I shouldn't laugh, coz it's no laughing matter. You know some people used to think they drove better with a few drams in them? Well, this New Year gave me pause for thought. There was a lot of traffic on the roads after The Bells. The thing was that I had never seen everyone driving with much care and consideration. I suspect they were driving safely coz they didn't want involved in any accidents that might resulted in them being breath-tested. This morning things were back to normal with folk going through red lights, etc. Some of these folks are such good drivers they get in collisions with trains.  I say drinking and driving is no laughing matter coz it killed my grandpa's brother. Multiple millions of Germans had failed to finish him off when he went into action as paratrooper during the Second World War but one Yank did for him in 1957.

I forgot to run a teaser last week reminding you that the 2025 Book of the Year was being announced today. So, if you please, internal drumroll sound in your head. After a strong start to the year although the general quality of the books reviewed was good, the shortlist came down to only three titles. The first contender was SAS Operation Storm about the defence of the Omani fishing village of Mirbat in 1972. For an SAS book to make the shortlist is unusual because most are what I term War Porn. Co-author Roger Cole was there as an SAS trooper while Richard Belfield is a skilled writer. Between them they delved into a rich vein of information. The second contender was The Korean War by old favourite, and old soldier, Tim Carew. This book from 1967 was a joy to read with the often grim stories from the Commonwealth contingent brightened with sudden splashes of humour. Number Three in the running was Robert Kershaw's balanced and insightful look at the 1944 fighting in Arnhem through the prism of one street. At the end of the day it came down to Mirbat or Korea. The tie- breaker was a stupid claim that the Strikemaster jets at Mirabet were armed with submachine guns. So, Korea wins.

I think Thanksgiving is a great idea. A public holiday where all you have to do is count your blessings and be grateful. Here in Canada there's usually a big family gathering and meal. Our taxpayer funded state broadcaster CBC has a new, and usually crap, call-in programme called Just Ask Me in which dim members of the public phone in their opinions in the belief that they constitute a question to a subject expert. An interesting idea very poorly executed. Anyway, the expert was a woman and the subject was how to please everyone at Thanksgiving Dinner. The problem was she hated Thanksgiving and thought anyone who celebrated it was a colonialist fascist. With such a party pooper on the end of the line, hardly anyone phoned in. Whoever booked this fantastically stupid boorish woman for the call-in should have been fired. And whoever hired the booker, also obviously a stupid person, should go as well and quite possibly their boss too should be terminated well for being so  chronically incompetent. Whatever happened to the old The Buck Stops Here? 

I hadn't realised how brilliant Lord Mountbatten was until I saw the wartime information film Burma Victory. Not. The whole film was a Mountbatten vanity project. I'm not sure now that the real architect of the British Empire 's victory of the Japanese in Burma, William Slim, even got a mention. Slim at least knew his left from his right. Which is more than can be said for the odious Mountbatten. It has been said, with only some exaggeration, that Mountbatten's South East Asia Command headquarters in Ceylon, had more personnel than the 14th Army in Burma. But the Americans liked working with a Real Life English Dook. And maybe that counted for something. By the way, I understand there are two versions of Burma Victory. One celebrates the reconquest of Burma. The American version celebrates how swell they and their Chinese allies are.

I've seen a couple of photos of young women murdered in Scotland over the past few months - obviously plucked from so-called social media. I can't work out whether the girls have been victims of badly botched plastic surgery or have used some kind of creepy inadequate Internet photo filter that for some reason they think makes them look more attractive. Now, I know what's considered pretty changes from decade to decade but when did the bad botox horror look come in? Is there are crazy incompetent plastic surgeon working for dead cheap in central Scotland? I hope not. I hope what a saw was down to flawed photo software.

Several years ago I was forced to read a history of North American Indians called The Inconvenient Indian by an American writer based in Canada called Thomas King who was marketed as indigenous. By the end I thought I Could Have Written That. So, I decided to look into King's credentials as an indigenous writer. He turned out to be a privileged Greek kid from California who had been told his deadbeat dad was of Cherokee descent. OK, but if he hung out with his Cherokee grandparents during the school holidays.... Nope, no evidence of that even. King has just admitted he has no Cherokee blood. He gave the impression this "revelation" followed a report from a family tree specialist he had commissioned. In fact, a US group that specialises in exposing Pretendians had called him up to answer some questions raised by their research. Now there is a big fuss here among the chattering classes. But I can't understand why. I'm a great believer in nurture being more important than nature. Was King supposed to have some deep rooted racial knowledge buried in his DNA that made him indigenous? That's surely pure racism. Turns out he was just a little Greek-American who decided he was an Indian. Good career move. A number of what I consider Professional Indians have said King's confession has not come as a surprise. So, why didn't they call him out? Put it this way, people in glass houses know they shouldn't throw stones.

