It's an old trick: a supposed question that's really an accusation. I think I heard one recently. Until comparatively recently the Canadian federal government sent Indian kids to what were known as Residential Schools, usually far from home and their parents. The schools were often run by churches. It's hard not believe that their primary purpose was to destroy the kids' sense of their heritage. In the past couple of years there has been a lot of talk about the kids being abused by staff and this has now transformed into tales of hundreds of unmarked graves in the grounds of the old schools. Even of mass graves. Cree writer and musician Thomson Highway attended one of these schools and was pretty much asked why he continued to insist he had no complaints. Question as accusation. The accusation being that was he refusing to back the clamour and was therefore betraying the kids allegedly murdered in a century long "genocide". Some in Scotland may recognise the residential school scheme as being very similar to what happens to kids from the remoter islands. Anyway, good for Mr Highway.

When I was a newspaper reporter I never described a crook as bold, or brazen, bandit. Criminals to my mind are scum. There are no excuses. The bleeding hearts always seem the least likely to be victims of crime. And the people who want most to see the thugs jailed are their neighbours, the most likely to be those preyed upon. I was seldom allowed to say in my articles what I really thought of those behind the crimes. I writing about. Sometimes I could get away with the odd knife wielding thug. But I never used a term that suggested any admiration. Not even an "ingenious".

I've heard a couple of news reports that suggested that simply because there were no criminal charges that means that the person arrested hadn't done anything wrong. And therefore the police had been heavy handed and had over reacted. So, if the police want to avoid that accusation they should charge everyone? The media pundits want people to have criminal records, even when there are better ways of dealing with them? It's a crazy old world when giving someone a break means you end up being castigated.

In the Old Days juries had the power to have a man hanged. I sometimes wonder if we should have super panels of folk recruited in much the same way as a jury run the country. Could a gang of randomly selected citizens run the country better than elected members of parliament? Maybe a better question would be could they do worse? Probably not. Getting elected takes money. That money comes from somewhere and the people who provide it expect a return on their investment.  Also, power corrupts. So perhaps it would be fairer on all concerned if the exercise of power was limited to a period five years, when the next parliamentary panel is selected. And having no need to fixate on the short term as politicians all too often do, we might see some projects and policies which look beyond the next election.  Plus we'd probably get a wider breadth of knowledge and skills than presently provided by the political hacks and former lawyers who dominate the elected legislatures.

I heard a woman interviewed on the BBC World Service who was being applauded for fulfilling her childhood ambition of being a war correspondent. It made me uneasy. Would she have received the same adulation if she had said that since she was a child she had wanted to report fatal traffic accidents? I've encountered war reporters in Kosovo and Afghanistan. I was very seldom impressed by them. I can't do better than quote the American journalist and war reporter Martha Gellhorn. "Wars are frightful, wicked things, and anyone who wants to specialize in reporting them is either a charlatan or else lacks a scintilla of humanity."