Larry’s Diary, Week Three Hundred And Thirty-One

Monday

Good morning, my happy readers. The heat wave is over and it is back to normal temperatures here in London, and it is actually forecast to rain this evening. Legohead is back in town this morning and, although I have not seen him, the word is he is not happy because there is a second tranche of Mandelslime communications out this afternoon, and it is likely to show just how deep Mandelslime’s fingers were in the government pie.

The story of the weekend must be Wee Krankie doing the media rounds, and no doubt being paid for it, to push her line that she knew nothing about her husband’s criminality and that she had just endured the worst week of her life. There were even tears to emphasise how she had been wronged. The one thing I did not see on the charge list was ladies’ glasses. Perhaps that is because, if he had bought her new glasses, she might have seen all the stuff he was buying. Oh yes, while on the topic of Wee Krankie, I see she has moved to London. After all the things she has said about England and the hated English, why has she chosen to move here? Is it to avoid the extra 1p Scottishland has slapped on income tax?

Yesterday afternoon, I happened to wander into the office where the boys were watching the Arsenal victory parade on one of the giant TVs. I do not think I have ever seen so many people on the streets of London, where they were celebrating Arsenal winning the league and being runners up in the Champions League. The Metropolitan Police gave a figure of a minimum of 800,000 people out there, and possibly 1,000,000. But what intrigued me was how joyous the whole thing was. No fighting, no looting, just people enjoying themselves in a safe atmosphere where parents were happy to bring their small babies. I hear that there were just 18 arrests, most of which occurred after the parade had ended. Compare this to the riots that broke out in Paris, the home city of the Champions League winners, on Saturday night, with 800 arrests. Well done, my fellow Londoners.

If you live in the southeast of England and travel by train, from yesterday you will probably be travelling on a newly renationalised service. Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern joined Southeastern in public ownership on Sunday. I doubt you will see much difference for a while, just one South Train has been wrapped in the red, white and blue Great British Railways colour scheme. But I do read that there are to be extra Gatwick Express trains between London Victoria and Gatwick, with the service doubling in the December timetable change. This really is a con, as the service was cut from four an hour to two an hour during Covid and never reinstated. Additionally, the Gatwick Express is a premium nonstop service, costing more than the Southern service, which already runs at least four times and stops once or twice. It is all a con to make tourists pay more.

Worthing Gooner, Going Postal
Recently Nationalised.
30.04.2014, Gatwick Express, London Victoria,
miroslav.volek
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

I know some of you do not like me talking about the Russo-Ukrainian war, as I have recently been telling you about some small successes that Ukraine has been having, but I think this story is too interesting for me not to report. A week or so ago, the price of crude oil hit new records, with Brent crude briefly hitting $120 a barrel before falling back a little. This was caused by the lack of oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz. The result was that many countries released part of their strategic reserves. The US and us also eased sanctions on petrol and diesel refined from Russian crude by countries such as India, with the aim of bringing down fuel prices in the West. At the same time, a truce between Iran and the US was extended and the market marked the oil price down, with Brent crude finally falling back to $92 a barrel. Now this causes Russia a problem, as it needs high oil prices so it can fund its war with Ukraine. In recent days, Ukraine has been regularly hitting Russian refineries and is said to have hit 23 of the 34 they have, and according to Russian authorities, petrol and diesel are in short supply in some parts of Russia. This suits Ukraine, as a diesel shortage means the Russians are struggling to supply the front. I understand the US, who are one of the main supporters of Ukraine, have been asking them not to attack Russian refineries so the price of oil goes down, but Ukraine is refusing to stop. Russia has now banned the direct export of refined oil, petrol, diesel and kerosene, and is unable to take advantage of shortages of Middle Eastern crude.

I must say, the latest tranche of Mandelslime emails and text messages is very revealing, not so much for anything it says about the Mandelslime appointment, but rather for what it shows about the infighting in the cabinet and how Legohead is struggling to run it. There are exchanges between Mandelslime and ministers openly critical of Legohead. Even the No. 10 enforcer, Pat McFadden, and a Legohead loyalist, said Starmer’s team “are not led” and “do not think [the PM] knows what he wants”. He also suggested No. 10 needed a “complete revamp”. What is interesting is that, in the 1,300 documents released today, a whole lot are redacted and there is virtually no correspondence between Mandelslime and Legohead. I foresee another huge row about things being hidden.

