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.

I hope the families of those killed in the 1994 Mull of Kintyre Chinook Crash don't give up on their campaign for answers. Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has denied a public inquiry into the deaths of 29 aircrew and top security forces personnel from Northern Ireland because the Ministry of Defence has advised against it. That's like taking the fox's word that there's no need to make the hen house more secure. But I hear that those former colleagues who remember Starmer as a lawyer say there wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell that he would order a new inquiry. I also understand that the only family members of the dead who aren't demanding answers are those of the MI5 agents. Why is that not a surprise? Most normal people continue to wonder why a helicopter crewed by two the top Chinook pilots in the RAF would fly into a hill side at the Mull of Kintyre. An attempt by senior RAF officers to blame the pilots failed. The safety record of the actual Chinook involved was queried. A computer system controlling the engines was notoriously unreliable. Boeing, the Chinook's maker, was heavily involved in the investigation from the beginning. A cynic might feel that the team was more interested in protecting Boeing than finding out why 29 Limeys died. The initial RAF finding of pilot error would have suited Boeing. Many of the papers relating the crash have been sealed until 2094. Who or what is being protected? Perhaps the papers shine too bright a light on the Chinook procurement programme and how many, if any, retired RAF and Ministry of Defence personnel were on the Boeing payroll at the time.  A cosy berth in the arms industry after retirement from the RAF has long been a perk for senior officers. Previous inquiries have been flawed for one reason or another. Perhaps too many vested interests. 

Next time Kate "Hawhawsdottir" Laycock tries to tell you on Deutsche Welle Radio that the British invented concentration camps, email and ask her about Shark Island. Though it was built three years after the last British camps were closed, in 1902, Shark Island was far more like what most people think of when they see the words "concentration camp". Arbitrary execution by guards, starvation, disease, inhumane medical experiments and death through over work were all hallmarks of Shark Island in 1905 in what is now Namibia. The main cause of death among the Boer women and children held in British concentration camps five years earlier was disease caused by incompetent healthcare administration, not a policy of near genocide. Similar incompetence meant far more British soldiers died in their camps than on the battlefield. Shark Island was part of an attempt by Imperial Germany to wipe out the rebellious Herero and Nama people. Some of those involved in the deaths of up to 3,000 prisoners at Shark Island played a role in setting up the Nazi camps just over 25 years later. And by the way, the British got the idea of corralling the civilian population to stop them supplying guerrilla fighters from t Spanish operations in Cuba. And in view of Deutsche Welle's penchant love of American propaganda maybe they should ask themselves whether Indian reservations were not the inspiration for the Spanish in Cuba.

When I had a real job, as a journalist, if I was told to do something I wasn't sure was the best way to tackle the story, I would say so. Maybe perhaps that's why I don't have a real job anymore. I don't think that folk realised that what I was doing was actually a sign of respect. There is no point engaging in a discussion with a complete idiot. They won't change their minds. I never tried it with the pair whom I considered the two biggest clowns at the Edmonton Sun. In way there no point because their far more sensible deputies would do the common sense thing anyway after the clowns went home at the end of their shift. But it's a shame that some of those deputies didn't realise that discussion was a sign of respect.

When I was checking how many British soldiers were killed during the First Gulf War in 1991 when the Americans attacked a halted armored column I was struck by one thing. That was the similarities between the 1991 incident and the US attack on a Canadian live fire exercise in Afghanistan in 2002 which killed four Canadian soldiers. Both incidents involved the Air National Guard, which has a load of civilian passenger jet pilots irresponsibly put in charge of military hardware. But main similarity was that the pilots involved just wanted to kill someone and they didn't care who. Just as long as it wasn't a fellow American. Then they might be trouble. The third similarity was the gross stupidity, lack of professionalism and incompetence involved in both fatal attacks. Both incidents were closer to reckless murder than accident of war. Is there not a song with the line Shot a man Reno just to watch him die. Maybe National Guard has a version along the lines of Bombed some guys in Iraq just to see the body parts fly.

Even more interesting than the question during my interview with the Scottish Office than who I would invite to a dinner party was whether I would lie to a journalist. Lies are nearly always found out in the end. So, lying is not a good idea. The question placed me in a dilemma because I knew British Government spokesmen did lie. A guy at the Ministry of Defence had just lied to me about the deaths of nine British soldiers at the hands of the US Air Force during the First Gulf War in 1991. I didn't want to appear naive when answering at the interview. But having never been to a dinner party, I probably wasn't going to get the job anyway.

Well, the folks in charge of the BBC have shown yet again that they're not fit to run a bath. They've just cut off overseas online access to British and Scottish radio news bulletins. So, no more Good Morning Scotland, no more The World at One. I'm not getting up in the middle of the night to listen to them livestreamed. Even if that was possible. Now, you'd have thought in a world of misinformation the BBC would have an interest in providing as much news content as possible. I guess I'll just have to rely on MAGA Conspiracy sources and that nice Elon Musk chappie, the one who believes the British jail system is filled with political prisoners. I don't think letting folk listen to the same news as people back home get costs the BBC extra. Did you know the BBC has a programme that no men are allowed on - The Conversation. The creators boasted no males were allowed at all but I think they ran into problems denying guys jobs on the production team - ie sex discrimination laws relating to employment. That doesn't mean they don't discriminate, just they can't boast about it any longer. Jolly Good Show.

