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.

I suspect that when a lot of people think of Shetland, they think of the Up Helly Aa festival in which a replica Viking ship is burned in a Lerwick swing park by a bunch of people in fancy dress. But there is another annual festival. Simmer Dim, the longest day of the year. There have been Simmer Dims when it was easily possible to play golf at midnight. Up Helly Aa used to be pretty much male dominated. Simmer Dim not so much. There was some stuff to do inside Fort Charlotte and then the fun would move to bonfires on the beach. All very relaxed and pleasant. By the way, the real roots of the present day Up Helly Aa only go back to Victorian times. There was a fire festival before that but the local Bourgeoisie didn't approve of it. That was because the old festival could sometimes climax with an unpopular shop keeper's premises in Lerwick getting a blazing barrel of tar through the window.

In amongst all the D Day Commemoration coverage I wonder how many people saw the German newsreel footage of civilians punching, kicking and slapping Allied prisoners of war as they were escorted down a French street. The footage suggests that the story might not be as straightforward as we are told. Didn't these people wanted to be "liberated" or was the price simply too high for them? My guess is a least as many French actively collaborated with the Nazis as took part in the Resistance activities. And most people just made the best they could of life under German rule. The 80th Anniversary revealed much about the prevalence of ignorance these days. Canadian radio host Chris Howden told listeners to As It Happens that troops of the 6th Airborne Division landed in France by parachuting from helicopters. Where to start with that display of ignorance and stupidity.

One of the petty irritations of this life is radio science reporters who insist on making sure we know they are a doctor. I suspect they think it gives them credibility. More often it signals they are pompous. The only time it would give them credibility would be when they are discussing the narrow specialist topic they gained their PhD in. The rest of time, their PhD doctorate counts for little. The only exception I would make would be for medical doctors. That's because they train in general medicine before specialising and therefore have more knowledge than the average reporter off the street.

What’s the point of paying for a website if you can’t blow your own trumpet once in a while? So, I was checking out the book reviews on amazon.co.uk and once that was done I decided to see how my books were doing. How the Scots Created Canada had five stars. But that’s based on only one rating. Scottish Military Disasters did slightly better with 4.6 stars based on five ratings. The one I want to highlight is the 4.5 stars for With Wellington in the Peninsula from 15 ratings. By the way, I’d appreciate it if folk could let me know if they come across the ebook of Scottish Military Disasters. And be very very careful about buying or downloading it. You might well be putting more than an ebook onto your computer or device. Certainly, no-one’s been in touch with me about royalty payments.

When I was at school, teachers could still hit kids on the raised palm of their hands with a leather strap. I think the maximum dose was six strokes. I don’t think it did me any harm; but it didn’t do me any good either. I think perhaps it is a shame that something has been removed from the teachers’ toolbox when it comes to stopping classrooms descending into anarchy. I have to say that I lost a lot of respect for teachers who had to resort to the tawse. I remember one teacher whom I’d liked strapping a classmate for next to no reason. Something inoffensive, to normal people, that the pupil said. I was strapped at least once in primary school. For something harmless like talking in line when we were queuing up in the playground to get back into school after playtime. Whatever, hardly inciting a slave riot. Another time was at high school when a technical department teacher took the tawse to the whole class. Some idiot wrote something on the blackboard when the teacher was out of the classroom and no-one would say who did it. I think the lesson learned was a confirmation that the technical department included more than its share of sadists and sociopaths. In a school which numbered at least one murderer among the phantom chalker’s pals, no sane person was fingering him.

Regular readers are probably aware that I believe the Public School system does major harm to the British economy and the well-being of the country. If the rich and powerful have no stake in the education of the majority of the population, they are not going to do much about it. You can bet that if their own children went to school with yours, then your kid would probably be getting a better education than they are. People with private educations are also over-represented in many jobs and it’s not because they are that smart. So, here’s something we could try. The rich will eventually get around it, but it may put a spoke in the wheels of perpetuation of privilege for a year or two. Why don’t we say that if the State is not good enough to educate a child then it is not good enough to employ them either. Think of all the civil service jobs, including military officers, which would no longer offer a cosy living for the products of private schools. And let’s not go into the question of boarding schools, the point of which seems to be to produce ruthless emotionally warped sociopaths who can be trusted with power over us. I know, because I’ve worked for two of them and both were vicious nasty pieces of work promoted well well beyond their ability.

I was jarred recently when I heard the BBC World Service refer to "the France side of the Channel Tunnel". I can remember when it was the French side of the tunnel. I can't help wondering if the lack of old fashioned national descriptors is down to ignorance. How many so-called journalists nowadays know that things pertaining to Norway are Norwegian? Or the Netherlands, Dutch? Of course, what used to be described as Our Scottish Correspondent seldom was. It remains usually an Englishman parachuted in. While many BBC correspondents now to seem to be natives of the country they are reporting on, Scots are still not trusted to tell the truth about their own homeland. Talk about The Last Colony. But Scotland Correspondent just sounds ignorant. How about Scottish Affairs Correspondent?