I hear that the reactor vessel from the second reactor at Hinkley Point ‘C’ has been positioned. It was lifted into place by the world’s biggest crawler crane, which I am told is called “Big Carl”, on Saturday just gone. The final cost of the two-reactor project is now said to be £46 billion, using 2024 prices. The whole project was previously priced at £18 billion in 2016 prices. However, there is a little bit of good news. The second reactor is reported to be taking 30% less time to build than the first. The project is now not expected to have both reactors exporting their power to the grid until 2031.

Tuesday

Hi folks, everything is rather damp outside this morning. It was not raining when I went out earlier, but it had been, and I suspected it was going to pour down again very soon, so I moved as quickly as my old bones would carry me. I had hardly got back inside before there was an enormous flash of lightning and a crash of thunder. Two huge stories this morning, one is the Mandelslime papers and the other is the video released by Hampshire Police, neither of which is good news for Legohead.

As the media reads deeper into the 1,500 pages of messages and records of conversations released yesterday, in response to the Humble Address, it has become apparent just how much has been redacted or withheld. The government says the Metropolitan Police has asked for a number of documents to be withheld, as they may be needed in any possible prosecution of Mandelslime, and that documents have been redacted for security purposes. But what is evident is that, in two years, this Liebore government has caused more chaos than the Tories did in 14 years. I find it interesting that Pat McFadden, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, says that every meeting he attends is looking for more taxes so they can pay the welfare bill. They have wrecked the economy by introducing new taxes and increasing old ones to pay for the burgeoning welfare bill. The number in work is reducing for two reasons, companies are letting people go because they are being strangled by taxes and regulations, and ex-workers find that they are better off on benefits than working.

With the sentencing of the killer of Henry Nowak, the police sneaked out the bodycam video and the 999 call late last night. The police were lied to and misled by the family of the murderer, who claimed he had been racially abused by Nowak. But when the police arrived at the incident, the first thing the video shows is the brother of the murderer supporting Nowak, who was collapsed against the wall of a house. The police do not find this suspicious in the slightest and proceed to drag the victim, by a leg he had been stabbed in, across gravel. Nowak then tells the officer nine times that he cannot breathe and, not once, not twice, but four times that he has been stabbed, and the officer says, “I do not think you have, mate”. The officer then proceeds to read the dying man his rights and handcuff him. Hampshire Police have a lot to answer for, as they are apparently trained to rate an accusation of racial abuse as worse than a stabbing.

I have just watched Nigel Farage making what he framed as an emergency announcement about the Henry Nowak killing. Speaking without notes or a teleprompter, and looking more prime ministerial than the Prime Minister, he said this death was the result of always accepting the word of a brown-faced man over a white-faced man and that DEI was to blame. I am inclined to agree. In addition, he pointed out that the length of sentence in the case was below the minimum normally expected for this type of murder and that he would be writing to the Attorney General requesting a review.

I read of another American fast-food chain that has decided to open up in the UK. Chili’s Grill and Bar is a chain of Tex-Mex restaurants, and this will be their second attempt at the UK after they closed all their branches, including Cambridge, Reading and London’s Canary Wharf, in 2009. No details yet about where the first franchise will open, but I hear locations currently being considered include London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Reading and Solihull. The first is currently said to be opening in 12 to 18 months, with as many as 100 opening in the next 15 years. Something to look forward to if you like burgers, ribs, fajitas and margaritas.

Worthing Gooner, Going Postal
One of 1,600 in the states.
Chili’s Grill & Bar, Cupertino, CA,
brianc
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

A week ago yesterday, Lumo began operating a new service between Stirling and London Euston. They are currently only offering a single daily service in each direction. The initial services are very cheap, as low as £20 one way, to try to establish a market. But yesterday was a bit of a disaster. The only train allocated to the service broke down, so there was no service. Not a good way to introduce a new service.

