I'm a little bit baffled why these days news programme presenters thank the reporters on sir for their stories. Surely, these reporters have been paid for their contribution and are just doing their jobs. They didn't file the story out of the goodness of their hearts. Mind you, maybe I expect more from people when it comes to doing their jobs properly than others do. Years ago I was an employee of the year. That meant I was a member of the judging panel for the coming year's employee of the month. At the first meeting I felt most of the candidates for the employee of the month award were basically only doing the job they were paid for. I wasn't invited back for any other judging panel meetings.

I'm not a fan of Lallans. I think the problem is that there's no such language. I've heard folk on the radio, poets in particular, who tend to think that all they have to do is substitute as many English words with Scots dialect ones as they can. The problem is the dialect words are plucked willy-nilly from across Scotland. No single person would naturally use all those words in one sentence. There are many varieties of Lowland speech. Welding them all together into one supposed language, Lallans, comes across as fake and affected.

There's a radio programme called the Urbanist. For the past fortnight it was unavailable here. That didn't make me sad. The programme often makes me angry. It usually interviews architects and others involved in city development. The reality of this world is Grenville Towers and 72 dead. Most folk I know are victims of supposed urban developers rather than being better off thanks to them. These people very seldom make ordinary people's lives better. And yet I don't think I've ever heard the programme's presenters ever ask a tough question. The only criticisms of urban planning come from interviewees trying to differentiate themselves from their competitors. I suspect the presenters' reticence may be linked to the fact that much of the programme's content comes from international conferences and perhaps no-one wants to jeopardise the flow of invitations.

It seems criminal greed may run deeply in the British Royal Family. It would appear that Prince Andrew did not think the British public were giving him enough money via the Royal List. Nearly everyone knows that Duke of Windsor's reputation was heavily tainted by allegations of Nazism. But how many know of his Mafia association? A royal lifestyle in France didn't come cheap for the former King Edward VII. So, perhaps it would be tempting to start building up an unofficial retirement fund when appointed Governor of the Bahamas in 1940. The Mafia wanted to open casino resorts in the Bahamas, along the same lines as operations familiar in Cuba and Las Vegas. When a major opponent of the casino developments was brutally murdered, Windsor stopped the local police investigation, involving experienced British officers, and brought in two American police detectives who promptly set about destroying much of the evidence. One of them was definitely on the Mafia's payroll. But was the Duke? If the smoke and mirrors surrounding his alleged Nazi links are anything to go by, I suspect we'll never know.

Once, when I lived in Shetland, I failed to meet singer/songwriter Elvis Costello. Most Saturday afternoons I used to go out for a couple of beers with my roommate Louis. But one Saturday afternoon there was an old film on Channel 4 that I'd always wanted to see. So I gave the Thule Bar a miss. Louis was away a long long time, way longer than our usual Saturday afternoon sesh. When he did come home it turned out he'd spent the afternoon drinking with Elvis Costello. Costello and his wife at the time had been on a North Atlantic cruise ship which had stopped off in Lerwick Harbour to let the passengers stretch their legs on land. Louis said Costello was a really nice guy and had promised the people drinking in the Thule that he would try to return to Shetland to play at the local folk festival. Not only did he keep that promise but he also did indeed prove to be a decent bloke. His acoustic set was no longer than anyone else's playing at the festival; no special treatment. And if he hadn't already been a star you would have known from his performance that he was going to be one.