The Rememberence Day weekend approaches. Here in Canada November 11th is a public holiday. I suspect the traditional silence is slightly more often observed here than in the United Kingdom. The Silence I thoroughly approve of. Some of the Rememberence Day parades, not so much. There is a painfully thin line between commemoration and celebration. The Silence is purely about the folk who didn't make it back. Though perhaps it should also also be about considering those who did come back but were  never the same again. 

A wise man once said that was a lot of money in poverty. I think he meant that there are a lot of people who make a good living from supposedly helping the poor. Here in Canada a lot of people make some money from collecting up bottles and cans and claiming the deposit money at the Bottle Depot. The depots are commercial operations and make a profit. Our Wise Man set up a bottle collectors co- operative and that way they got the deposit and a share of the profit. But the money in poverty notion also includes those who get their pay from charities and agencies which are involved in helping the poor. No poor, no job. I think the same is true when it comes to supposedly fighting racism. No racism, no job. It must be tempting to torque up the issue.

I've  heard a couple of reports of people pretending to be something they are not, often a member of a "minority" group,  in order to get a job. These were jobs that were awarded on the basis of skin tone or some other kind of form discrimination. I had to laugh. Though sometimes well intentioned, this supposed “poHsitive discrimination” is misguided. Fighting discrimination with more discrimination is wrong. The job should go to the person who will do it best. In many cases that might involve being a member of the group the organisation concerned serves. I’m left wondering how come the interviewers failed to see through the deceptions and lies perpetrated by these bogus claimants. But then those involved in discrimination are seldom the best, or smartest,  of people.

OK. I'm getting fed up with Canadian so-called "historians" , many of them for some reason taken seriously, informing me that Canada fielded the largest volunteer armed force during the Second World War at 250,000 men. Canadians are the first to claim that their part in the conflict is too often minimized or ignored by British and American writers and film makers. So you would think that they would be the last people to display such ignorance. The Indian Army was by a massive stretch the largest all volunteer force during the conflict; 2.5 million men. Full stop. No dispute. The 21st Army group in Northwest Europe was made up of the 2nd British Army and the 1st Canadian Army. Somehow many of the same "historians" ignore the fact that until the very last few weeks of the war about half of the 1st Canadian Army was made up of British soldiers on loan from the 2nd Army. Canadians are left with a very distorted view of what they achieved and what the British troops under 1st Canadian Army command achieved. As I said, you would think Canadians would be amongst the last to indulge in this sort of puffery.

A couple of years ago I tried to get a Christmas job with a major chain bookshop. The interview brought together in one room about 20 people, a surprising number of them with some amazing qualifications, of a branch on the southern outskirts of the city. There were a number of tests and challenges, including playing something called Pictionary. I didn't get the job. I suspect in an effort to standout I came across as an obnoxious know- it-all. That's just a guess because after jumping through so many hoops the guy conducting the recruitment didn't respond to my request for "lessons to be learned" feedback. The thing is that the whole process was probably unnecessary. We were all gathered in a corner of the shop floor before things kicked off. All the guy really had to do was hide around the corner and watch how the job seekers interacted with each other. No silly Pictionary required.

I saw it argued that the Highland Clearances were ultimately a good thing because economically things couldn't go on the way they were. Maybe, but there's a big difference between reluctantly bowing to the inevitable and buying passage to Canada or the Antipodes as against a bunch of the landowner's thugs turning up at your door with blazing torches and crow bars. Losing your home due to compulsion at hands of the rich is a bitter bitter pill to swallow.

As I've said before anyone who calls football The Beautiful Game doesn't know what they are talking about and almost certainly have never played it. Now the half wits have decided that tournaments do not have a Cup Final. They have a Cup Finale, as in an opera. Where do the media find these people?  And even more importantly why do they give them a job or a platform? 

The death of Queen Elizabeth II has seen renewed discussion about several Caribbean nations declaring themselves republics. And also a renewal in demands for compensation for Slavery and further payment for the end of slavery. There is a degree of racism here. It seems to the United Kingdom is expected to pay all this compensation. I have a feeling that it wasn't the British who snatched the ancestors of large portions of Caribbean nations in question and conveyed them to the coast. Surely the descendants of the African slavers and their collaborators should also face demands for compensation. And as the kleptocracies that run most African countries are often actual descendants of the slavers, it's hard to see why they don't. A few billion pounds diverted to the Caribbean rather than into their Swiss bank accounts doesn't seem unreasonable. They continue  to enjoy the benefits of the slave trade to this day to a far greater extent than the average  British taxpayer. 

