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.

When I started at the Edmonton Sun the boss who prepared the shift rota wouldn't post it until the Friday before the Monday that it took effect. So, you didn't know if you were working on Monday until preceding Friday. Hard to plan a life. Which I suspect was the point. The uncertainty definitely made it very difficult to have much of a social life, never mind a marriage. Which in turn hurt the old Work-Life Balance. A new boss meant a new approach. On a five or six week cycle, you moved up a place in the rota and every week started an hour or so later than in the previous week. And you also knew well way ahead of time which weekends you would be working. The downside was that one week you were starting at, say 2pm, and finishing at 10pm then the following week as you moved to the beginning of the rota cycle again you were starting at 10am and finishing around 6pm. That's a big adjustment for a body clock to make. In fact it's a downright unhealthy adjustment. Swings and roundabouts.

I didn't know I used to be a Rangers supporter. I recently came across a photo of my third or fourth birthday party. And the cake is emblazoned with a Rangers player. That might make sense as the baby sitter's family were staunch, very staunch, Bluenoses. But I was still a little surprised. Rangers in those days refused to field any Catholic players. Kids can have a very strong sense of social justice and that kind of policy would trigger it. I would have known about the policy because of the joke about the Celtic fan boasting about the 1967 European Cup win in Lisbon. And the Rangers fan remarks "Aye, but you had five proddies playing for you". To which the reply was "Well, you've got eleven and f'all good it does you". Also, I would have been aware from the radio halftime scores that Rangers seemed to be losing after the first 45 minutes but then at full time they'd scored five or six goals and came out the winner. Even a four year old could work out that they were running the opposition into the ground in the second half due to their outstanding fitness. I think I heard that most of training sessions at Ibrox involved running up and down the stairs of the Clyde Tunnel rather than working on ball skills. Anyway, it turns out that maybe perhaps I wasn't a Ger's fan after all. But one of my grannies was and she would have brought the cake. I wish I still had the tinplate raygun, which had a spark wheel which span when the trigger was pressed, which I can be seen gripping in every photo from that long ago party no matter what I'm doing.