What are the chances that if someone asked you a question you would give exactly the same answer, word for word, that you gave someone who asked that question earlier in the evening? I remember a rival newspaper wanted everyone to believe just that. Not only were the words exactly the same but the punctuation was duplicated. Most people don't speak punctuation marks out loud and there can be some flexibility in where, say, the commas go. Now, if the quotes were given to the two reporters involved, perhaps at a press conference, then the words would be same. But not when two reporters are operating completely independently. Less conclusive but a red flag is when all the facts of the story are recounted in exactly the same order. Slightly different words. It's called rewriting. It's called plagiarism. It's called theft. In Canada all the newspapers used to be members of a news cooperative called the Canadian Press. In places where there are competing media outlets, the stories submitted to the cooperative are not distributed to the local competition. But the unscrupulous scum newspaper chains who also own an outlet in Calgary simply pass the story onto their sister publication in Edmonton. A smart operator would then use the information as the basis of their own story but do all their own news gathering. It takes a real couple of stupid scum just to steal the story outright. Probably more than one person in the newsroom was involved, at least one editor and possibly a reporter, so we're not talking about a single rogue operator. Not like the guy from the same paper who used to pretend to work for us when he phoned bereaved relatives. At first I thought people, often in times of crisis and grief, were just confused when they said they'd just spoken to us. Then I noticed that every time this happened it was the same rival reporter's name on the story next morning. And when he left our competitor 's employment people stopped saying they'd already spoken to us.

Ha, I give writer Denise Mina a hard time for not replying to me email about her suggestion that Glasgow cop Bob Muncie framed serial killer Peter Manuel; and now I'm failing to answer someone's email. It came in as spam and I tried a new, supposedly, safer way to deal with it. But I boobed and it got deleted with no hope of retrieval. It was from a guy called Nick Bullen and was about an ancestor called Richard Bullen. I was intrigued about his work making clogs for horses during the Crimean War and very interested in finding out more about his time in Campbelton. Unfortunately, Mr Bullen's email address was lost when his message was accidently deleted and I haven't had any success tracking it down - though I'll know it when I see it. So, if you're out there Mr Bullen, please get in touch again.

Something I heard on the News Quiz suggested the BBC World Service is in danger. Hey, if there have to be cuts, let's get rid of the outrageously sexist The Conversation. And sack everyone involved and the managers who gave the programme the Green Light. When it first started it boasted that it was completely untouched by male hands. That is actually illegal under employment law. It's called sex discrimination in the workplace. The fact that the flagrant breach of the law was a matter of pride for the production team tells you all that you really need to know about them. The fact that this illegal sexism was allowed tells you more than you want to know about the stupidity of World Service management and the BBC overall. The Conversation continues and I don't think anything has really changed beyond no longer advertising with such pride a basic breach of employment law. By the way, I can't think of any must-listen-to programmes on the World Service these days but there are now several definite just-switch-offs-without-missing-anything-worth-hearing offerings. These are folk who brought us painting appreciation on the radio. Not totally insane but getting up there. And who told me this week that the last time the monarch read the Canadian speech from the throne was in 1957. Try 1977. Even an outfit with a modicum of professionalism..............

Now, forgive me if I've suggested this before in this blog. But I think people should have to pass their motorcycle test before they can drive a four wheel vehicle. On a motorcycle it doesn't matter whether the biker or the motorist is to blame, it's usually the former who comes off worse in any accident. This means that caution and road safety awareness become deep rooted in a biker's soul. It makes them far better drivers when they do graduate to four wheels. Of course, the snag is that the British roads in winter are not always safe for motorcycles. I had to give up my bike because it didn't fancy sliding through a junction on black ice in the early morning and under the wheels of an articulated lorry. But where there's a will there's a way and think of the lives saved if folk drove a little more safely.

They tell you work hard and do a good job and you'll be OK. It's not true. The incompetents who have self-awareness to realise just what they are often do better. Instead of expecting a good job well done to be the key to success, they start early in sucking up to the bosses. It's amazing how well it works. I wouldn't even say the bosses fall for it. Many bosses fear the competent because they don't want anyone who could take their job anywhere near them in the promotion stakes. I remember once the Big Boss, the capo di tutti capi, came to visit. His accompanying high powered management team behaved more like a troop of red-arsed baboons fighting over who would get to pick the fleas off the Alpha Male than anything else. I was right to despair as the company was sold not long afterwards to its inept but deep-pocketed rival.

