I think writers have to be very careful when they describe something as "the last", or even "the first". I was just reading a book, by Tory Kwasi Kwarteng, which stated the last British cavalry charge took place at Omdurman in 1898. I can think of several subsequent British cavalry charges after that, including several during the First World War. I'm not even sure that qualifying the claim by saying "full regimental" cavalry charge will cover it. Whole cavalry divisions were sweeping around Palestine towards the end of the First World War. Perhaps the only safe thing to say is the 1898 charge by the 21st Lancers was the last, and I think only, one in which Tory Winston Churchill took part. Kwarteng is far from the only person to assert the last cavalry charge claim. His expensive education, which included Eton, may have been wasted. On the other hand is being an Old Etonian not almost an essential qualification for Cabinet office? Am I alone in wondering if one secondary school really does have such a monopoly on producing exceptionally talented people?

When I was reporter I noticed a lot of parents of children who died tried to set up charities or organisations linked to whatever had killed their child. It was a case of They Didn't Die in Vain: Some Good Must Come of This. The thing is that setting up a charity to support, say, research into childhood diseases is complicated and hard. It takes very special talents. Things were made even more difficult for these grieving parents by the number of shysters and chancers who infest the charity business. The first, and sometimes only, person they help is themselves. It was shame to see parents' grief being so exploited.

One of the things that struck me when I moved to Canada was the number of teenagers killed in car crashes. It seemed that a lot of people went to school with someone who died in a car crash. Back in the late 1970s and 80s few British teenagers had cars. But in Canada secondhand vehicles and petrol were cheap. In Scotland, or at least in Livingston, most folk knew someone from Craigshill High School who had been murdered or had murdered someone. A different world.

Well, that's basically Award Season pretty much over. I heard Radio's stupids lamenting that more of the winners didn't use their time on the podium to use it as a platform to make a statement on world affairs or some social issue. I'm glad they didn't. I don't think I've ever changed my opinion about anything because of something some celebrity has said about something. Stick to your field of expertise. I don't care what you think and your opinions are no more valid than any other man or woman on the street. They might even be less so. A depressing number of musicians who do station promotions for the local university radio station, and some of them are legends, are unable to give the frequency correctly. If they can't do that, why should I take them seriously when they opine on events in Gaza or teenage sexual identity issues?

This happened a long time ago. I was still at high school. And the genocidal actions of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot were in the headlines. The school decided to raise money to help the survivors. One means of this was a raffle. The first prize was a bottle of whisky and a tin of biscuits. A mate and I were there when the winning ticket was drawn. It had been bought by the teacher we had after morning break. We offered to deliver the prize. Instead, we went to the staff room and told the teacher we could fix it for him to win. He said he wasn't much interested in the biscuits and we could have 'em. We then went to the home economics department and borrowed eight or nine glasses, one for the teacher and one for everyone in the class. So, the teacher arrived to find a bottle of whisky and nine glasses on his table. He took the hint.

I wonder if artillery gunners and bomber crews really chalked stuff on their munitions. Or was it all faked for the photographer? All those Kaiser or Hitler Special Delivery shells or bombs. Did people really bother? It's much the same when it comes to unit nicknames. All those Ladies from Hell, Devil Dogs or Green Devils. I have a feeling that enemy troops would not come up with awed descriptions of their opponents. I tracked down the term some German troops used for kilted regiments during the First World War. It wasn't exactly awe filled or respectful. It sounded like how German troops really would describe kilted soldiers and was more than somewhat disrespectful.

I heard some on the BBC's Life Scientific which caused me concern. The programme profiles and interviews leading scientists. Two of the British women scientists on recently were privately educated. How many women in the UK are privately educated? Statistically, it's surely unlikely that even one privately educated woman would appear on the programme. What worried me was the possibility that opportunities in scientific research were heavily weighted in favour of those whose parents could afford to pay for private school. One of the women I heard went to a school that saw its mission as teaching Home Economics to create good little housewives. And yet it appeared that whatever job this woman wanted to try, doors were opened for her. I think Africa suffers badly due to lack of opportunity for youngsters whose parents are not rich. I worry that maybe perhaps a career in UK science is no longer a question of talent, but of parental income. That's something we can't afford.

