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.