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

Monday

Good morning, my happy readers. Hot again this morning when I went out, but I’m delighted to see it’s not going to only be for the one day, and it might even rain a little bit later in the week. Mascara Man popped down to Dover to record yet another video to add to the over 200 he has made since he became PM. It has taken a long time, but he addressed the illegal immigrants crossing in small boats. Apparently, he thinks everything is going well, despite 2,057 arriving since he became PM two weeks ago. So, what is he going to do? Sweet FA.

Two big news stories this weekend. The first is the invasion of Ceuta, the tiny enclave on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, due south of Gibraltar. At first, we were told “several thousand” arrived, then 10,000, and it went up by the hour. This morning, I hear it was 80,000 who crossed the border from Morocco into what is effectively a Spanish city of 70,000 people. The local people shut all the shops and restaurants, locked their doors and refused to sell them even a bottle of water. The Spanish shipped in the army from the mainland and, according to the BBC, they all went home voluntarily. Strange, I keep seeing video of young men sleeping rough and wandering the streets. This morning, the free media are saying there are still 20,000 there. Who is not telling the truth?

The second tale is that Rupert Lowe has put out a 13-minute video suggesting that his Restore party should get together with Reform “for the good of the nation”. Lowe says the two parties have very similar policies, but he has laid down what he says are five Red Lines. I can see some might be acceptable to Farage and Reform, like a referendum on the death penalty. But some could never be agreed, like no ex-Tory cabinet ministers in a joint cabinet. I suspect Lowe knows this and is playing games, and his aim is to announce that Farage will not put the Nation over his own opinions. However, I just heard Farage say he is open to talks and sent a message saying so to Lowe yesterday, but has heard nothing back. I also hear that Lowe has recently had a falling out with the Tories.

A big announcement from Reform this morning of what they are calling Operation Fortress. This is their plan for dealing with small boat migrants and, unlike their previous plan, it does not include pushing back the small boats. Instead, they would have the military lift the immigrants off the giant rubber boats and return them to a French port or, if the French didn’t like that, to a French beach. Farage says it would not be illegal to return them, as under the rules of the sea, you return people in danger to the nearest port. We will no doubt have to wait until we have a Reform government to see if this works.

Gianni Infantino looks like he could have shot himself in the foot over selling off the World Cup to a private company. As I mentioned before, he had to back down on the idea when European, American and Asian football associations came together to oppose the plan. Now I hear that FIFA president Infantino has lost the support of both Wales and England for him standing in the next election in 2027.

I have already written about Professor Jason Arday, Cambridge University’s youngest ever black professor, and the allegations that he cheated in his PhD thesis and subsequent papers and plagiarised most of them. The allegation is that his doctoral thesis contained over 180 passages that were identical or near identical to prior academic works by other authors. If that were not bad enough, he has made several odd claims, like he ran 30 marathons in 35 days, the last nine with a broken leg, raising millions for charity. However, there seems to be no reports or photos of these achievements. He also claims he took part in the BBC programme Seven Up, which followed several children as they turned 7, 14, 21, etc. However, the BBC has no record of this, and the programme started before he was born. He also claimed that a pig’s head had been delivered to his parents, something he had reported to the police. He even said the police had discovered the butcher’s shop that had sold the whole pig. The only problem here is that the named butcher says he hasn’t spoken to the police and has never sold a whole pig. I wonder who is telling porkies here.

Sorry to hear that Rod Liddle has died suddenly at the age of 66. I can’t say I always agreed with his politics, but he was often quite funny in his writing and musings. He described himself as an old-fashioned Labourite whose party’s move to the left had left him in the centre.

Tuesday

Hi folks, it’s still hot in London, but it wasn’t quite as warm as when I headed down the garden. I hear that it’s going to be a bit cooler tomorrow. There is some other good news this morning, Mascara Man is off on his holiday today. I hear that, as a ‘man of the people’, he usually takes his family away in a caravan. But not this year, a PM can’t go that low, so I understand he is going overseas. Not a lot of information as to where he is going, but I do hope it’s a 3* hotel in Benidorm and we get some pictures of him with all those plebs on a sun lounger around the pool.