What's the point of paying for website if you don't get to take a swipe at the rich and famous? A while back I read a book by Denise Mina which seemed to suggest that Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel was framed. When I was teenager a read the memoirs of the cop who caught him, Bob Muncie. So, I was intrigued by the suggestion that he went around framing people. And my mum sort of knew Manuel. Apparently at the Saturday Night Dancing in Glasgow he insisted on a specific girl for a specific dance and everybody knew about this and went along with it. I can't remember which dance my mum was. I'd heard Mina presenting a radio programme about Midge Ure getting a new guitar and the work involved in building it. She seemed friendly and approachable. So, I emailed her at her website about the Muncie-Manuel thing. I never heard back. So maybe she had no evidence that Muncie framed Manuel, perhaps the contact function on her website did not work or possibly she's not really that friendly or approachable. Another of Life's disappointments.

I have a confession to make. I was drawing up a list of people I just turn off when they come on the radio. I've found they have nothing to say that I care to hear. I'm frankly surprised that any of them have managed to keep their jobs. But here's the terrible appalling thing. When I looked at the switch-off list, all the people on it were women. Now, there are some guys I'm not too happy about having to listen to but I don't turn them off. So, what's going on? Am I a closeted misogynist? I could come up with some rationalisations - sexism, racism, xenophobia, laziness, obnoxiousness, incompetence or class prejudice. But 100% of those on list for switch-off female? I am appalled and shocked.

I'm announcing that I am not going to the United States to promote my books. The reason? The US border folk will want to know my place of birth. I identify myself as a Citizen of the World. I refuse to be defined by my place of birth. And in any case I didn't live there until I was in my teens. I am not doing this to get myself interviewed on the radio. I am adamant that this is not a publicity stunt.

I was recently reading about the Battle of Rorkes Drift, immortalised in the 1964 film Zulu, and the book looked at recreations dating back almost to the time of the battle in 1879. British interest in the battle was such that performances, some involving real Zulus, were quickly to be seen at theatres, circuses and military tattoos. Some, particularly at the latter, simply featured white guys covered in boot polish as the Zulus. That all reminded me of my first and only byline in the old Glasgow Herald. While walking along Woodlands Road in the city I spotted a little card in shop window looking for black Africans and telling them to apply for work at Python Films. Some follow up revealed, yes, that Python. They were filming a sequence for the Meaning of Life featuring red coats and Zulus. I suppose Glasgow was the closest they could get to South Africa without leaving the UK. Anyway, come filming day the black extras refused to work. Many were medical students at Glasgow University and something about the portrayal of the Zulus upset them. An emergency search of nearby JobCentres was launched. So, if you look closely at the battle footage most of the Zulus are actually from the Indian sub continent and the ones furthest from the camera are unemployed white Glaswegians wearing boot polish and sandshoes.

Should people who work for foreign governments and undermine Britain while promoting the interests of a third country lose their citizenship? The question came to mind after listening to Kate "HawHawsdottir" Laycock on German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle. DW is known to still recycle anti-British Second World War Nazi propaganda and combine it with present day material most probably scripted in Washington by the CIA. The coverage of the last major anniversary of the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift was a disgrace. The one token former RAF pilot included in the fawning US worshipping programme grossly misrepresented the British contribution of almost 25% of the supplies flown in. I suspect the DW scripts are American written because Cambridge-educated Laycock employs Americanisms such as Gotten and uses the word Protest without saying whether it's For or Against something. And for a supposedly German broadcaster DW has an awful lot of American presenters or people who learned their English from Americans. Maybe perhaps there should be consequences for folk who denigrate their former neighbours for foreign government money. And the US Über Furhers who seem call the shots at DW don't even know their own history - The first St Patrick's Day parade was not in Boston but in the then Spanish colony of Florida in 1601. Or perhaps HawHaswdottir might just check what she is telling her audience is true.

