The BBC World Service had an item about AI generated current affairs content - fronted by AI generated presenters. The real life programme presenter simply fed in his notes and Notebook LM did the rest. I was impressed at first. Though the AI presenters did claim to be humans discussing AI programme hosting; naughty. But then I decided that the item said more about the general standard of broadcasting, terrible, than it did about AI. I mean, it was possible to mistake voices and content created by a soulless, unimaginative, uninquisitive plagiarism machine for real journalists. It doesn't say much for what passes these days for journalism. One presenter here literally doesn't usually know what day it is and another only becomes engaged when handbags or icecream flavours are being discussed. And unlike most of the publicly funded presenters the AI was at least able to read text without stumbling over words or badly mispronouncing them.

I think I'll post the photo of the dead kilties scattered across a battlefield in 1917 again. Just as a Remembrance Day reminder of how badly soldiering can turn out. For some reason I'm reminded of the Max Boyce joke when his mum says You Go Out and Play Rugby but If You Break Your Legs Don't You Come Running To Me. It's all good fun until someone loses an eye. Or their entire lower torso. Anyway, click here to see the photo  – War Dead

I saw a piece of newsreel film you don't get to see very often. It showed French people attacking Allied prisoners of war in a Normandy village in 1944. The villagers were obviously not happy about attempts to liberate them from the Germans. A lot of Allied soldiers reported that even after the Germans were driven out, the French did not seem too happy. Certainly, there wasn't the joy seen in Belgium or the Netherlands. Of course, Normandy took a hammering; a lot of war damage and civilian deaths. But maybe perhaps there were a lot of French who had done well under the Nazis. Despite later claims, not everyone was in the Resistance. It could even be that there were more men in the fascist police force, The Milice, than took up arms against the Germans. Most people, I suppose, just made the most of a bad job and tried to get on with life as best they could. But I wish we would stop pretending that the French were enthusiastic allies in the war against fascism. Of the 38,000 French troops captured by the Allies in Syria in 1941, only 6,000 opted to fight the Axis as members of the Free French forces. And let's not consider the British lives squandered rescuing French troops from Dunkirk in 1940, only for them to return to France after the surrender to work for the German war effort.

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.

OK, I was wrong. The word Gotten is not yet another American bastardisation of the English Language. I found it in a Scottish book published in 1825. But I'm still agin Lived Experience. What other kind of experience is there? And Continue On. Where else would one continue? Would you take medical advice from a doctor who talks about something being pre-existing? Suggests muddled ignorant thinking to me. English is now an international pidgin language. But I balk at referring to a helicopter as Jesus Christ Big Mixmaster in the Sky. I can see why the arbiters of English as pidgin are American. It has always been a pidgin for them. Who remembers now that before the First World War the biggest single national minority were the Germans - closely followed by the Irish? And nowadays folk in the US can live their entire lives in Spanish.

I don't know what they called now but it used to be Tinkers or Travellers. The Bleeding Hearts say they get a hard time. Most, I'm sure, are good and decent people. But there are some who want a lifestyle which allows them to vanish overnight. Years ago such a band of such characters set up camp on the common land between two villages in the English Midlands. Their packs of savage dogs made it impossible to use the public right of way linking the two villages. This mob made their living from tarmacking driveways. I heard they showed up at homes of the vulnerable, elderly, stupid and the just plain greedy claiming to have some Tarmac left over from a construction job going on nearby. So, for cash in hand they could lay a new driveway for a bargain price. I wouldn't be surprised if the new driveway proved to be paper thin and cracked open within a month. But that wasn't the worst of what they did. Boiling up bitumen for the Tarmac creates a highly toxic cancer inducing thick tarry sludge. When these people vanished they left the stream between the two villages clogged with a toxic residue.

Last weekend I stumbled across an event called Yego. It was word play on the fact that the international airport designation for Edmonton, Canada, is YEG, and the children's toy Lego. Now, I remember when Lego bricks came in four or five sizes. What kids did with their margarine tub, or whatever, full of bricks was only limited by their imagination and ingenuity. So, it was a shock to see how many of the exhibits depended on specially molded pieces. I can see why the folk who make Lego would want to sell sets that make a specific item, like a space station or a racing car. In the old days when a kid had a margarine tub full of bricks the world was their oyster and they stopped buying anymore Lego. Still, it's a shame that kids these days expect Lego to do a lot of work for them.

Many years ago I was finishing off a beer in a pub in Edmonton after my mates had headed off to somewhere I had no interest in going to when a couple of guys asked me if the table was taken. I said I was leaving and they were welcome to it. This was in Edmonton, Canada. The first guys were joined by more and it became apparent I was sharing a table with a number of members of the Canadian Football League's Edmonton Eskimos (these days rebranded as the Elks). At first I was perturbed there were no black guys there because I knew the team had a number on the roster. The CFL teams have a large number of American players who can't get a game in their own country in the National Football League. But then I realised that it wasn't black guys the players at the table didn't want to drink with, it was failed American Footballers. Later in Regina, Saskatchewan, the local CFL team, the Roughriders, was idolised and the American exiles never ceased to praise the city during their public appearances. But the praise always sounded insincere to me and I thought it was scripted by team management. I mentioned this belief to my boss in the pub and was told that as I wasn't from Regina I had no right to an opinion. But that season the Roughriders won the Grey Cup, the only CFL competition that counts, and almost all the Americans cashed in the kudos earned to join NFL teams. So much for their professed love of Regina and what a fantastic place to live and work it was. And all those scripted assurances that the Canadian rules game was far superior to the NFL version.

