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.

In middish September I heard a news item on the BBC World Service news about the 80th anniversary of the failed British/Polish airborne operation at Arnhem. Any resemblance with actual events was more good luck than good journalism. There were a damn sight more men involved than the 2,000 cited by the so-called journalist. The 1st British Airborne Division alone deployed 10,000 and the US 101st and 82nd divisions, also involved in Operation Market Garden would have had a sent in about the same number. I'm pretty sure the show presenter called it Market Gardez. But then she was a foreigner. Sadly, the fact is that education in the UK is now such a joke that I doubt if a Brit these days would have had much more background knowledge. But here's the thing. When I was a journalist it was expected that you would do some research for the article. Something the World Service obviously doesn't insist on in 2024. But the BBC is not alone in short-changing the taxpayer. The CBC in Canada reported that last Monday marked the first anniversary of the murder of 1,200 concert attendees in Israel. No wonder just under half of Canadians in a survey think the time has come to stop publicly funding of the CBC.

I was a little disappointed when the paper I worked for, the Edmonton Sun, was taken over in 1998 by a company called Quebecor, at that time one of the biggest commercial printers in the world. It was how that had become such a big deal in the world of printing that that worried me. They had gone into partnership with millionaire crook Robert Maxwell. It seemed to be me that either Quebcor had known that Maxwell was a crook and didn’t care. Or they didn’t know and they were idiots. Either way, I was not happy. The Department of Trade and Industry had warned back in 1971 that Maxwell should not be allowed to head a publicly quoted company. And here were his main business partners buying us. It was no great surprise when a few years later the Sun was sold off and absorbed by its rival The Edmonton Journal.

A lot of parents think their darling little kids are the greatest thing since sliced bread. That's fine - unless these parents are journalists and decide to interview their supposedly cute little darling on air. I think the rest of us quickly cotton onto the fact that little so-and-so isn't exactly genius material - or that cute. I don't think it's a co-incidence that the journalists involved are often also really really bad at their jobs. I can think of one who literally doesn't know what day it is and advises people to ignore traffic lights if the roads are quiet. He also frequently interviews his wife as a sort of Jill Average. And don't get me started on the Kenyan who talks on air like she just came from a Home Counties Pony Club meeting but when she interviewed her kid sounded like she came from ..... well, from Kenya. A sad case, I fear, of someone hired on the Never Mind the Quality, See the Colour principal. When someone benefits from so-called positive discrimination many others are discriminated against. And my bet is that with the implosion of professional journalism there were plenty of recently redundant British reporters who were more worthy of the job.