One of the red flags when it comes to science on the radio is the number of Americans interviewed for an item. The more Americans, the more dubious the science. Good rule of thumb. If they ever interview four Americans, then we'll be in Food Causes Death territory. The Autopsies All Found Food In The Stomach - Food Causes Death. The reason much American science, when conducted by Americans, is poor is that during the Vietnam War the university faculties suddenly had to expand massively to cope with demand for higher education from draft dodgers like Donald J Trump. People who otherwise would have no hope of teaching in university suddenly found themselves on campus faculties after all. And if you're taught by an idiot...... This is why I ended up giving up on history books written by American academics. That was disappointment as I was interested in a non-British take on events but what I got was often really poorly researched and fantastically chauvinistic.

Lived experience. Is there any other kind of experience? The word "lived" is redundant. We know little to nothing about the experiences of dead people. Perhaps maybe they don't have any. The use of Lived Experience suggests a fuzzy, flabby and muddled thought process. It is a red flag when someone uses it in a sentence on the radio. Experience shows that what follows will be weak. Just turn the radio off. The same goes when some ignoramus who doesn't know how to use the word "literally" comes on. It's a pretty reliable red flag indicating that what follows will be worthless.

I don't think any sane person expects everyone in an Elizabethan era television drama to speak Shakespearean English. But is it too much to expect the folk in some detective drama set in England before 1975 not to talk about being "across" something? I don't remember when that phrase sadly entered the British lexicon but it wasn't that long ago. Certainly not before the 1990s. Nor did British people use that horrible trite American euphemism for dying, "passing". Not a part of everyday speech in 1950s or 60s Gloucestershire. I can see why the casting director wants to make Gloucestershire after the Second World War look far more multi-ethnic and multi-cultural than it was in a bid to pander to the "We want to see people who look like us on television" crowd. But it's a lie. And lies should be avoided. Though I would hate it if such programmes turned into a nostalgia-based fodder for racists. The kitschy television adaption of the Hamish McBeth stories erased the village Asian shopkeeper of the original books and replaced him with a white guy. That probably wasn't racism but more an example of the mess made of the adaptation.

No-one, or no-one I would rate, would deny that the Taliban are very wrong to deny females a proper education or jobs in the professions. But a few thoughts. There's no war going on within Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban. The education issue affects only a tiny proportion of women there. The fact that they come from the most privileged sections of society means that the Western Media, themselves bastions of privilege, identify with them and give their plight a lot of coverage. The vast majority of Afghan girls were, and are, never going to become doctors, airline pilots or lawyers and they are being hurt by Western sanctions. And I'm pretty sure the war against the Soviet Union and their Afghan Communist clients was in a large part inspired by their insistence on educational opportunity regardless of sex. The Red Army was fighting as much for girls' education as the US and NATO troops who propped up the corrupt Afghan government until recently. But we in the West supported the Mujahedin back then. What changed when it comes to the West's attitude to female education?

I've got a pile of really good books about newspaper journalism. The thing is I can't bring myself to read them anymore. The make me too sad. Journalism is pretty much dead. Most radio and television reporting was based on what was in the papers. Now the newspapers have tiny overworked staff and that shows in their poor content. And the folk who call themselves journalists these days are more interest in expressing opinions than ferreting out and presenting facts. The line between fact and opinion isn't blurred, it's non-existent. Without newspapers to ransack, radio and television are now pretty poor conduits for the information people need to take part in democratic government. News belongs to no-one but it's expensive to gather. No-one wants to pay for news and the interweb meant for a while they didn't have to. But then the flow of proper journalism died with the demise of print media as the online outlets hoovered up their ad revenue. It's a bit like why electrical appliances no longer have lives measured in decades. A washing machine or food mixer that lasts 30 years would be really expensive due to the high quality of the components. And manufacturers don't say tell you that for the price you want to pay you'll be lucky to get six years out of an appliance. So, we take a chance. Can we afford to take the same chance on shoddy news?