I heard a PhD candidate on the radio declare that a woman in medieval England "appealed" a man of rape. This came on top of a couple of dubious assertions that I didn't feel qualified to challenge. But I strongly suspect that the woman "accused" the man of rape. Sadly, this is yet another symptom of how higher education has gone down the toilet; along with the BBC 's confident assertion that Glasgow and Amsterdam are respectively the capitals of Scotland and the Netherlands. Now that a university degree is required to get even a job as a waitress, education has become a commodity to be bought and sold. No matter how lazy or stupid a person is, they have paid for their degree and by golly they are going to get it, even if it means suing the university. I have been told by a university teacher that failing someone is now a no-no because of the potential legal costs. The supposed, and aggrieved,  student can easily find a rent-an-expert, usually a retired professor,  who will testify in court that the paper should have merited a pass. Faced with losing such cases, the university has decided to avoid pointless legal costs by simply allowing pretty much everyone to pass. 

Far too often these days, particularly in writing or the arts, projects are being cancelled because someone says something other people don't like. Shame on those who cave in. I want to hear what people think. But now a lot of vile thoughts and opinions are being driven underground. I want to know that so-and-so is a balloon. But I can't do that if they are silenced by Cancel Culture.  Let these idiots condemn themselves with their words. It is good know that your English boss refers to Scots as "Oatmeal Savages".  Down With Self Appointed Censors. 

I have a definition of Hell. It’s a sort of Flying Dutchman thing. It would be a flight from Boston to Glasgow that never touches down. The ingredients would be first of all the addition several extra rows of seats on the plane. This ensures that if the person directly in front of you reclines their seat it rests against your forehead. Then don’t upgrade the air circulation system to cope with all the extra passengers crammed into the Smartie Tube with Wings thanks to the added seating. Make it as stuffy as possible.  But here’s the kicker. Offer free booze to the passengers as compensation for something. This will ensure that many of the male adult passengers become pissed and obnoxious. And that their wives and girlfriends start nagging and rowing with them.  And there you’ve for your recipe for a Living Hell.

When the BBC started out,  it claimed to be about Nation Speaking to Nation. But nowadays one of the Bs in BBC must stand for Bourgeois. The BBC is firmly in the hands of the Ruling Class and they are supported by a mass of employees drawn from the Home Counties Chattering Classes. It also tends to turn for international coverage to the bourgeois of whatever country is being discussed. That makes sense to an extent because the correspondent, as members of their own country's upper middle class, can be expected to have some English language competence. But there are two problems. One is that many of them have more in common with their English  Home Counties mentors than they do with 95% of the population of their respective countries. The second is that the supposed correspondents, their families and friends, are often key players in the events they are supposedly impartially reporting  on. For instance, there is not a single true democracy in Africa or anything close to it. But you won't hear that that much because so many of the  BBC correspondents there are part themselves part of The Problem. 

My heart sank this past Saturday when I realised that the BBC World Service's Newshour  was being presented by the obnoxious Razia Iqbal. Novelist Salman Rushdie had just been seriously injured in an attack during a book event in New York State. I knew Iqbal would be out of her depth. And right enough, minutes into the programme one of the interviewees attacked the majority of Muslims for allegedly failing to condemn the fatwa issued against Rushdie and then declared Islam is a religion of hate. A tricky situation. But a broadcaster worth his or her salt would have handled it. Iqbal did not. Maybe she should stick to Pony Club News. 

I once knew a guy I thought of as a friend, let's call him So-and-So. I know, ominous start. This guy it would appear wanted to be a legend in his own lunchtime, as they used to say. Part of what I liked about him was that he seemed to be up for all sorts of capers. We had a lot of fun. But I noticed that people started asking if it was true that So-and-So had done such-and- such. Well, yes, he had done some of the things he claimed. But more often I'd played a part that was not credited in the version he was putting out. And sometimes it  it was me , not him, who had done the thing in question. It was hard to know what to tell people. I had no need to be a legend. Not even in my own lunchtime. 