So, the review of the prisoner early-release scheme, instituted when the news emerged that two of the killers of PC Harper were due to be released, dropped yesterday. Well, I understand that it’s basically carry on regardless. Only prisoners who committed rape, grooming and serious child sex offences will be excluded from the scheme for England and Wales. Why not murderers, especially those who were responsible for the death of a 999 worker?

I read that Portsmouth Harbour has now commissioned three shore-charging points for hybrid ships, and the first Brittany Ferry, Guilliaume de Normandie, used one yesterday. Apparently, the idea is that the ferry uses its conventional power while out at sea, battery power coming into port, and can plug in and use shore power while docked. This allows them to also recharge the battery for the next trip and supposedly cuts pollution in the port. There are just a couple of big problems. The cost of running offshore power is much more expensive than keeping the diesel generators running and, perhaps the most awkward, if all three shore-power points are in use, they consume more power than the City of Portsmouth, and the grid just can’t deliver that much power.

Back in December last year, the Irish Government took possession of a brand-new €53m Dassault Falcon 6X VIP jet to replace their ageing and ailing Lear Jet. But the Irish have cut off their nose to spite their face. I hear it was ordered without its standard weather-navigation system because it was made by an Israeli company. This is the system that allows the plane to land in fog and other bad weather. So, the Irish Teashop now has to hope that it isn’t foggy or raining hard the next time he hops over to Brussels to visit his EU masters.

The latest news I hear from Russia is that the employees of the Wildberries Logistics Warehouse have been banned from taking their camera phones into the working area. Until recently, Wildberries had a ban on all personal items being taken into the workplace except their phones. But in the last week or so, employees were permitted to take ID papers, car and house keys into the working area to make identification of dead bodies easier. Now Wildberries has decided to ban camera phones because “a photo might inadvertently disclose the position of the defence installations”. I think it might really be because they might photograph the extent of the damage the drone attack had done.

I read that six adult passengers have been removed from the cruise ship MSC Divina for making a fake emergency announcement over the ship’s PA. It seems that, as the ship sailed from Marmaris in Turkey to Naples, Italy, the six somehow got access to the PA system and announced that the Captain had lost control of the ship and it was adrift. Fortunately, the announcement was made at 06:30 and only went out in two of the main rooms and was only heard by a few passengers. The group were held and handed over to the Italian authorities when the ship reached Naples. They have been charged with unauthorised access to a computer system and causing public alarm. I bet they were drunk.

Luton Rising, the Luton Council-owned company that owns Luton Airport, has cleared the final hurdles in gaining permission to expand the airport. The plan is to expand the current airport capacity from 19 million passengers a year to 32 million a year by 2040. The first phase of the plan is to increase the size of the existing terminal, and the second phase is to build a second terminal. When completed, the scheme is expected to add £1.5 billion to the local economy.

Wednesday

Good morning all. I woke up to an odd sound this morning, it was raining! Something that hasn’t happened here in London for weeks. It was raining quite hard for a while but had stopped while I popped out. Mind, it’s raining again now. I hear that it’s going to stop completely by mid-morning, so it’s brown grass for a while yet.

I see we dodged the bullet yesterday when one of those giant rubber boats failed to make it over the Channel from France. I hear that a dinghy with 162 illegals set off for Britain accompanied by a French naval vessel, but had only gone a short distance from the beach before five of the passengers wanted to go back and were transferred to the French naval vessel. Now with 157 on board, the dinghy plodded on until the outboard motor caught fire and passengers started jumping into the sea as the boat started to sink. A full-scale emergency was declared and British boats from Border Farce and the RNLI turned up in French waters to help. Fortunately, all 157 were saved and landed in France. That’s 162 that never made it yesterday.

It’s taken a lot longer than planned and cost a lot more money than budgeted, but the FAA has finally certified the Boeing 737 Max 7 as fit to fly on scheduled services. Boeing can now start its assembly lines and ship some of its order backlog. The lead customer is Southwest Airlines, who are waiting for 300 planes. Like the 777X, Boeing has been producing aircraft for a while now, and some 30 Max 7s are sitting around. However, once again, some of these planes are years old and not up to the current production standard. Boeing now has a problem. If they spend money bringing the planes up to the certified standard, can they sell them, or would it be better to scrap them for parts? Although they are likely to get the first plane off the line, Southwest are looking at an in-service date of 2027. The first operational 737 Max 7 is expected to be with Canadian airline WestJet later this year.</p

Has the Burnham bounce for Liebore been a seven-day wonder? After taking the lead in a few polls, Liebore have slipped down the ladder in the latest YouGov poll. YouGov are supposed to be the Gold Standard of opinion polls, but in this latest one they have Liebore down in second place behind Reform, with the Tories in third. It will be interesting to see what the lesser-rated polls say later this week.

