Most days on the radio I hear at least one item that is prefaced with a warning that I may find the content disturbing. It never is. I’m left wondering if it really is genuinely felt to be disturbing, why it is being broadcast. I think maybe in these Everyone-is –in-Danger-of-PTSD times whether the broadcaster is just trying to cover themselves legally when it comes to liability. Much the same as warnings on coffee cups that the content may be hot.

When I was a primary school in the late 1960s we had the chance to Buy A Black Baby for six weekly payments of one old penny. We got some sort of card with six boxes and every penny payment made resulted in the teacher ticking one box. Or a rubber stamp may have been involved. I'm pretty sure it was explained to us that the payment of sixpence, a tanner, was not going to buy us a slave for life. The scheme was more about raising money to help with health care in Africa. But that tanner did supposedly give us the right to name an African baby. I always chose John. I wonder how many Johns there are in their mid-50s wandering Africa as you read this.

The BBC World Service had an item about AI generated current affairs content - fronted by AI generated presenters. The real life programme presenter simply fed in his notes and Notebook LM did the rest. I was impressed at first. Though the AI presenters did claim to be humans discussing AI programme hosting; naughty. But then I decided that the item said more about the general standard of broadcasting, terrible, than it did about AI. I mean, it was possible to mistake voices and content created by a soulless, unimaginative, uninquisitive plagiarism machine for real journalists. It doesn't say much for what passes these days for journalism. One presenter here literally doesn't usually know what day it is and another only becomes engaged when handbags or icecream flavours are being discussed. And unlike most of the publicly funded presenters the AI was at least able to read text without stumbling over words or badly mispronouncing them.

I think I'll post the photo of the dead kilties scattered across a battlefield in 1917 again. Just as a Remembrance Day reminder of how badly soldiering can turn out. For some reason I'm reminded of the Max Boyce joke when his mum says You Go Out and Play Rugby but If You Break Your Legs Don't You Come Running To Me. It's all good fun until someone loses an eye. Or their entire lower torso. Anyway, click here to see the photo  – War Dead

I saw a piece of newsreel film you don't get to see very often. It showed French people attacking Allied prisoners of war in a Normandy village in 1944. The villagers were obviously not happy about attempts to liberate them from the Germans. A lot of Allied soldiers reported that even after the Germans were driven out, the French did not seem too happy. Certainly, there wasn't the joy seen in Belgium or the Netherlands. Of course, Normandy took a hammering; a lot of war damage and civilian deaths. But maybe perhaps there were a lot of French who had done well under the Nazis. Despite later claims, not everyone was in the Resistance. It could even be that there were more men in the fascist police force, The Milice, than took up arms against the Germans. Most people, I suppose, just made the most of a bad job and tried to get on with life as best they could. But I wish we would stop pretending that the French were enthusiastic allies in the war against fascism. Of the 38,000 French troops captured by the Allies in Syria in 1941, only 6,000 opted to fight the Axis as members of the Free French forces. And let's not consider the British lives squandered rescuing French troops from Dunkirk in 1940, only for them to return to France after the surrender to work for the German war effort.