At the Airbus factory in Toulouse, 10 new Airbus A320 family planes are sitting on the tarmac, undelivered to China, because the Chinese owe some $5 billion for over 20 Airbus jets they have received. There is nothing wrong with the jets, it is just that the Chinese are trying to force the European safety regulator, EASA, to certify the Chinese COMAC C919 as fit to fly in Europe. Because the European, American and British regulators work together, an aircraft approved by one is automatically approved by the others and therefore is accepted by the rest of the world. But the European regulators have found several problems with the C919, including a lag in the movement of control surfaces when demanded by the pilot, the air conditioning randomly filling the passenger cabin with a fog of water vapour, and, perhaps most worrying, the poor integration of various electronic systems, which renders them vulnerable to electromagnetic radiation. EASA has demanded these be fixed before certification. China is trying to force Airbus to pressure EASA to certify the plane without the changes, but this cannot happen, as EASA is a totally independent authority. In China, the three biggest airlines have been forced to place 100 orders each for the plane. But much of the plane, engines, systems and electronics is supplied from France and America, so consequently not paying for planes they have been delivered is likely to rebound, with parts for new C919s and Airbus planes being withheld. The three major Chinese airlines have a huge number of Airbus jets and, if spare parts were to be withheld from them, the Chinese airline industry would likely collapse.

Wednesday

Good morning all. Grey and cooler again when I went out, but dry, though not for long. The forecast is for rain soon, and lots of it. Yesterday, Legohead claimed to have obeyed the Humble Address and to have handed over all his correspondence with Mandelslime. He puts the lack of paperwork down to his use of WhatsApp, where his messages are set to be auto-deleted within minutes of them being read. Mind you, I understand that although WhatsApp is not banned from use in government, important discussions should be recorded on paper. So apparently Legohead had no important discussions with Mandelslime.

Worthing Gooner, Going Postal
Not Legohead’s phone.
WhatsApp / iOS,
microsiervos
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

I see that the Qantas Project Sunrise non-stop service from Sydney to London has taken a big step forward, with the first test flight of the new A350-1000ULR. This plane version has an added internal fuel tank, giving it an extra 1,000 nautical miles range over the current long-range aircraft version. The plane went on a three-hour trip out over the Atlantic and will now enter a two-month type certification programme. This plane is currently fitted with a load of flight testing and recording instrumentation, which will be stripped out and a normal passenger cabin fitted at the end of testing before being handed over to Qantas. The second of the Qantas 10-plane order is currently in the Airbus Toulouse paint shop.

Starting in August this year, there is a new law coming in throughout the EU. The use of sachets of sauce and seasoning has been banned if the sachet is made of plastic. Supposedly this is for environmental reasons and to reduce the amount of plastic in waste across the EU. Consequently, the ban covers hotels, restaurants and cafes, and all single-use plastic packages for items such as ketchup, mayonnaise, olive oil, salt, pepper, preserves, sauces, milk, coffee creamer, sugar and mustard. Salt and pepper may be acceptable if they come in paper packs. I wonder how hotels will serve milk for coffee and tea that people make in their hotel bedrooms. Thank goodness we are out of the EU.

Do you remember me telling you last week about the row over the Champions League Final only being available on pay-to-view TV? Well, the UK viewing figures are out and it seems that the match was watched by over 7 million viewers on TNT Sport and HBO Max, which TNT say they are happy with. But researchers say that 16.2 million illegal streams of the match also took place in the UK. Can you imagine how much TNT would have made from advertising if they had put the match out free to air to those additional 16 million viewers? TNT seem to cut off their nose to spite their face.

Details behind the Henry Nowak murder by Vickrum Digwa are beginning to emerge. Apparently, the first thing Digwa did was to call his family, who turned up promptly. His mother took the 8-inch blade murder weapon and hid it. Vickrum’s brother called the police to report a racial attack. Digwa took off his own turban and claimed it had been knocked off by Nowak, it was disposed of by someone. When Nowak tells the police he has been stabbed, Digwa can be heard in the background saying, “No he hasn’t”. Digwa stole Nowak’s phone, on which Nowak had been filming the events leading up to his stabbing. When he was arrested, Digwa and his brother were put in the back of a police car where they spoke in Punjabi and hatched a plot to claim self-defence. Fortunately, the police recorded the conversation and had it translated. They also recovered Nowak’s phone and were able to watch what led up to the stabbing, establishing that there was never a racist attack. Apparently, more court cases against other members of Digwa’s family are to follow. His mother is understood to have been remanded in custody.

When is a deal to build a nuclear power plant not a deal? It seems it is when the deal is between Russia and Kazakhstan. About this time last year, Russia’s nuclear power plant builder, Rosatom, announced they had come to an agreement to build Kazakhstan’s first nuclear plant on the shores of Lake Balkhash. Since then, nothing has happened. Last week, President Poo Tin was on a state visit to Kazakhstan, where he signed an agreement covering the “basic principles and conditions of cooperation” concerning a nuclear power project on the shores of Lake Balkhash. According to the Russian news agency Interfax, the project is valued at $16.4 billion, most of which will be a Russian loan. My question is, is there an actual contract in place?

