So, the United States Justice Department knew that it was possible that Labour Eminence Gris Peter Mandelson was selling cabinet- privileged British banking information to American banker Epstein And yet they kept it to themselves. British police only began investigating the allegation after the American authorities publicly released three million pages of what they call The Epstein Files. I call it a disgrace. Mandelson, always a deeply unpleasant character, was the British ambassador in Washington. Perhaps the Americans were blackmailing him while he was in Washington. Either that or the DoJ has no real interest in catching bad guys. Knowing the American Government and their now open contempt for the British, demonstrated in 2019 when they spirited a killer motorist out of England during Trump's first reign, one has to wonder how it is GCHQ and the rest of the Surveillance Society managed to miss what Mandelson was allegedly doing in betraying Cabinet secrets by email. I would have thought in view of how unreliable the Yanks are, that was exactly the kind of thing what we pay them to do.

Where in Edinburgh is The Golden Mile? According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the population of Scotland was queued up down it to invest their savings in the disastrous Darien Scheme of the late 1690s. The programme was Nobody Saw It Coming. It claims to reveal little known but world shaking events. So, their English expert had to claim that Darien has been airbrushed from Scottish history. I seem to remember it was taught in high school as one of the main reasons for the 1707 Treaty of Union. But how would someone educated in England know that? Nobody Saw It Coming started out as quite a promising series but as it goes on the claims being made and the quality of the research are becoming increasingly dubious. The Darien episode has moved it to possibly the worst ABC programme rebroadcast in Canada. But that's only because ABC sensibly recently axed the obnoxious Stop Everything. The English supposed expert was an archaeologist from the Royal Agricultural University. Stick to digging for spuds mate.

I was a little baffled when I learned that adults were queuing up to be diagnosed with autism. I know a number of parents want their children to be somehow special even if they are not - but adults? Then I found out that social media is telling folk that many of history's geniuses, your da Vincis and Einsteins, would almost certainly be diagnosed these days as being on the autism spectrum. Suddenly it all made sense. By the way, I do believe in autism but suspect that there have been some dodgy diagnoses made in the past.

It turned out that the reporters at the Edmonton Sun were paying for a management spy out of their own pockets. Every year there was a Story of the Year award. It was usually a team effort and the prize money was shared between the reporters involved. The winners usually included one guy who as far as I knew had contributed nothing. But I wasn't involved, so how would I know? Then there was a winning story I was involved in that I knew this guy had made no meaningful contribution. But around then the guy had blown his cover anyway. There was a leaving do at a pub at which it became clear that the reason for the departure was a certain boss. Many others at the pub that night had their own stories about this boss guy's incompetence and sexual harassment. Next day the big boss knew a lot about what was said in the pub. But the odd thing was he only knew what was said after a certain person arrived at the pub - you guessed it, the fellah who regularly shared in the prize money pot despite not working on the winning story of the year. It turned out one of the perks of being a management spy was being put on the list of prize winners for Story of the Year. If he hadn't been, then the real contributors would have one less person to split the prize money with.

When I was an underage drinker I was surprised that I wasn't challenged more by the bar staff. Maybe they simply didn't care. But as someone who is now legally classed as an adult I wonder how well a bar full of teenagers would do financially. We were not big spenders. I knew one guy who at 16 used to drink in the same pub as a lot of the teachers. They may even have had beers with him. I wish they could see how he turned out. Hanging out with the kind of guys who leach off kids in a pub isn't a good start in life. As I say, an older guy now, I wonder how we got away with it. I suspect it might have been that to adult most folk under 20 years old look 15 and you can't turn 'em all away. The thing is that teenagers like to be different - though not getting-picked-on different. Anyway they adopt bands and stuff like that as tribal totems. And if you recognise the band name on the Tshirt, or whatever, you can pretty work out how old a person is from their musical taste, or whatever. But a person over-21 and working in bar wouldn't be able to consistently spot the tells.

I shouldn't laugh, coz it's no laughing matter. You know some people used to think they drove better with a few drams in them? Well, this New Year gave me pause for thought. There was a lot of traffic on the roads after The Bells. The thing was that I had never seen everyone driving with much care and consideration. I suspect they were driving safely coz they didn't want involved in any accidents that might resulted in them being breath-tested. This morning things were back to normal with folk going through red lights, etc. Some of these folks are such good drivers they get in collisions with trains.  I say drinking and driving is no laughing matter coz it killed my grandpa's brother. Multiple millions of Germans had failed to finish him off when he went into action as paratrooper during the Second World War but one Yank did for him in 1957.

