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.