I once won Employee of the Year. It was to a surprisingly extent simply a lucky draw. To qualify for the draw a person had to do something reckoned to be above and beyond what they drew their pay packet for doing. Anyway, the point is that the winner helped judge who might qualify for the following year's draw. I joined pretty senior management on judging committee. But I found that the people being nominated hadn't done anything more than their job. I wasn't invited to any subsequent judging committee meetings. Every day on the radio I hear hosts lavishing exhaustive thanks journalists for their contributions. Which would be OK if the journalists were being paid for those contributions.

The younger generation, and even the generation that follows it, is often dismissed as soft and not half the men their fathers were. British Second World War commanders often lamented that their troops were nothing like as tough as the men they had led as junior officers during the First World War. Perhaps what they really meant was the men were less docile and deferential. Most of the guys in the frontline had been brought up at the hard edge of The Depression and not a few had lost their fathers in the First War. They were just as tough but possibly a bit cannier than their fathers. For about a decade the youngsters joining the 21st Century British Army's infantry battalions went in knowing they would almost certainly see action - either Iraq or Afghanistan. The almost certainty of combat was not true for the vast majority of men who joined up during the Cold War. Few would say the fresh generations failed to rise to the challenge - despite stories that they had to do their basic instruction wearing training shoes because their feet were too soft for boots.

Once long ago in a Highland town far away there was a kindly police sergeant. On the day he retired he decided to pass on his favourite truncheon to his prodigy. The main reason it was his favourite truncheon was because it was far heavier than regulation. And a heavier truncheon breaks skulls and arms more efficiently than a standard weight one. This extra heft was created by drilling out the core of the truncheon and filling it with molten lead. Maybe lead from the local newspaper's Linotype machines. I suppose the trick was knowing how much of the truncheon core to gouge out. A good police officer wouldn't want their lead bar disguised as a truncheon to splinter apart when applied to a bad guy's upper arm.

In the early 1980s I visited a US minesweeper tied up at Invergordon. All the guys swabbing the decks were black. There were no black faces on the bridge or in the weapons control suite. Move forward to Kandahar International Airport in 2002. Lots of black faces among the US support troops but when I was corralled with a 100 strong rifle company from the 101st Airborne, I don't think I saw a single black face and only a sprinkling of Hispanic looking guys. I recently read two American books which featured photos of 30 strong platoons from elite units and only noticed two or three black faces. Does this strike anyone else as odd?

When I was a wee boy my grandparents' home was broken into. Actually it was broken into several times but this is the one I remember. I was there when a detective showed up to investigate. He wore a sheepskin jacket. I hadn't seen many of them. But even more impressive was how he was treated. The adults all showed great respect to the detective. This, I decided, was what I wanted to be when I grew up - a man who got respect. Catching bad guys might be interesting too. Sadly, it was not to be. When I left school there was still a minimum height for joining the constabulary and I came up short. Of course, all the adults in that room that day probably wondered how a detective constable could afford a sheepskin coat. I suspect the respect that impressed me was purely superficial. But as a wee boy I was fooled.

Two people were murdered in my neighbourhood within the space of three or four days recently. But if I relied on the state-funded CBC radio news I wouldn't have known. Not a word did I hear about either killing. But I do know from the vapid banter engaged in just before the news bulletins what the presenters' favourite snacks are or whether they prefer cats or dogs. I suppose brainless chatter is cheaper to produce than news. Should I be forced to pay for this via my taxes? The alternative is one of the privately owned radio stations but I can't stomach the constant Looney Right propaganda. If the provincial government announced everyone with a family name ending in a vowel was being fed I to a woodchipper these guys would report it without any questions or an interview with someone who didn't think it was a good idea.

What's the difference between wounded and injured? According to state-funded media in the UK and Canada, the two are interchangeable. But to me, there's a difference. Wounded is what happens to someone when they are hurt as a result of deliberate human violence, most often involving military activity. Bullet wound, shrapnel wound, etc. Injured is when a person gets hurt. Someone suffering physical harm in a car crash or Caribbean storm is injured, not wounded. It's a mainly a question of intent. And why would anyone use the word normalcy when they could say or write normality? Normalcy was a word used by the stupidest US President ever, Warren Harding, because he was unable to find the word normality in a dictionary. And why would a non-American say gotten? That can involve either possession or becoming something. Both ignorant and imprecise. We also already have the word got - far shorter. Using gotten is to indulge the American love of long words. But, seriously, language counts. The BBC was just talking about Northern Ireland being reunited with The Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland has never been part of The Republic. So how can it be reunited?

On a road bridge near my place is a digital indication board that tells motorists if they are speeding. Most that are speeding slow down on the bridge so that by the time they pass the sign they have dropped below the 50 km/h limit. But I can't see the city council fully embracing this apparently effective method. It is obviously addicted to the revenue from photo radar tickets. Just before the bridge is a corner where the photo radar guys like to set up. There is a tiny sign with the speed limit on it just before the spot. A while back the photo radar guys vanished. I looked and the speed limit sign was bigger. Then they came back. I looked again and the tiny sign was back. I've had two speeding tickets. Both times I had to go back and hunt for the signs. With one a driver would have to ignore the traffic he or she was merging with to see it on the "wrong" side of the road. The other is often masked if there are two buses at the stop. And let's not forget the blindness. The radar trucks like to park next to the pavement in the dark. Imagine as a pedestrian getting a giant size flash bulb able to capture the number plate of a speeding car going off right in the face. But then you try to prove in 15 years' time that your loss of vision was caused by a photo radar unit.