I forgot to run a teaser last week reminding you that the 2025 Book of the Year was being announced today. So, if you please, internal drumroll sound in your head. After a strong start to the year although the general quality of the books reviewed was good, the shortlist came down to only three titles. The first contender was SAS Operation Storm about the defence of the Omani fishing village of Mirbat in 1972. For an SAS book to make the shortlist is unusual because most are what I term War Porn. Co-author Roger Cole was there as an SAS trooper while Richard Belfield is a skilled writer. Between them they delved into a rich vein of information. The second contender was The Korean War by old favourite, and old soldier, Tim Carew. This book from 1967 was a joy to read with the often grim stories from the Commonwealth contingent brightened with sudden splashes of humour. Number Three in the running was Robert Kershaw's balanced and insightful look at the 1944 fighting in Arnhem through the prism of one street. At the end of the day it came down to Mirbat or Korea. The tie- breaker was a stupid claim that the Strikemaster jets at Mirabet were armed with submachine guns. So, Korea wins.

I think Thanksgiving is a great idea. A public holiday where all you have to do is count your blessings and be grateful. Here in Canada there's usually a big family gathering and meal. Our taxpayer funded state broadcaster CBC has a new, and usually crap, call-in programme called Just Ask Me in which dim members of the public phone in their opinions in the belief that they constitute a question to a subject expert. An interesting idea very poorly executed. Anyway, the expert was a woman and the subject was how to please everyone at Thanksgiving Dinner. The problem was she hated Thanksgiving and thought anyone who celebrated it was a colonialist fascist. With such a party pooper on the end of the line, hardly anyone phoned in. Whoever booked this fantastically stupid boorish woman for the call-in should have been fired. And whoever hired the booker, also obviously a stupid person, should go as well and quite possibly their boss too should be terminated well for being so  chronically incompetent. Whatever happened to the old The Buck Stops Here? 

I hadn't realised how brilliant Lord Mountbatten was until I saw the wartime information film Burma Victory. Not. The whole film was a Mountbatten vanity project. I'm not sure now that the real architect of the British Empire 's victory of the Japanese in Burma, William Slim, even got a mention. Slim at least knew his left from his right. Which is more than can be said for the odious Mountbatten. It has been said, with only some exaggeration, that Mountbatten's South East Asia Command headquarters in Ceylon, had more personnel than the 14th Army in Burma. But the Americans liked working with a Real Life English Dook. And maybe that counted for something. By the way, I understand there are two versions of Burma Victory. One celebrates the reconquest of Burma. The American version celebrates how swell they and their Chinese allies are.

I've seen a couple of photos of young women murdered in Scotland over the past few months - obviously plucked from so-called social media. I can't work out whether the girls have been victims of badly botched plastic surgery or have used some kind of creepy inadequate Internet photo filter that for some reason they think makes them look more attractive. Now, I know what's considered pretty changes from decade to decade but when did the bad botox horror look come in? Is there are crazy incompetent plastic surgeon working for dead cheap in central Scotland? I hope not. I hope what a saw was down to flawed photo software.

Several years ago I was forced to read a history of North American Indians called The Inconvenient Indian by an American writer based in Canada called Thomas King who was marketed as indigenous. By the end I thought I Could Have Written That. So, I decided to look into King's credentials as an indigenous writer. He turned out to be a privileged Greek kid from California who had been told his deadbeat dad was of Cherokee descent. OK, but if he hung out with his Cherokee grandparents during the school holidays.... Nope, no evidence of that even. King has just admitted he has no Cherokee blood. He gave the impression this "revelation" followed a report from a family tree specialist he had commissioned. In fact, a US group that specialises in exposing Pretendians had called him up to answer some questions raised by their research. Now there is a big fuss here among the chattering classes. But I can't understand why. I'm a great believer in nurture being more important than nature. Was King supposed to have some deep rooted racial knowledge buried in his DNA that made him indigenous? That's surely pure racism. Turns out he was just a little Greek-American who decided he was an Indian. Good career move. A number of what I consider Professional Indians have said King's confession has not come as a surprise. So, why didn't they call him out? Put it this way, people in glass houses know they shouldn't throw stones.

I think maybe perhaps it's time the Royal Family decided to implement a ban on sex with citizens of the United States of America. It often doesn't turn out very well. Edward VIII stopped being Edward VIII so he could marry the obnoxious Wallis-Simpson. Constitutional Crisis negotiated but the abdication tainted with later Nazi overtones. Did he really mean when he declared Something Must Be Done during a visit to some economically distressed part of England that all the Jews should be killed? Then we have the present family rift following Prince Harry's marriage to the toxic Meghan Markle. Yet another American divorcee - will they never learn? Prince Nice-but-Dim simply married someone just like his mother. Now Prince Andrew is no longer Prince Andrew because of sex parties in America set up by Robert "The Bouncing Czech" Maxwell's daughter and her creepy boyfriend. Double trouble mixing with a Maxwell and teenage American girls.