A rumour reaches me from across the Atlantic, where I hear that Canada is close to deciding on its planned order for 88 Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth jets. For some time, they have been contemplating buying a fleet of SAAB JAS39 Gripen E/F instead. The Gripen E is the single-seater, and the F is the two-seater. The Gripen is a much smaller, lighter aircraft but is designed to operate in Arctic conditions, can take off from roads and needs a very small ground crew, making it much cheaper to operate than the F-35. I hear the latest idea is to cut the order for F-35s to just 30 and place an order for 60 Gripens, which suits winter operations in much of Canada more closely. Canada has only actually ordered 14 F-35s and has paid for long-lead items for the next 16, so cutting the order to just 30 would be simple. That would be quite a coup for SAAB.

Thursday

Hello folks. Gosh, it was windy when I popped out, getting my fur blown about is almost as bad as getting it wet. I saw almost the whole House barracking Nigel Farage when he dared to stand up and ask a question at PMQs. I hear that after PMQs, when many MPs were leaving the Chamber, a senior Northern Irish MP, Gregory Campbell, said to Farage, “You seem to have lost the House, but I suspect you have won the country”.

The BBC has been at it again, this time misquoting what Nigel Farage said in his statement on the Henry Nowak murder. BBC Newsnight presenter Matt Chorley misquoted Farage four times during an interview with Bad Enoch. To misquote once might be a mistake, but to say the same thing four times begins to look like deliberate manipulation, something the BBC has form for, especially as this made Farage’s statement look racist. Chorley has apologised to Farage, saying he misremembered the quote, but he still said it four times during the interview and twisted the words to make them sound racist.

A bit of a shock this morning for anyone booked for a cruise on the Norwegian Cruise Line ship Norwegian Viva between November 2027 and January 2028. The ship had been scheduled to sail from Europe to San Juan, Puerto Rico. It would then be based there for those three months, offering Caribbean cruises out of Puerto Rico. NCL have been writing to passengers booked onto the ship and telling them their trips are cancelled, as the ship is being moved to sail out of Miami. Passengers booked on these particular cruises will get a full refund of what they have paid, and a 10% future cruise credit based on the full fare of the cruise they had booked.

Worthing Gooner, Going Postal
Not going to Puerto Rico.
Norwegian Viva Mar 1 2024,
Master0Garfield
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

There is a strange thing happening in the EU. Most member nations are signed up for free movement and, as such, it has implemented the Schengen Area, where the people of Schengen nations can move between countries without passports. Some countries were never members of the Schengen Area, including us, Ireland and Cyprus. But some EU members have recently reinstated border checks, including Germany, France, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. This group has written to the EU and told them they are temporarily reintroducing checks. These ten countries say the reasons are to combat terrorism, deter cross-border organised crime and manage irregular migration. The EU is not happy and wants Schengen reintroduced.

I have previously told you about the plans by Stellantis to launch new cars across its various markets based on its three new size platforms. Now I have seen a picture of the first of the new Fiats on these platforms, unusually called the Grizzly and Grizzly Fastback. These cars are being built on the same platform as the Fiat Grande Panda and the new Citroen C3, which they look rather like. The Grizzly and Grizzly Fastback will be available as petrol, hybrid and electric. There has been no announcement of prices yet, but the car should be available in Europe later this year.

According to the Indian press, the Indian Ministry of Defence is looking at making a couple of major decisions. Firstly, they are developing a fifth generation jet fighter they call the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA). The first demonstrator has flown with an F404 jet engine, but with a second plane being readied to fly, this engine does not produce enough thrust for the planned production aircraft, and India is contemplating developing its own engine. Apparently Rolls-Royce has stepped in and offered to develop a new engine with the Indians. Rolls has made this of huge interest to the Indians by promising a full technology transfer, production in India, and Indian ownership of the IP rights.

The second decision India is contemplating is whether they should join one of the European projects to build a sixth generation stealth fighter. The two projects are the Franco, German, Spanish FCAS or the Anglo, Italian, Japanese GCAP. I would have thought that decision was simple. The FCAS project is currently stalled because the French want the majority of the work while the others pay. Meanwhile, GCAP is progressing well and has said they are open to other countries joining the project. The first is likely to be Canada, who are looking at observer status, and then Poland, who are looking at becoming a full partner. India could easily be the next.

