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.

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?