricity, and lithium is also extracted from the brine, which contains more than 340 parts per million of lithium. This amounts to about 100 tonnes a year. Lithium currently sells at about $30,000 a tonne and is essential for EV batteries. We need a few more of these geothermal power plants, they keep going when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

I see that the Enterprise, the express train between Belfast and Dublin, is to be upgraded. Translink, the joint Republic and Northern Ireland company that runs the service, has ordered eight new 400-seat trains from Stadler, the Swiss train maker. The trains will be tri-modal, electric, diesel, and battery, ready for the line to be fully electrified. The €700 million investment should allow a daytime hourly service between the two cities, with 16 services a day in both directions.

I read that Amazon is testing a drone delivery service in Darlington. The express service claims to be able to deliver within a 7.5-mile radius around their warehouse, but can only deliver a maximum 5 lb parcel that has to fit into the hold of the drone. The service can currently handle only 12 deliveries an hour. Another thing is that you must have a garden, as the drone hovers about 8 ft above it and drops your delivery into it, so it is not much good for fragile items.

For this week’s final story, I bring you the odd tale of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Back in 2022, burglars broke into his rural home and stole $580,000 hidden down the back of a sofa. The theft led to allegations that he had not accounted for where the cash had come from, and an independent panel said he had a case to answer. However, impeachment proceedings were stopped by a vote by the governing ANC in Parliament. The Constitutional Court has now ruled that the ANC government breached the constitution. The law at the time said that holdings in foreign currency must be deposited with an authorised currency dealer, such as a bank, within 30 days. The opposition is calling for Ramaphosa to resign, but he is refusing. At the time, Ramaphosa said the cash was from selling a buffalo.

That is me finished for this interesting week, and I am off to sit on my windowsill. I intend to get my afternoon nap done while waiting for the last few local election results to be announced. You never know, there might be a surprise, but I think these last few results are foregone conclusions. Chat to you all again next week.

 

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