I think maybe perhaps it's time the Royal Family decided to implement a ban on sex with citizens of the United States of America. It often doesn't turn out very well. Edward VIII stopped being Edward VIII so he could marry the obnoxious Wallis-Simpson. Constitutional Crisis negotiated but the abdication tainted with later Nazi overtones. Did he really mean when he declared Something Must Be Done during a visit to some economically distressed part of England that all the Jews should be killed? Then we have the present family rift following Prince Harry's marriage to the toxic Meghan Markle. Yet another American divorcee - will they never learn? Prince Nice-but-Dim simply married someone just like his mother. Now Prince Andrew is no longer Prince Andrew because of sex parties in America set up by Robert "The Bouncing Czech" Maxwell's daughter and her creepy boyfriend. Double trouble mixing with a Maxwell and teenage American girls.

Most folk like to get some praise. Some even seek it. But I remember when I worked at the Government of Saskatchewan and someone praised the daily news summary that I'd prepared for the morning meeting. They meant well. But I just knew that the colleague who prepared the summary on alternate weeks would interpret this as a criticism of her. And it was my life she would make more difficult as result. And I was correct. I sometimes wonder if senior management praise for the Campbeltown Courier's coverage of the Mull of Kintyre Chinook Crash led my then-boss to undermine me and make my job as editor more difficult than it had to be was an example of something similar. Only, she was motivated by fear that I would get her job and wasn't just being petty.

Censored

OK, time I think for what is going to become an annual Downer. It's around Remembrance Day and I think it's important to remember what soldiering is all really about and how badly things can work out for too many people. I've never been sure whether this photo from 1917 shows British or Canadian kilties. The photo is sometimes credited to The Official Canadian War Photographer. Sadly, the guy I was going to ask, Tim Cook at the Canadian War Museum, died suddenly a couple of weekends ago. He was a good guy. Anyway, click here to see the photo  – <a href="/index.php/14-titles/81-wardead" target="_blank&quot;">War Dead</a></p>

The BBC has a science programme called Discovery. It causes me some concern. Quite often it profiles leading world scientists. What concerns me is the majority of them come from privileged backgrounds. I don't think scientific ability is dependent on, or even linked to, parental income. This suggests to me that genuinely talented working class kids are not being given a chance. And the exclusion of talent must mean our science is far more mediocre than it should be. England seems to worst for this, Scotland and North America, though no meritocracies, appear to be slightly better, say children of school teachers, and the sole Aussie was, if I recall correctly, was the son of a working class single mother. Now I don't know how hard it is to get a job as a scientist. But one English princess decided she wanted to be a journalist when she graduated from Oxbridge. Hey Presto, Princess gets a good job as a journalist handed to her. Then she decides she wants to be a scientist instead. Hey Presto, she gets a good job as a scientific researcher. I'm not saying she is not a good scientist. What I am saying is that equally, or more, talented folk from humbler backgrounds were pushed aside to make way for her and never got a chance. We all end up losers when Privilege closes ranks to make sure their kids get all the good jobs. Can the UK really afford to stifle talent so that Nigel, Charlotte and Tim can have first pick?

The problem with new recipes is that many require a pinch of this or a dash of that. But the shops seldom sell ingredients in pinches or dashes. And suppose the the recipe is not a success. You end up with a bag or jar of something you may never use again. What's the answer? Some kind of cookery club where everyone agrees to try the same new recipe on the same weekend and divvy the pinches, dashes and snatches out from a communally purchased jar or bag? Even then there would have to be a lot of club members to avoid bring left with 4/5ths of a bag or jar of whatever.

Last weekend the BBC World Service news carried a highly critical item about the Taliban hosting a news conference in India which barred female journalists. Grounds indeed for censure. My problem was that half an hour earlier my radio had a BBC programme that used to boast that it was uncontaminated by any male contribution. Employment equity laws made such a boast unwise and it's been dropped. But somehow I doubt if any males are on the programme production team at this time but the lawyers are happy. The content remains 100% female. So, how can it be wrong for the Taliban to bar females when the BBC half an hour earlier banned males? Is it not a bit hypocritical of the BBC to run an item critical of sexism while engaging in it itself?

Last weekend the BBC World Service news carried a highly critical item about the Taliban hosting a news conference in India which barred female journalists. Grounds indeed for censure. My problem was that half an hour earlier my radio had a BBC programme that used to boast that it was uncontaminated by any male contribution. Employment equity laws made such a boast unwise and it's been dropped. But somehow I doubt if any males are on the programme production team at this time but the lawyers are happy. The content remains 100% female. So, how can it be wrong for the Taliban to bar females when the BBC half an hour earlier banned males? Is it not a bit hypocritical of the BBC to run an item critical of sexism while engaging in it itself?