Here's something scary: your airplane carry-on vanishes from the overhead storage and you don't find out until the plane lands. It happened to me on an Air Canada flight from Edmonton to Toronto. When I was finally allowed to board, being in the cheap seats, the overhead bins in my section were all full of oversized carry-on. Clue - If You Need Wheels On Your Bag; It's Not Carry On. Actually, it was paying attention to the staged boarding that was my mistake. Several other cheap seaters were already well ensconced in my section. I saw their tickets with seat numbers in the departure area and know they were allowed through the gate before they should have been. Anyway, I found a space in an overhead bin further down the plane. So, I didn't see someone subsequently take my bag, because the bin was behind me. I was horrified to find the bag wasn't there when I went to fetch it at the end of the flight; in its place was little white backpack. My bag finally turned out to be in a bin several rows up and on the other side of plane. I reckon I know who made the switch. I think the vacant spot in the bin was due to someone taking the white backpack down briefly to get something out of it. They could have said at the time that there was no space in the bin. Or they could have told me where my carry-on was when they saw my panicked look on arrival at Toronto. They just had to say they'd seen someone move it and tell me where it now was. I mean, there were 300 suspects if the bag was stolen. Strangely, Air Canada didn't seem keen on searching each passenger as they left the plane.

I think writers have to be very careful when they describe something as "the last", or even "the first". I was just reading a book, by Tory Kwasi Kwarteng, which stated the last British cavalry charge took place at Omdurman in 1898. I can think of several subsequent British cavalry charges after that, including several during the First World War. I'm not even sure that qualifying the claim by saying "full regimental" cavalry charge will cover it. Whole cavalry divisions were sweeping around Palestine towards the end of the First World War. Perhaps the only safe thing to say is the 1898 charge by the 21st Lancers was the last, and I think only, one in which Tory Winston Churchill took part. Kwarteng is far from the only person to assert the last cavalry charge claim. His expensive education, which included Eton, may have been wasted. On the other hand is being an Old Etonian not almost an essential qualification for Cabinet office? Am I alone in wondering if one secondary school really does have such a monopoly on producing exceptionally talented people?

When I was reporter I noticed a lot of parents of children who died tried to set up charities or organisations linked to whatever had killed their child. It was a case of They Didn't Die in Vain: Some Good Must Come of This. The thing is that setting up a charity to support, say, research into childhood diseases is complicated and hard. It takes very special talents. Things were made even more difficult for these grieving parents by the number of shysters and chancers who infest the charity business. The first, and sometimes only, person they help is themselves. It was shame to see parents' grief being so exploited.

One of the things that struck me when I moved to Canada was the number of teenagers killed in car crashes. It seemed that a lot of people went to school with someone who died in a car crash. Back in the late 1970s and 80s few British teenagers had cars. But in Canada secondhand vehicles and petrol were cheap. In Scotland, or at least in Livingston, most folk knew someone from Craigshill High School who had been murdered or had murdered someone. A different world.

Well, that's basically Award Season pretty much over. I heard Radio's stupids lamenting that more of the winners didn't use their time on the podium to use it as a platform to make a statement on world affairs or some social issue. I'm glad they didn't. I don't think I've ever changed my opinion about anything because of something some celebrity has said about something. Stick to your field of expertise. I don't care what you think and your opinions are no more valid than any other man or woman on the street. They might even be less so. A depressing number of musicians who do station promotions for the local university radio station, and some of them are legends, are unable to give the frequency correctly. If they can't do that, why should I take them seriously when they opine on events in Gaza or teenage sexual identity issues?

This happened a long time ago. I was still at high school. And the genocidal actions of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot were in the headlines. The school decided to raise money to help the survivors. One means of this was a raffle. The first prize was a bottle of whisky and a tin of biscuits. A mate and I were there when the winning ticket was drawn. It had been bought by the teacher we had after morning break. We offered to deliver the prize. Instead, we went to the staff room and told the teacher we could fix it for him to win. He said he wasn't much interested in the biscuits and we could have 'em. We then went to the home economics department and borrowed eight or nine glasses, one for the teacher and one for everyone in the class. So, the teacher arrived to find a bottle of whisky and nine glasses on his table. He took the hint.

I wonder if artillery gunners and bomber crews really chalked stuff on their munitions. Or was it all faked for the photographer? All those Kaiser or Hitler Special Delivery shells or bombs. Did people really bother? It's much the same when it comes to unit nicknames. All those Ladies from Hell, Devil Dogs or Green Devils. I have a feeling that enemy troops would not come up with awed descriptions of their opponents. I tracked down the term some German troops used for kilted regiments during the First World War. It wasn't exactly awe filled or respectful. It sounded like how German troops really would describe kilted soldiers and was more than somewhat disrespectful.