I recently managed to watch the 1916 film of the Battle of the Somme. It was the most viewed film shown in British cinemas at the time and may still hold some kind of a record. Anyway, I was interested to see how one of the biggest disasters in British military history was portrayed to the public back home. Let's just say no outright lies were told but folk might have been left with the impression it was a victory: footage  of captured German positions and long lines of prisoners. One of the things that struck me was that nearly all the prisoners were wearing the soft feldmutze caps and not helmets. Who were these guys? 

Long time passing in a place far far away there was a guy on a journalism course. The course was part of the Printing and Media Department's empire at the college. So when the printing students went on a visit to one of the biggest book printers in Europe, the department head took along the journalism student guy to record his triumphant progress through the plant. The printing plant included a miracle press which had cardboard, paper and ink fed in at one end and kicked out palettes of finished books at the other. Some joker had put a For Sale sign on. It turned out from  talking to print workers that the miracle press chewed up thousands of books when it was started up and a similar number when it was shut off. The tour guide must have been a very bitter employee. He told the students that a far smaller printer had ordered some specialist ink that the big printer suddenly needed. The big guys phoned the supplier and demanded the ink. They pointed out how much their business was worth to the supplier and what they got from the little guy who placed the ink order. They got their ink and maybe the little guy went to the wall because he couldn't fill an order. The day after the class trip the journalism guy was summoned to the department head's office and told if he wrote about anything he'd learned on the class visit he would be kicked out of college. It wasn't clear if it was the miracle press's poor performance or the ink hijacking that was the problem. The department head obviously didn't know much about journalism and the need to double-check information. Getting kicked off the course would probably mean no job. What do you think our hero did? 

I heard something on the radio about a controversial bravery award in Afghanistan. Putting aside the allegations of dishonesty involved, some, if not all, of the blame lies at the door of the battalion of The Rifles involved. In their rush to get a gallantry medal credited to the unit, the officers failed to investigate the claim properly. I doubt if many in the medal winner's platoon applauded the highly dubious award. Sadly, the number gallantry awards credited to a battalion is as good an indication of military value and combat effectiveness as a body count of dead Vietnamese is a guarantee of ultimate victory. I understand in the early days of the SAS the unit subscribed to a more traditional regimental ethos that scorned bravery award applications because very high standards of conduct were par for the course in the unit. I know of at least one Crimean War Victoria Cross winner who was chosen through a vote by his whole battalion. Either approach would have saved The Rifles a great degree of ridicule. I can't be alone in thinking that an out and out popularity contest is just, if not more, likely to produce a deserving recipient than the way things are apparently done at the moment.

If I said only Scottish people should be permitted to play in pipe bands, I would quite rightly be condemned. Even if I started throwing around claims of "cultural appropriation". And I don't fancy facing off against a group of outraged Gurkhas. By the way, does the Royal Tank Regiment still have a pipe band? And yet the taxpayer funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation gives a platform to people who come away with similar highly racist nonsense. Stupidity crosses the Atlantic at the speed of sound these days, so no longer does the time lapse measured in years you guys used to enjoy exist. Remember the Australian break dancer Rachael Gunn at the last Olympics and ridicule she endured? Well, CBC's Commotion programme got hold of an American who announced that she should never have been allowed to compete because she wasn't from New York. In fact the guy seemed to be saying that no-one who wasn't from Harlem should be allowed to compete in Olympic break dancing. Putting aside an ignorance of what the Olympic Games are, what riled me was that the presenter/host failed to challenge this obnoxious pap. This was far from the first or only time the CBC has acted as an amplifier and platform for highly obnoxious racism or sexism; Commotion being a prime culprit thanks to its preference for American contributors over Canadian ones (Good to see Canadian tax money being funnelled to US hate mongers). Though it has to be said that so far the BBC is more outrageously sexist than racist.

I'm a little baffled by Trump's Nazi-style birthday tank parade. Trump was a draft dodger. Only instead of fleeing to Canada with the other wasters, his slumlord dad got a tenant doctor to give him a medical exemption. Though whatever was supposed to be wrong didn't interfere with Trump's sporting activities on campus and he's pretty hazy about it. Also, during his last term as US president I got the impression that he thought people draft enough to be in military uniform were mugs. So, why the birthday tank parade? I know, I know, it was officially it was for the 250th birthday of the US Army. But it's had plenty birthdays without a parade. Perhaps Trump wanted to be one up on his family back in Germany, who know a lot about Nazi parades but have never had one in their honour. At least he didn't insist on wearing a uniform. Maybe next time. And will his pal Elon Musk, he of the Nazi salute, also have a parade? I'm sure he can afford to hire some tanks and maybe Trump will let him hire Washington's main drag for the venue.

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.