News reaches me from Sheffield, where a recently elected Green councillor has resigned. Richard Tillsely says he had to resign for the good of his mental health. He says he didn’t realise the pressure he would be under as a councillor. He is expected to return to his previous occupation as an environmental gardener(?). The date of the by-election is yet to be announced.

The lack of rain in central Europe has caused a big problem for nuclear power generators this summer. The lack of rain has resulted in the lowest water levels for many years and, in central Europe, the nuclear power stations use the continent’s biggest rivers for cooling water, as unlike the U.K. and France, many countries are landlocked and can’t use seawater. Several power stations have been turned off already for lack of cooling water. Of course, in the early days of summer, I read of at least two nuclear power stations stopping because the temperature of the water they were returning to the river was too high for environmental reasons.

There is a Survation Opinion Poll out for the Clacton By-Election, and the way it is being reported by the Guardian is insightful. Their headline says, “one fifth of voters support Count Binface”. While undoubtedly true, it ignores the real headline that 73% of committed voters say they will be voting for Nigel Farage! The poll says Farage 73%, Binface 20%, Laurence Fox 2%, everyone else together, 31 candidates, 5%. The Mirror has a different way of showing its left-wing colours, by moaning about an unnecessary by-election costing £250,000. Interestingly, they didn’t say the same thing about the Makerfield by-election.

Thursday

It’s a good morning to all my readers. Today is my sort of summer’s day. It’s beautifully sunny and warm, but only warm, not hot. In addition, there is a pleasant breeze. I’m in a hurry to get things done today so I can retire to the windowsill.

I see the Cambridge professor, Jason Arday, has resigned, due, he says, to all the unfair pressure he has been under. I have no doubt that he is a clever man, but like so many clever people, he appears to lack common sense. How he ever thought his embellished CV would stand up under close inspection, I will never understand. I did read that he complained to the police that a journalist from the Times Higher Education Supplement was harassing him. Apparently, asking embarrassing questions is now harassment. I really don’t know how Cambridge hired him. They clearly didn’t check a single claim in his CV. Was it because of the colour of his skin?

I read that there are talks taking place to finally iron out the exact position of the border between India and Myanmar. Back in 1967, a bilateral agreement settled most of the 1,643 km international border, and it was marked out by boundary marker posts. However, there are several areas that are in dispute. The current arrangement allows people who live on the border to move freely in a zone up to 16 km into both countries without a visa. The idea is that the two nations will swap land so the people’s homes will be permanently on one side of the border or the other. I suppose it is better that the countries are talking about the border rather than fighting over it.

With the news that Boeing has at long last achieved certification of its 737 Max 7, the smallest of the Max family, the spotlight moves on to the Max 10, the largest of the family. Boeing says it hopes to receive FAA certification for the Max 10 by the end of the year. The problems with the Max family of planes are well documented and have taken many thousands of Boeing’s engineering hours. This has had a knock-on effect on solving the problems that the 777X has run into, so perhaps Boeing will be able to move engineers over to getting that certified.

Speaking of the 777X, it is interesting that not a single US airline has ordered any. Why, you may well ask, and I will attempt to answer your question. The previous 777 sold very well worldwide. The 777ER was a particularly strong seller and is still used by American Airlines and United Airlines. But when Boeing was designing the original 777, they consulted with, among others, United and designed an aircraft that suited them, hence they bought it. When designing the 777X, they also consulted airlines and, in its case, both Emirates and Qatar wanted a larger-capacity plane than Boeing was proposing, and with bigger wings to cope better with conditions at their hub airports. Both Gulf carriers promised huge orders if such a plane was offered. Consequently, the design was stretched and bigger wings employed. So Emirates have ordered 270 planes and Qatar 124 of the 561-passenger versions on order. But the resulting plane is just too big for American, Delta and United.