Friday

Hi everyone, dry but blowy today, and not exactly warm. So, Mascara Man has finally come out and said if he wins the Makerfield by-election he will enter the Liebore leadership race. The only problem is that there is not currently a race, no one has yet challenged Legohead. I suspect that Mascara Man would not have any problem getting the necessary backers if he tried, but will he want to be the first one to challenge Legohead?

After a year of existence, Ben Habib has decided to kill off Advance UK and has deregistered it as a political party. He has emailed party members to tell them and has virtually told them to move to Restore Britain, saying it is a very similar party and that having two parties on the right was likely to cause confusion. If the truth be known, the party has never attracted mass membership and I am not surprised Ben has called it a day. I wonder if he will now attempt to join Restore, I suspect that he has burnt his boats with both Reform UK and the Conservatives.

Worthing Gooner, Going Postal
Once an MEP.
Ben Habib Official MEP Portrait, 2019,
© European Union 2019 – Source : EP
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

I read that Nissan Motors has signed an agreement with the Chinese car manufacturer Chery to assemble their cars at Nissan’s Sunderland plant. The final deal is still under discussion, but I understand the idea is to use Sunderland’s production line number one to assemble Chery cars from 2027. Chery is one of the big Chinese car makers and already sells its Chery, Omoda and Jaecoo brands in the U.K. In fact, the Jaecoo 7 Hybrid, currently manufactured in China, was the UK’s top selling plug-in hybrid in March. The Nissan plant is widely considered to be Europe’s most profitable car factory and currently produces the Qashqai SUV, the Juke crossover SUV, and the electric Leaf, but it is only running at about half its 600,000 cars per year capacity, and a deal would safeguard the 6,000 Sunderland Nissan workers’ jobs.

While reporting about cars, I see that earlier this week there was a massive fire in a compound at Southampton Docks that destroyed 33 brand new Jaecoo E5 electric vehicles. The fire brigade deployed 10 pumps, an aerial platform, a high-flow device and two water carriers. The report puts the value of the cars destroyed at over £900,000. I wonder how long the buyers’ dealers will have to wait for replacement cars to be manufactured in China and shipped to Britain.

I read that a recent study has found that cat owners have a higher level of schizophrenia. The Australian study found that when families with children also have a cat, there is a higher chance of the child growing up to develop schizophrenia. The study also links exposure to a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii as the cause. This parasite, which spends part of its life cycle in cats, can be spread to humans, where it is known to infect the nervous system. It seems that children aged 9 to 12 are statistically the most vulnerable, but no one knows why.

Yesterday I told you about the Fiat Grizzly and Grizzly Fastback. Today I learn that Stellantis is going to sell the models in the US, where they will become the Chrysler Arrow and Arrow Cross. Apparently, in the States the Chrysler brand is struggling, and the brand’s dealers have been begging for a new cheap model to sell. The cars will be made on the same Fiat line as the Grizzly, and the only difference will be the Chrysler badges. American journalists have been shown the rebadged Arrow at the European launch of the Grizzly but were not allowed to take photos. I hear that the car will cost under $30,000 landed in the States, including tariffs, but will cost more to buy because of what the Yanks call “distribution charges”. This puts the car in a very competitive price bracket and should please the dealers, provided the customers like it.

The Electoral Commission has just published the quarterly political donation numbers for Q1 2026, and it makes interesting reading. Looking at the numbers, there are one or two standouts. In the period, some parties took no public donations and relied solely on public money. These included the Scottish Greens, Sinn Fein, the DUP, the UUP and the SDLP. Reform U.K. took in £9,262,000 in public donations and £674,393 in public money, putting it at the top of the list for the quarter with £9,936,393. The Tories came next with £6,063,791, but £1,837,607 of this was public money. Liebore reported a total of £4,102,856 and the Limp Dumps £3,019,235. I must say, on seeing this report, I am not surprised Advance UK has deregistered as a political party, they only took in £28,000 in the quarter. Restore Britain only registered as a political party in February and, consequently, is not included in this report.

Saturday

Morning my friends, no rain at the moment but it is forecast for later. I have got sick of hearing Government Ministers saying there is no such thing as “two tier policing” when there clearly is. Well, this morning the rumour I hear is that the government spin doctors have decreed that in future the message will change to, there is some two tier policing but it is only necessary for equitable outcomes, whatever that means.