One  of the disturbing elements that has come out of Covid is the number of masked creepy people prowling the streets in the early hours of the morning. In normal times the police would be entitled to stop someone wandering around in a mask in the middle of the night. Now, not so much. There is no good reason for cycling around in the very early hours of the day wearing a mask. I doubt if these people are the sort who really care about the danger of giving folk Covid. And at 4am there are not generally a lot of people around to give Covid to. But the mask might make it hard for a victim of crime to identify their attacker.

I've just heard another radio trailer for something calling itself Being Black in Canada. It promises me the "Black Experience in Canada Today". Racist Tommy Rot. The programme can no more encapsulate the life and experiences of all black people in Canada than I can encapsulate the white, or whitish. Or old The White Heather Club on television captured what it was like to be Scottish. Radio should be celebrating what we have in common, not creating ghettos.  PS - I suggested Remembered Memory might be the next example of pointless repetition alongside the likes of Lived Experience. It turned out to be Residential Home. The so-called journalists that perpetrate this nonsense are supposed to be professional communicators.

There used to by a BBC radio show called Just a Minute in which panelists were challenged to speak for a minute on a subject. Other panelists could take the topic on if they caught the panelist talking repeating themselves and could win the round by addressing the topic when the one minute buzzer sounded. The BBC could take a leaf out of that game show. Surely reference to pre-prepared military positions in Ukraine is blatant repetition. Any reference to pre-prepared is yet another example of redundant repetition – along with lived experience, etc. But pre-prepared is truly pathetic. The “pre” is already there in the first three letters of prepared. Another example is "continue on". How long before the idiots start talking about "remembered memory"? 

Last Friday was Canada Day. Only apparently there are people who believe the public holiday should not be called Canada Day because that celebrates Settler Colonialism. I think people should be more honest. Taking land is as old as mankind. Here in Canada many Indians like to be called First Nations. I doubt most  were the first inhabitants of the land they now occupy. One of the supposed First Nations here in Alberta are the Nakota Sioux. The Sioux are originally a woodland tribe from way further east than prairie Alberta, Minnesota I believe. Maybe someone should look into who the Sioux robbed of their land. Is this not an example of Settler Colonialism? Or is it just white people who are responsible for that? 

I heard a radio programme recently about people living in exile. What struck me was that all the participants were members of the upper middle classes in their former homelands. The ability to speak some kind of English may have weighted the participation rate but perhaps more effort should have been made to widen the social spectrum. The fact that most of the radio production team were probably middle class too was also a factor in the misrepresentation. That kind of class bias, intended or otherwise, can lead to distortion. The lionisation of the odious Aung San Suu Ky is one example. She was one of the Oxbridge chattering classes who dominate the all but the very senior ranks of the BBC. One of Us. Only fool would believe that her supposed commitment to democracy went beyond redressing that fact that as a girlie she could not be part of the military junta established in Burma by her father. She was putting the boot to the Rohingya Muslims long before her regime started murdering them. But she still has sainted status on the BBC.  I wonder how the BBC would cover the war in Ukraine if Putin had gone to Oxford and spoke English with a plummy accent. 

I had hoped to head this Why Does Mickey Mouse Hate Canada. But it turns out that though Disney bought much of the Fox media chain, it did not buy Fox News. And it is Fox News which is advocating the overthrow of Canada’s “Creepy Trudeau Government”. I take it that Fox News fully endorses its right wing, almost neofascist presenters and what they say on air. There is such a thing as Freedom of Speech. But shouting “Fire” in the crowded cinema is criminal. Sedition is a crime. Overthrowing a democratically elected government surely counts as sedition. Though Fox News is not big on democracy and appears to support voter disqualification measures which favour the Republican Party.  Perhaps the answer is to discourage Fox presenters from exercising their supposed right to freedom of speech when it comes to neighbouring countries. They are of course free to spout insidious rubbish that encourages polarisation and violence in their own country. Let's just stick to inciting riots at the Capitol Building and leave the Canadian House of Commons alone.