When I was a 17 year old office boy at the Glasgow Herald I was sent to the Mitchell Library for about a week to find out what the paper had said about momentous events in history. This was for a book to mark the paper's bi-centenary. I can't remember now much of what I found but I do recall they didn't use the comments on the acquisition of Hong Kong in the early 1840s. Basically, the paper said Britain had been cheated by the Chinese and what was it going to do with this barren island at the mouth of the Canton. What I do remember is how the paper's attitude to the poor and working classes changed after the First World War. Before the war the paper took a paternal and concerned attitude. After the 1918 the working classes were the enemy within. These were days of Red Clydeside. This was the paper read by the handful of men who ran heavy industry in Scotland and who, along with their sons, would cripple attempts from the 1930s onward to diversify the Scottish economy and give workers a wider choice of employers. And then eventually move their shipbuilding operations, etc, to places like Korea. Even before I joined the Herald, Koreans had a higher standard of living than the Scots. The Red Menace of 1918 conjured up by the Herald had been vanquished.

I recently watched an American documentary about the 1944 D-Day Landings. One of the US infantrymen interviewed had an obvious German accent. He was described as being "of German descent". But was he brought up in Germany? Not necessarily. I remember talking to an old Ukrainian guy in Edmonton. He spoke English with a thick Eastern European accent. But it turned out he'd been born and raised in Canada. He had the accent because all the adults in the village he was brought up in spoke English with a thick European accent.

I saw a documentary about the 1994 Mull of Kintyre Chinook Crash, which pretty much wiped out the entire leadership of Britain's anti-terrorism effort in Northern Ireland. I came to Canada in 1997. So I was unaware of the vehemence with which successive government ministers insisted "nothing to see here, move along". The RAF inquiry ruled that two of its top Chinook pilots were guilty of gross negligence. Eventually, it was admitted that there was insufficient evidence to support the finding. So, the public still does not know what really happened. It has come out that there were a lot of concerns about the safety of the American-built Chinook 2 and government ministers were lied to and misled by the Ministry of Defence. The MoD does lie, sometimes stupid lies. Usually it does so due what it interprets as "National Security". Often this simply means not saying anything that might embarrass the Americans.

What do Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Russian Federation supremo Vladimir Putin have in common? They have both appeared in recent weeks being "interviewed" by American right wing propagandist Tucker Carlson. Smith said she welcomed the chance to tell the world the good news from the Canadian province. Even accepting Carlson's claim to be a journalist, which he is not, Smith does not seem to have been asked by local reporters why she did it twice, once in Calgary and again in Edmonton. In fact it looks like she was pandering to a right wing pressure group, a lot like the old Left Wing Militant Tendency in the UK, which has been taking control of the local branches of her ruling United Conservative Party. These are the kind of people who would vote for Donald Trump if they could. And in fact, I suspect, a lot can as they are dual US-Canadian citizens. Putin just wanted a platform in the west which would not involve being asked any hard questions. Who'd have thunk a hard core right winger like Carlson would be a shill for The Evil Empire? Anyway, when are Smith and Putin going to share a stage? We should be told.

Sometimes the cleverest funniest television adverts fail. The first viewing is often a delight. But once you know the punchline, the payoff, from the second time onwards the advert can be one long bore. And that boredom can easily translate into irritation with the advert and this is transferred onto the product being marketed. It's a shame.

Many years ago, while on a visit to Vancouver, I spotted a "clan" gathering featuring the Chief of the Clan Macleod. Actually, it turned out to be pretty much a begging session to raise funds for renovations to Dunvegan Castle. I had a chat with the guest of honour, Chief John. He started by quizzing me about my own Scottish bloodline. Cheeky. I didn't see what it had to do with anything. And for the questions to be posed in such a posh English Public School accent! I refrained from pointing out that even if I was half-Polish or Swedish, I almost certainly had more Scottish DNA than him. The Anglo-Scots male tends to marry English money generation after generation. Nope, even with my Irish and English forefathers in the mix, I'm confident of who was more "Scottish". Born there, educated there and with enslaved coal miners in the family tree.