I was delighted to read that, after four years, Sgt Martyn Blake, an officer in the specialist firearms unit MO1, has finally been cleared in an IOPC investigation into the killing of gangster Chris Kaba. The inquest into the death of Kaba had already cleared the shooting as legal. But Blake was put on trial for murder and found not guilty. Then the IOPC decided that they needed to investigate the shooting and have taken two further years to drop the investigation of an incident that was on film and had loads of witnesses. All this time, Sgt Blake has been suspended and under enormous stress. It must be highly unlikely that he can ever return to MO1 and, if he can even continue as a police officer, it is likely he can only hold down a desk job. I wonder if he has a case for compensation.

I read that the demonstrator aircraft for the GCAP (Tempest) programme is more than half complete and on target to fly next year. The fuselage is being constructed at the BAE Systems Samlesbury facility in Lancashire. Its forward, middle and rear sections will be mated together later this year before being shipped to the BAE factory at Warton, where the wings and tail fins are being built. The demonstrator is to test things like aerodynamics and flyability, but will be powered by a pair of EJ2000 engines that power the Typhoon, as the Rolls-Royce-designed engine is not yet far enough advanced. The Tempest is currently on line to enter RAF service in 2035, but I am hearing that, in particular, the Japanese would like to see the date brought forward and that plans are being made to bring the in-service date forward by two years to 2033.

Friday

Hi everyone, another sunny and pleasant morning, warmer than yesterday but by no means hot when I went out for my constitutional. It’s a good job Mascara Man is on holiday today or he might have had a problem with his Friday spent at Number 10 North. There was a major power failure affecting the railways in the Northwest of England, especially Manchester, yesterday afternoon, and I hear it has still not been sorted out this morning. The official advice is to only travel if necessary. As I write this, no one seems to know what caused the problem, but it only lasted three seconds!

An interesting idea from Singapore. The government there is planning to plant one million trees to shade the streets. Apparently, research concludes that this shading will reduce the temperature under the trees by an average of 2.6 degrees Celsius. Mind you, other research shows the “Heat Island” effect of the city adds four degrees to the overall temperature. I am not surprised by these findings, you only have to look at a pack of lions in Africa to see them snooze under a tree to keep out of the midday sun.

I have been looking at the one in, one out game with France. The latest numbers say we have taken 1,117 from France and 1,087 have been returned. But we have recorded 50 of those sent back have returned on small boats. I have no idea what has happened to those 50, I only hope they have been returned to France and not counted in the returns. But there is another question there, how many have come back and not been detected? I hear that the gangs have lowered the price of boat crossings and put up the price of lorry crossings, as coming in the back of a lorry now has less chance of being detected.

It looks like history is repeating itself after the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. After the previous games, there were several athletes who applied for political asylum. I read that now that this year’s emergency games have finished, at least five athletes have “disappeared” and not gone home with their teams. The hardest-hit team are the Ugandan boxers, where only two of the six have gone home. The missing four, two men and two women, have been joined by a single Pakistani boxer. Police Scotland are searching for all five.

I read that the National Crime Agency has carried out a raid at Felixstowe container port on a container recently arrived from China and due for onward shipment to Hamburg. Inside the container were 25 inflatable 10-metre boats and 25 Parsun outboard engines. Parsun are a Chinese maker of medium to high-power outboard motors. The people-smuggling gangs like to store their inflatable boats in German warehouses, as they are breaking no German law by doing so. This size of boat could carry around 100 illegal immigrants across the Channel.

Yet another problem for the Boeing 737 MAX family of aircraft. This time, the FAA says that cracks have been found in the fuselage of several aircraft and, consequently, they could suffer from a failure of structural integrity. The FAA has ordered that all 475 aircraft on the US register should be inspected for cracks around the starboard door, which is used as a service door to the forward galley and is sometimes used by Ambi lifts at airport stands without airbridges. The FAA says that if cracks are found, they must be repaired before the plane is allowed to return to service. The FAA Airworthiness Directive only applies to planes on the US register, but the other national and multinational authorities, such as the CAA and EASA, are expected to issue a similar AD.

