Some may be surprised at the Burmese Army's poor performance against the various ethic resistance groups in Myanmar. I'm not. The so-called Army has always been nothing more than a bandit gang. That's why it is more of a business operation and political dictatorship than a fighting force. Burma has always been a country of bandit gangs. During the Second World War the biggest allied itself with the Japanese. Then it changed sides. One of the leaders Bogyoke Aung San was told by a senior British officer "You only joined us because you saw the Japs were going to lose. To which Aung San replied "Of course". His daughter Aung San Suu Kyi, who would have been welcomed into the gang if she had only been born a boy, inherited her murdered father's willingness to be candid. Asked while in power if she would do anything to save the Rohingya, she said No, there were no votes in helping the Muslim Rohingyas. I find the honesty commendable but the mindset detestable.

Years ago I covered a reunion of pilots who had made emergency landings on Fair Isle, halfway between Orkney and Shetland. The guest of honour, the main attraction, was a German pilot who crashed on Fair Isle during the Second World War. His weather reconnaissance plane had been shot down by Spitfires operating out of Sumburgh on the south tip of Shetland. The weather planes and the bombers sent to knock out the northern lighthouses, including those on Fair Isle, provided a steady trade for the Spitfires. This German claimed to have been "only a weather reconnaissance pilot". Sounds kind of harmless until you realise he was part of the German war machine intent on killing my parents, their parents, and their parents and any member of my family they could drop a bomb on. And probably your ancestors too. Anyway, those forecasts weren't for the tea time news bulletin. They were to make the Nazi's job of killing British people easier. I think the old German pilot realised his plea didn't really wash with me because he wasn't too friendly or forthcoming. Luckily for me, someone from After The Battle magazine was also there and I was able to piggyback on his interview with a guy who was probably an old Nazi. The Luftwaffe attracted right thinking Nazis. Several members of his crew died as a result of the encounter with the Spitfires and were buried on Fair Isle for a while. Then the German Government dug up nearly all their dead from both World Wars, including men executed for murdering their fellow prisoners of war for not being good enough Nazis, and reburied them in a central war cemetery just north of Birmingham on Cannock Chase.

I have a long multi-coloured panel stripey scarf. It's not actually all the colours of the rainbow. I like it. But it's not any kind of a statement. Sadly, some people think it is. I had one particularly nasty encounter at a street crossing. There was a guy there who looked as though he wanted to ask me something but couldn't decide if I was the kind of person who would tell him the time or give him street directions or whatever. I asked if I could help him. This resulted in a tirade of abuse and fist waving. Maybe he was just crazy or perhaps he thought my scarf was saying something he didn't approve of. As I say that was most unpleasant reaction but there have been others, both negative and positive. I'm told if I don't want a reaction I shouldn't wear that scarf anymore. But it's my scarf and I like it.

One of the interesting things about Canada is some folk use US spellings and forms while others go for British. Most of the spelling is British. The few exceptions in the Canadian English dictionary that spring to mind are plow, for plough, and tire for tyre. A lot of the vehicle-related terms are the US ones, hood for bonnet, trunk for boot, etc and of course, automobile for car. I think that just illustrates the dominance of the US car industry in Canada. For a while the national news agency, the Canadian Press, insisted on using US spelling but I think that was just because they couldn't be bothered correcting the spelling in the reams of US pap they insisted in foisting on us. All of the above is pretty harmless. But when some folk do their dates in the American format month- day-year and some use the British day-month-year, confusion can break out. Imagine having a card that was supposed to expire on 1st February this year, 1/2/2025 and someone reading that in American sees it as the 2nd January and announces the card has expired. From now on I'll get them to write the month in full.

I recently got the bad news that the old Glasgow Herald's man in Inverness and former owner of the Inverness Courier, Stuart Lindsay, has died. Stuart was very good to me and I learned a lot from him. Not that I realised at the time how much I was learning from watching him in action. He was a class act and a first rate journalist. Nor had I realised how much I was absorbing by osmosis earlier as an office boy on the Herald in Glasgow from watching the reporters in the main Glasgow office at work. A bunch of mainly first rate young folk had been recruited in the previous couple of years to replace the somewhat fusty newsroom. Then I got to thinking about how lucky I was to start my reporting career in Inverness. The town was the base for the Highlands and Islands reporters from all the main Scottish media outlets. How many weekly reporters get to compete on a daily basis against so many good operators? And learn so much from those very folk? Overall, I got a lucky start. And one of the biggest strokes of luck was knowing Stuart.