Three times last week I couldn't believe that professional journalists failed to ask obvious questions. One was an item about "neurodivergent" adults, or however they want to be referred to, who were working as parcel couriers. What I wanted to know was were they still getting their full government benefits and did this mean that they were being exploited as cheap labour? And keeping people not in receipt of benefits out of a job by working for a wage that didn't meet the cost of living? Another item was about similar adults doing graphic design. The argument seemed to be that they were more creative than college-trained and indoctrinated professional artists. But it seemed that very little of what these amateurs did was being used. My question was is someone pocketing a big charity grant for running this scheme? I can't see how it makes money if no-one wants what is being created. Obvious questions that went unasked. The third thing I won't bother you with, it arose from journalists interviewing other journalists when one of them has made little or no attempt to investigate the truth of someone's claims. The reporter being interviewed was basically answering that she didn't know and how could she know. The answer was if you were doing your job you could give a better answer than that.

Once upon a time, long ago, and in a place far far away there was a newspaper owner who thought the journalists' union was getting too big for its boots. He thought and thought and eventually came up with an idea. The paper had a lot of freelance contributors. He wrote to the freelancers and told them that due to Hard Times he would have to cut how much they were paid. The freelancers were not happy. They appealed to their fellow union members who worked full time as staffers for the paper for help in fighting the paycut. But the staffers weren't interested in doing much for the freelancers. Then the newspaper owner provoked a dispute with the staffers and there was a big big strike. As the owner knew would happen, the angry freelancers continued to write for the paper and despite the staffers not contributing stories any more there was no shortage of content. And the freelancers' threatened cut in income never happened. So, it wasn't a case of If You Stick Together, You'll Win; Take It Easy, But Take It. Maybe another time I'll tell you how the newspaper dealt with sub- editing the paper during the strike. That was neat but a ruthless plan also.

OK, , I'm not sure of the spelling but several people who pretend to be Indians to benefit from  "positive discrimination" have been in headlines here in Canada recently. The outing of the singer Buffy Sainte-Marie as a New England Italian rather than a kidnapped as a baby Cree Indian from Saskatchewan has prompted a lot of discussion. Sainte-Marie is only the latest person whose Indian credentials have been challenged. Italians long passed themselves off in Hollywood films as Indian actors. Here in Canada several senior academics have had the claim of Indian ancestry that got them their jobs suddenly questioned. I heard one commentator point out that the universities involved hadn't checked out the fake claims because they wanted to virtue signal by employing Indians in senior positions while actually hiring white  "settlers" who wouldn't rock the boat. An interesting  take that explains a lot. 

Well, the day many of you have been awaiting with bated breath, not, has arrived. The 2023 Book of the Year has been announced. Most years the short list is four or five books. That works out at maybe one book every three months. And that's from a field of 52 books in a year. It's been decided not to name and shame the worst book of the year. But regular readers of Book Briefing will know 2023 was not without its stinkers. The things I do for you. Anyway, check out Book of the Year to find out this year's winner. The book reviews part of the website can be viewed at Book Briefing.

I don't know what the latest medical orthodoxy is but it used to be said that a glass of wine or a beer in the evening were part of a healthy lifestyle. A little relaxer. But I often wondered if the advice was based on surveys of the lifestyles of folk who reached an advanced age. Perhaps it wasn't the modest daily alcohol intake that was contributing to longevity. Maybe it was moderation itself. Moderation in all things.

When I was around 10 years old we used to live on what was basically a building site. Our house was one of the first to be completed on a pretty substantial new housing estate. It was being built, by the way, by a company that had originally made its money running whaling ships out of Leith. Anyway, there wasn't a lot, apart from playing football at The Atlas Park, for kids to do. But there were a lot of empty oil drums on the building site. So, guess what we did? Yep, we used to cram ourselves inside old oil drums and roll down the hill until we hit the wall of a house under construction at the bottom. Do kids still do that kind of thing? Or are they too busy on their smart phones?

The fellah in the poster’s standing there pipe in hand and his two mates are warming themselves by a roaring fireplace. What’s he selling? Why, a life in the Australian Army. The selling point is Comradeship. I reckon from the battledress that the three are wearing that the recruiting campaign must have been in the late 1950s or early 1960s. The poster is a bit different from most. They tend to feature The Missing Man, or What Did You Do in the War Daddy?, or A Square Meal and Plenty of Time Playing Football with Training for a Civilian Skilled Trade , or Be Part of A Proud Tradition, or Travel and Adventure. Roaring log fires and pipe smoking at the hearth and a promise what the Aussies these days I think call Mateship is an interesting approach to recruitment.