Most folk like to get some praise. Some even seek it. But I remember when I worked at the Government of Saskatchewan and someone praised the daily news summary that I'd prepared for the morning meeting. They meant well. But I just knew that the colleague who prepared the summary on alternate weeks would interpret this as a criticism of her. And it was my life she would make more difficult as result. And I was correct. I sometimes wonder if senior management praise for the Campbeltown Courier's coverage of the Mull of Kintyre Chinook Crash led my then-boss to undermine me and make my job as editor more difficult than it had to be was an example of something similar. Only, she was motivated by fear that I would get her job and wasn't just being petty.

Censored

OK, time I think for what is going to become an annual Downer. It's around Remembrance Day and I think it's important to remember what soldiering is all really about and how badly things can work out for too many people. I've never been sure whether this photo from 1917 shows British or Canadian kilties. The photo is sometimes credited to The Official Canadian War Photographer. Sadly, the guy I was going to ask, Tim Cook at the Canadian War Museum, died suddenly a couple of weekends ago. He was a good guy. Anyway, click here to see the photo  – <a href="/index.php/14-titles/81-wardead" target="_blank&quot;">War Dead</a></p>

The BBC has a science programme called Discovery. It causes me some concern. Quite often it profiles leading world scientists. What concerns me is the majority of them come from privileged backgrounds. I don't think scientific ability is dependent on, or even linked to, parental income. This suggests to me that genuinely talented working class kids are not being given a chance. And the exclusion of talent must mean our science is far more mediocre than it should be. England seems to worst for this, Scotland and North America, though no meritocracies, appear to be slightly better, say children of school teachers, and the sole Aussie was, if I recall correctly, was the son of a working class single mother. Now I don't know how hard it is to get a job as a scientist. But one English princess decided she wanted to be a journalist when she graduated from Oxbridge. Hey Presto, Princess gets a good job as a journalist handed to her. Then she decides she wants to be a scientist instead. Hey Presto, she gets a good job as a scientific researcher. I'm not saying she is not a good scientist. What I am saying is that equally, or more, talented folk from humbler backgrounds were pushed aside to make way for her and never got a chance. We all end up losers when Privilege closes ranks to make sure their kids get all the good jobs. Can the UK really afford to stifle talent so that Nigel, Charlotte and Tim can have first pick?

The problem with new recipes is that many require a pinch of this or a dash of that. But the shops seldom sell ingredients in pinches or dashes. And suppose the the recipe is not a success. You end up with a bag or jar of something you may never use again. What's the answer? Some kind of cookery club where everyone agrees to try the same new recipe on the same weekend and divvy the pinches, dashes and snatches out from a communally purchased jar or bag? Even then there would have to be a lot of club members to avoid bring left with 4/5ths of a bag or jar of whatever.

Last weekend the BBC World Service news carried a highly critical item about the Taliban hosting a news conference in India which barred female journalists. Grounds indeed for censure. My problem was that half an hour earlier my radio had a BBC programme that used to boast that it was uncontaminated by any male contribution. Employment equity laws made such a boast unwise and it's been dropped. But somehow I doubt if any males are on the programme production team at this time but the lawyers are happy. The content remains 100% female. So, how can it be wrong for the Taliban to bar females when the BBC half an hour earlier banned males? Is it not a bit hypocritical of the BBC to run an item critical of sexism while engaging in it itself?

Last weekend the BBC World Service news carried a highly critical item about the Taliban hosting a news conference in India which barred female journalists. Grounds indeed for censure. My problem was that half an hour earlier my radio had a BBC programme that used to boast that it was uncontaminated by any male contribution. Employment equity laws made such a boast unwise and it's been dropped. But somehow I doubt if any males are on the programme production team at this time but the lawyers are happy. The content remains 100% female. So, how can it be wrong for the Taliban to bar females when the BBC half an hour earlier banned males? Is it not a bit hypocritical of the BBC to run an item critical of sexism while engaging in it itself?

Does anyone else remember TV Detector Vans? Sinister vehicles with a revolving antenna on the roof that supposedly prowled the streets and could tell what television channel you were watching. And if you didn't have a licence for that television set - kapow. An older person now, I suspect the vans were a con. I doubt they could detect a switched-on television with any degree of accuracy and certainly not which channel it was tuned to. By the time I left home nearly 100% of households had a television. So, all the TV enforcement folks did was check which houses to not have a licence and target them. When I first lived in Inverness I got a letter demanding to know why I didn't have a licence and threatening several unpleasant happenings if I didn't get one. I didn't have a licence because I didn't have a television. Some folk might say that the best thing to do then was just ignore the letter. I knew better. I knew of too many doors kicked down by the TV licence people, who regarded evasion as up there in the scale of criminal activity alongside raping your little sister, cutting her throat was a jagged tin can and feeding her body to the pigs. I went to the Post Office in Queensgate to explain my lack of a licence.