Imagine an airport where all three departing flights arrive at the same time, regardless of schedule for the morning, and passengers line up on the runway at the foot of a mobile stairway next to each plane. And unlike buses, there's no indication on the aircraft of their destinations. It's easy to join the wrong queue and I did. I'm referring to Kabul Airport in the mid-2000s. Maybe this was not a typical experience of flying out of Kabul with Ariana, the Afghan state airline. But I think maybe it was. The flight out of Kuwait was interesting too. All the passengers were herded into a waiting room miles from the main terminal, miles from the main airport even. Then just before the middle of the night departure time a door was opened and the passengers raced across the runway and up some steps at the back of plane. First up, first choice of seat. And from the coverings on those seats they had been salvaged from several different planes. I can't speak to the safety of the plane but I seem to remember that Ariana had been barred from European routes at the time. But I have no complaints, they got me to Kabul and back.

Some may be surprised at the Burmese Army's poor performance against the various ethic resistance groups in Myanmar. I'm not. The so-called Army has always been nothing more than a bandit gang. That's why it is more of a business operation and political dictatorship than a fighting force. Burma has always been a country of bandit gangs. During the Second World War the biggest allied itself with the Japanese. Then it changed sides. One of the leaders Bogyoke Aung San was told by a senior British officer "You only joined us because you saw the Japs were going to lose. To which Aung San replied "Of course". His daughter Aung San Suu Kyi, who would have been welcomed into the gang if she had only been born a boy, inherited her murdered father's willingness to be candid. Asked while in power if she would do anything to save the Rohingya, she said No, there were no votes in helping the Muslim Rohingyas. I find the honesty commendable but the mindset detestable.

Years ago I covered a reunion of pilots who had made emergency landings on Fair Isle, halfway between Orkney and Shetland. The guest of honour, the main attraction, was a German pilot who crashed on Fair Isle during the Second World War. His weather reconnaissance plane had been shot down by Spitfires operating out of Sumburgh on the south tip of Shetland. The weather planes and the bombers sent to knock out the northern lighthouses, including those on Fair Isle, provided a steady trade for the Spitfires. This German claimed to have been "only a weather reconnaissance pilot". Sounds kind of harmless until you realise he was part of the German war machine intent on killing my parents, their parents, and their parents and any member of my family they could drop a bomb on. And probably your ancestors too. Anyway, those forecasts weren't for the tea time news bulletin. They were to make the Nazi's job of killing British people easier. I think the old German pilot realised his plea didn't really wash with me because he wasn't too friendly or forthcoming. Luckily for me, someone from After The Battle magazine was also there and I was able to piggyback on his interview with a guy who was probably an old Nazi. The Luftwaffe attracted right thinking Nazis. Several members of his crew died as a result of the encounter with the Spitfires and were buried on Fair Isle for a while. Then the German Government dug up nearly all their dead from both World Wars, including men executed for murdering their fellow prisoners of war for not being good enough Nazis, and reburied them in a central war cemetery just north of Birmingham on Cannock Chase.

I have a long multi-coloured panel stripey scarf. It's not actually all the colours of the rainbow. I like it. But it's not any kind of a statement. Sadly, some people think it is. I had one particularly nasty encounter at a street crossing. There was a guy there who looked as though he wanted to ask me something but couldn't decide if I was the kind of person who would tell him the time or give him street directions or whatever. I asked if I could help him. This resulted in a tirade of abuse and fist waving. Maybe he was just crazy or perhaps he thought my scarf was saying something he didn't approve of. As I say that was most unpleasant reaction but there have been others, both negative and positive. I'm told if I don't want a reaction I shouldn't wear that scarf anymore. But it's my scarf and I like it.

One of the interesting things about Canada is some folk use US spellings and forms while others go for British. Most of the spelling is British. The few exceptions in the Canadian English dictionary that spring to mind are plow, for plough, and tire for tyre. A lot of the vehicle-related terms are the US ones, hood for bonnet, trunk for boot, etc and of course, automobile for car. I think that just illustrates the dominance of the US car industry in Canada. For a while the national news agency, the Canadian Press, insisted on using US spelling but I think that was just because they couldn't be bothered correcting the spelling in the reams of US pap they insisted in foisting on us. All of the above is pretty harmless. But when some folk do their dates in the American format month- day-year and some use the British day-month-year, confusion can break out. Imagine having a card that was supposed to expire on 1st February this year, 1/2/2025 and someone reading that in American sees it as the 2nd January and announces the card has expired. From now on I'll get them to write the month in full.