The Royal Mail have just clarified their preference for the way addresses are written on envelopes and parcels. Some are obvious, but I bet that you don’t comply with at least one of their “rules”. Amongst the preferences, particularly for handwritten addresses, are that they should be clearly written in a colour that is easily distinguished against its background, i.e. black ink on a white envelope. Pale colours such as grey, yellow and pink should be avoided. The address should include no commas or full stops, and you should always include the postcode. Now, all of that is fairly obvious, and I suspect most of you are probably using those rules, well, maybe not the no commas and full stops. But I bet hardly any of my readers follow the last two preferences, that the address should be in the bottom left-hand corner of the envelope and it should be left-aligned. I don’t think I have ever seen a letter addressed in that way.

Saturday

Morning, my friends. It’s getting warmer again and was very sunny when I went out this morning. With Mascara Man still on his hols, I turn to Reform for my starter story this morning. The Guardian has been publishing stories about the finances of Nigel Farage and Richard Tice using private data only known to Farage, Tice and their banks. So, Farage and Tice were not happy with their banks. But the banks say they are the only people they have shared the information with are the National Crime Agency, and they have no choice as that is the law of the land when someone is being investigated. So, Farage and Tice have now learnt that they are being investigated by the NCA, who have not bothered to tell them and have leaked their private financial information to the left-wing media. I understand that Farage and Tice gave the NCA five weeks to tell them what was happening. That five weeks was up yesterday and the NCA had asked for more time at the last minute. Instead, Farage and Tice have both issued High Court summonses against the NCA. This one is going to be fun.

Next Tuesday, the law in France changes to ban unsolicited advertising phone calls. It seems that for many years the French public, like the British, have been moaning about unsolicited advertising calls, and the French have passed laws that have had little effect. The new law says you can only make these calls under specific conditions, like having given prior permission. Of course, we have things like the Telephone Preference Service, but it is widely ignored. I wonder how much notice the French will take of the new law. The people who run the call centres are up in arms, claiming thousands of jobs are at risk.

The Panama Canal Authority has just announced a new restriction on the maximum draught of ships using its new, bigger locks. This will bring back memories of the 2023-24 drought, when similar restrictions were put in place. The maximum draught of a ship is limited to 43 feet, which will affect the biggest container ships and tankers. Back in 2023-24, many of the ships passing through the canal stopped at a port at one end of the canal and offloaded part of their load onto the trains that follow the route of the canal to meet the depth limits, only to reload the cargo at the opposite end of the Canal. Will we be seeing a similar thing happening this time?

I hear that a second airline, German carrier Lufthansa, is talking to Boeing about refusing 777-9 planes built before the production standard was fixed back in May. As I have mentioned before, many of these planes need considerable work to bring them up to production standard. As I understand it, six of the Lufthansa order were built early and will need work to bring them up to standard. Like Emirates, Lufthansa do not want to pay the negotiated price for a new jet and receive an old, reworked jet.

It seems that e-scooters now have a higher injury rate than motorbikes. I am not really surprised, as those scooters do seem to whizz around the streets at enormous speed and the riders never wear a crash helmet or protective leathers like a motorcyclist. But I thought riding an e-scooter on the streets was illegal unless it was from an official hire scheme, and those machines have speed limiters.

It reaches my ear that the Guardian has been investigating the joint birthday party Richard Tice and his fiancée Isabel Oakeshott held last year. Apparently, the paper has been going around all the people who were at the party asking if Tice charged them for drinks. I’m not sure what the paper is trying to prove, that he was selling alcohol without a licence, that he is so tight he made people pay for drinks, or that he was trying to influence people by buying them drinks.

Westminster Council are proposing two changes to the pub licences they currently issue. The first proposal is that there should be no bar service, meaning that anyone who purchases a drink would have to buy it from a waiter. I am not sure what the reason behind this is, but I can’t imagine it doing anything other than putting prices up, as extra waiters would have to be employed. The second proposal is what the council calls a ban on “Vertical Drinking”. This is yet another stupid suggestion. If a pub can only serve drinks to people who are seated, they will be losing half their customers. Obviously, Westminster Council either don’t want pubs in their area, or they have no idea how a British pub works.

That’s me done for another week, and as it’s a lovely day, I am off for my nap on my favourite windowsill for my outdoor snooze. I don’t know if Mascara Man is back next week or if he is away for a fortnight. I do hope it is the latter. Chat to you all again next week.

 

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