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.

What's the point of paying for website if you don't get to take a swipe at the rich and famous? A while back I read a book by Denise Mina which seemed to suggest that Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel was framed. When I was teenager a read the memoirs of the cop who caught him, Bob Muncie. So, I was intrigued by the suggestion that he went around framing people. And my mum sort of knew Manuel. Apparently at the Saturday Night Dancing in Glasgow he insisted on a specific girl for a specific dance and everybody knew about this and went along with it. I can't remember which dance my mum was. I'd heard Mina presenting a radio programme about Midge Ure getting a new guitar and the work involved in building it. She seemed friendly and approachable. So, I emailed her at her website about the Muncie-Manuel thing. I never heard back. So maybe she had no evidence that Muncie framed Manuel, perhaps the contact function on her website did not work or possibly she's not really that friendly or approachable. Another of Life's disappointments.

I have a confession to make. I was drawing up a list of people I just turn off when they come on the radio. I've found they have nothing to say that I care to hear. I'm frankly surprised that any of them have managed to keep their jobs. But here's the terrible appalling thing. When I looked at the switch-off list, all the people on it were women. Now, there are some guys I'm not too happy about having to listen to but I don't turn them off. So, what's going on? Am I a closeted misogynist? I could come up with some rationalisations - sexism, racism, xenophobia, laziness, obnoxiousness, incompetence or class prejudice. But 100% of those on list for switch-off female? I am appalled and shocked.

I'm announcing that I am not going to the United States to promote my books. The reason? The US border folk will want to know my place of birth. I identify myself as a Citizen of the World. I refuse to be defined by my place of birth. And in any case I didn't live there until I was in my teens. I am not doing this to get myself interviewed on the radio. I am adamant that this is not a publicity stunt.

I was recently reading about the Battle of Rorkes Drift, immortalised in the 1964 film Zulu, and the book looked at recreations dating back almost to the time of the battle in 1879. British interest in the battle was such that performances, some involving real Zulus, were quickly to be seen at theatres, circuses and military tattoos. Some, particularly at the latter, simply featured white guys covered in boot polish as the Zulus. That all reminded me of my first and only byline in the old Glasgow Herald. While walking along Woodlands Road in the city I spotted a little card in shop window looking for black Africans and telling them to apply for work at Python Films. Some follow up revealed, yes, that Python. They were filming a sequence for the Meaning of Life featuring red coats and Zulus. I suppose Glasgow was the closest they could get to South Africa without leaving the UK. Anyway, come filming day the black extras refused to work. Many were medical students at Glasgow University and something about the portrayal of the Zulus upset them. An emergency search of nearby JobCentres was launched. So, if you look closely at the battle footage most of the Zulus are actually from the Indian sub continent and the ones furthest from the camera are unemployed white Glaswegians wearing boot polish and sandshoes.

Should people who work for foreign governments and undermine Britain while promoting the interests of a third country lose their citizenship? The question came to mind after listening to Kate "HawHawsdottir" Laycock on German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle. DW is known to still recycle anti-British Second World War Nazi propaganda and combine it with present day material most probably scripted in Washington by the CIA. The coverage of the last major anniversary of the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift was a disgrace. The one token former RAF pilot included in the fawning US worshipping programme grossly misrepresented the British contribution of almost 25% of the supplies flown in. I suspect the DW scripts are American written because Cambridge-educated Laycock employs Americanisms such as Gotten and uses the word Protest without saying whether it's For or Against something. And for a supposedly German broadcaster DW has an awful lot of American presenters or people who learned their English from Americans. Maybe perhaps there should be consequences for folk who denigrate their former neighbours for foreign government money. And the US Über Furhers who seem call the shots at DW don't even know their own history - The first St Patrick's Day parade was not in Boston but in the then Spanish colony of Florida in 1601. Or perhaps HawHaswdottir might just check what she is telling her audience is true.

One of the red flags when it comes to science on the radio is the number of Americans interviewed for an item. The more Americans, the more dubious the science. Good rule of thumb. If they ever interview four Americans, then we'll be in Food Causes Death territory. The Autopsies All Found Food In The Stomach - Food Causes Death. The reason much American science, when conducted by Americans, is poor is that during the Vietnam War the university faculties suddenly had to expand massively to cope with demand for higher education from draft dodgers like Donald J Trump. People who otherwise would have no hope of teaching in university suddenly found themselves on campus faculties after all. And if you're taught by an idiot...... This is why I ended up giving up on history books written by American academics. That was disappointment as I was interested in a non-British take on events but what I got was often really poorly researched and fantastically chauvinistic.

Lived experience. Is there any other kind of experience? The word "lived" is redundant. We know little to nothing about the experiences of dead people. Perhaps maybe they don't have any. The use of Lived Experience suggests a fuzzy, flabby and muddled thought process. It is a red flag when someone uses it in a sentence on the radio. Experience shows that what follows will be weak. Just turn the radio off. The same goes when some ignoramus who doesn't know how to use the word "literally" comes on. It's a pretty reliable red flag indicating that what follows will be worthless.

I don't think any sane person expects everyone in an Elizabethan era television drama to speak Shakespearean English. But is it too much to expect the folk in some detective drama set in England before 1975 not to talk about being "across" something? I don't remember when that phrase sadly entered the British lexicon but it wasn't that long ago. Certainly not before the 1990s. Nor did British people use that horrible trite American euphemism for dying, "passing". Not a part of everyday speech in 1950s or 60s Gloucestershire. I can see why the casting director wants to make Gloucestershire after the Second World War look far more multi-ethnic and multi-cultural than it was in a bid to pander to the "We want to see people who look like us on television" crowd. But it's a lie. And lies should be avoided. Though I would hate it if such programmes turned into a nostalgia-based fodder for racists. The kitschy television adaption of the Hamish McBeth stories erased the village Asian shopkeeper of the original books and replaced him with a white guy. That probably wasn't racism but more an example of the mess made of the adaptation.

No-one, or no-one I would rate, would deny that the Taliban are very wrong to deny females a proper education or jobs in the professions. But a few thoughts. There's no war going on within Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban. The education issue affects only a tiny proportion of women there. The fact that they come from the most privileged sections of society means that the Western Media, themselves bastions of privilege, identify with them and give their plight a lot of coverage. The vast majority of Afghan girls were, and are, never going to become doctors, airline pilots or lawyers and they are being hurt by Western sanctions. And I'm pretty sure the war against the Soviet Union and their Afghan Communist clients was in a large part inspired by their insistence on educational opportunity regardless of sex. The Red Army was fighting as much for girls' education as the US and NATO troops who propped up the corrupt Afghan government until recently. But we in the West supported the Mujahedin back then. What changed when it comes to the West's attitude to female education?