Does anyone else remember TV Detector Vans? Sinister vehicles with a revolving antenna on the roof that supposedly prowled the streets and could tell what television channel you were watching. And if you didn't have a licence for that television set - kapow. An older person now, I suspect the vans were a con. I doubt they could detect a switched-on television with any degree of accuracy and certainly not which channel it was tuned to. By the time I left home nearly 100% of households had a television. So, all the TV enforcement folks did was check which houses to not have a licence and target them. When I first lived in Inverness I got a letter demanding to know why I didn't have a licence and threatening several unpleasant happenings if I didn't get one. I didn't have a licence because I didn't have a television. Some folk might say that the best thing to do then was just ignore the letter. I knew better. I knew of too many doors kicked down by the TV licence people, who regarded evasion as up there in the scale of criminal activity alongside raping your little sister, cutting her throat was a jagged tin can and feeding her body to the pigs. I went to the Post Office in Queensgate to explain my lack of a licence.

Something like 45 years ago I was a regular on a BBC Radio Scotland teenage current affairs programme called Sunday Club. It involved a panel about six school kids interviewing two or three of the country's news makers. One Sunday we were interviewing a Czech dissident. He started talking about a beating his son had been by the Czech secret police. Because of what of you were doing, we asked. "Oh, no," he replied. "I'm proud to say he asked for it." Few Scottish parents at the time would have been proud that their kid had got a kicking from the police. While most youngsters only appeared on the programme three or so times I did a lot more. I suspect that was because I wasn't the sort of kid my high school would have picked to represent them on the wireless.

I wonder how many British children died from suffocation in the 1960s and 70s after climbing into an abandoned fridge. Certainly there must have been enough that the government made a public education film warning kids to stay clear of fridges. Or was it telling adults to take the door of the fridge before illegally dumping it? We were also informed by the telly that if we did not use the underpass on the way home from buying New Shows our dads would almost run us down in his car and our grannies would be very perplexed. Was the kid or Charlie the cat who burned the house down by playing with matches? Or did Charlie talk the kid out of playing with the matches? I never did get to stagger around the country in an RAF boiler suit suffering from hypothermia. Downed RAF aircrew in the final stages of hypothermia were seldom seen on my street. I think the government perhaps maybe had some interesting ideas about the kind of lives most of the population were experiencing. New Shows, killer fridges, talking cats and hypothermia. They were obviously interesting but dangerous times.

I'll never forget the day that I didn't meet singer Elvis Costello. It was a Saturday in Lerwick. Most Saturday afternoons I would go for a couple of pints at the Thule Bar, down by the harbour, with my flatmate Lois. But that Saturday there was an old film I'd always wanted to see showing on Channel 4. So, I didn't go that Saturday. Lois was a long long time coming back. When he finally did get home it turned out he'd spent the afternoon boozing with pop star Elvis Costello. Costello and his then wife were on a cruise ship that had called in to Shetland to let the passengers stretch their legs. Costello didn't get further than the Thule on the quayside.  Lois said he was good guy and had promised to come back to Shetland and play. And lo and behold, he did come and play at that year's Shetland Folk Festival. Just him and his guitar. If he hadn't already been a star, you would have said he was going to one. He was bigger and broader than I'd expected, the TV made him look a bit scrawny. I can't remember the name of that film that was on Channel 4.

Yep, you read that correctly. When I was a kid a person could get hurt in a children's playground. And I don't mean from a junkie's needle through the foot. I think something we called The Cheese-cutter was the most dangerous piece of playground equipment. It was basically a heavy wood beam that swung back and forth. A bit like a medieval battering ram that you could sit on. Another kid, not paying attention, could walk into the path of the swinging beam and kerpow, a fractured skull. There was also something called The Witch's Hat, but I can't remember why we thought it was dangerous. And then there was all the gravel or Tarmac surfacing to fall headfirst onto from the slide or climbing frame. Nowadays the playground surfaces seem to be rubberised. Anyway, the good thing about the old fashioned playgrounds was the role they played in Natural Selection. Most of the kids who got hurt were doing something stupid. Maybe better out of the picture before their stupidity could kill someone else. Maybe best they were out of circulation before they were old enough to get a driving licence and their dangerous stupidity killed an innocent person.

When I was a reporter on Tyneside I lived in the Heaton area of Newcastle. But I worked in South Shields on the other side of the Tyne. I used to cover Hebburn Magistrates Court. I was surprised how many, going by their addresses, of my neighbours in Heaton showed up at Hebburn Mags charged with house breaking or theft in either Hebburn or Jarrow. It took me a while to work out why that was. Heaton was once home to a sprawling British Rail goods yard. It was pretty much closed by the time I moved to Newcastle. But the guys showing up at Hebburn Mags were from families who for generations made their living from stealing from the railway goods yard. When it closed, they had to spread their crime net wider. Our fridge broke down during a heat wave and we carried it and its contents into the backyard. Within 24 hours the gate had been forced and the fridge was stolen. I wonder if it gave off a cloud of toxic death spores when it was opened.