So, the Defence Investment Plan that was due last September has been postponed once again and looks like being at least a year late. It seems that there is a major row between the Chancellor and the Defence Secretary over the amount allocated to the defence budget. I hear Legohead thought they had agreed an amount and was on the verge of publishing the document, when the agreement broke down. Apparently John Healy has demanded more money, and Robber Reeves is putting her foot down and saying no. Consequently, Legohead has decided to postpone the whole thing in the hope that something can be agreed. In the meantime, we are failing to order new equipment for our servicemen.

This morning my first story is about Scandinavian Airline Systems (SAS). This week SAS reintroduced a service from Copenhagen to Mumbai. It has been 17 years since SAS flew this route and, on Tuesday, an Airbus A330 took off from Copenhagen only four hours late. However, four hours into the flight, over Azerbaijan, it was realised that India had not issued the paperwork to allow the service and were unlikely to do so by the plane’s expected arrival time, so it was turned around and went back to Copenhagen. I bet the passengers kicked up a stink.

Worthing Gooner, Going Postal
Not going to Mumbai.
SAS A330-343E LN-RKU,
SJByles
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

Hertfordshire County Council has been describing its vision of introducing a service to link the county from east to west. They said it is very difficult to get from one side of the county to the other and that passengers often find it much easier to take one of the many north-south train routes into London and then change to another to get to their destination. What Hertfordshire County Council is proposing is a rapid transit service that runs from Harlow in the east to Hemel Hempstead in the west via Gilston, Hertford, Hatfield and St Albans, and a possible spur from St Albans to Croxley via Watford. The plan is to run a very regular service using what they call a trackless tram, but which is actually an articulated electric bus made to look like a tram. The council says that this route connects to most of the north-south rail services and would be cheap to implement because no tracks have to be laid.

I read that the Apple MacBook Neo, which was launched in March this year, has been a far greater success than Apple dared to hope for. As I understand it, Apple had planned for five million sales worldwide in 2026, but they have recently doubled this to 10 million sales. I hear that it has been a huge success amongst university students on both sides of the Atlantic. University students nearly always need a laptop for their course but do not have the money to buy anything powerful. Consequently, many rely on something in the £500 to £600 bracket. To date, this has been one of the many cheap Windows laptops. But Apple has been very smart here, they have launched a device in the same price bracket that is more powerful and comes with Apple’s own free office software suite, which is similar enough to Microsoft Office for some to switch straight over to. No wonder it is selling fast, Apple marketing has hit a sweet spot.

I saw a strange war video coming out of Russia this morning. It seems that the white stork is a beloved national bird of Ukraine and it has been reported that Russian drone operators have been targeting these very large birds, with a 7-foot wingspan, to annoy the people of Ukraine. Today’s video showed one of these birds cruising over fields, with a drone quickly closing in on it. But the bird was not so stupid, it suddenly did a tumble turn and disappeared, leaving the drone looking at clear air. I wonder where the stork learned to do that.

I have been reading that there was an emergency on the International Space Station yesterday, when the Russian module sprung an air leak and the astronauts were ordered to don their space suits and seal themselves into the escape craft attached to the ISS. I understand that several hours later the Russians found the leak and it was sealed, allowing the emergency to be called off.

I have a bonus story for you today and, before anyone says I am working for the pro-Ukraine propagandists, the story comes from Izvestia, the Russian state newspaper. It reports that Ukrainian drones hit five Russian ships, in a couple of hours, in the Sea of Azov early yesterday morning. The ships were one coastal oil tanker and four general coastal cargo ships that were moving military cargo or Ukrainian grain. Apparently, the Ukrainians used the same medium-range drones to hit the ships that they use to hit military freight on the coast road. The paper says that, because of the Ukrainian success on the road, the military had tried to move fuel and supplies by sea. I wonder what the next plan will be.

I normally say “That’s me finished for another week”, but today it is for three weeks, as my cub reporter and scribe is off on a cruise, yes another one. I will miss chatting to you, but I do enjoy the break, especially if the weather is good. No nap on my windowsill as it is a bit damp and breezy outside. Chat to you all a week or so after he gets back, but I expect he will be writing a cruise diary and telling you all about all the lovely food he stuffs his face with.

 

© WorthingGooner 2026