This is a story that got away from me. Mainly because it wasn't worth flying from Canada to Australia for and my Australian collaborators were crap. Like most Commonwealth countries, Australia has pensions for disabled war veterans. Until recently, most of those veterans were from the First or Second World Wars. Many had suffered serious battlefield injuries. But the pensions are also paid out to people who suffered some injury due to their wartime military service. One of the oddest must have been the former Australian aircrew member who wanted compensation for the loss of his teeth. He did his air force training on the Canadian Prairies, as did many Commonwealth flyers. He successfully argued that the quality of the drinking water at his training base was so poor that he was forced to survive on a well-known sugary soft drink. Which in turn rotted his teeth and now he was entitled to compensation. The hearing agreed. I thought it was interesting. The veteran's local paper couldn't be bothered pulling the hearing documentation. With Remembrance Day coming up this weekend, this photo from 1917 may serve as a reminder of what it looks like a battle goes wrong.

So, when a rich person wins a libel case and then it turns out that they did do what they were accused of, should they have to repay the damages awarded to them? For many lawyers, the law is a only game and the winner not only gets to take all but also to keep it no matter what comes out afterwards. I've sat through enough court cases not to be fooled into confusing Law with Justice. To appeal is to risk all again on a second throw of the dice. Even if a person is telling the truth they could easily lose a libel case. Civil Law is more a matter of the depth of pocket than truth. Most sensible people do indeed cave when they get a lawyer's letter sent on behalf of a wealthy client. There have been several nasty rich people who have succeeded in silencing the truth, even threatening their own families with libel suits, and in a couple of cases have even won substantial damages because the defendant had a bad day in court. Criminals who have their convictions overturned are freed and often compensated. Unsuccessful libel defendants can have their lives and reputations ruined for life. How about when it turns out that someone who did do what was alleged but won their case that they are charged criminal perjury? With guaranteed jail time if found guilty.

We recently had some overnight snow. The good thing about the snow is that bounces light off the ground through the windows into my flat and that brightens the place up considerably. The bad thing is a fresh fall of snow shows the creeps out there have been out creeping. The residents’ car park shows trails of footprints coming in from the back lane, going to the doors of all the cars there, and then heading back to the lane. The footprints in the carpark snow are not the only signs of the local scum going to places they shouldn’t go but they are among the most blatant. I can do without such tangible reminders of blatant nastiness going on outside my window.

In my mid-20s I used to be able to grow a pretty-half-decent beard in a fortnight. So, part of the two weeks off for the summer holidays often involved not bothering to shave. Camping or hitch-hiking seemed easier when I didn't have to scrape my face every morning. By the end of the fortnight I was well beyond the designer stubble stage. The problem usually came around Christmas. That was when the beard was becoming more than somewhat bushy. For some reason, year after year I would attempt to trim the facial fungus with the kitchen scissors. And year after year I would only succeed in cutting a series of door steps in the beard. The only answer was to go back to being clean-shaven until the next summer holidays. Eventually someone got me one of those fancy beard trimmers for Christmas. Hmm, kitchen scissors versus proper trimmer.

Everyone has an excuse for why their life didn't turn out the way they wanted. Sometimes they blame their gender, social background, skin tone, or even their lack of stature. Even people widely regarded by others as blindingly successful feel that but for... (fill in the blank) ... their true worth would have been recognised and rewarded. Dissatisfaction with life is natural, essential even for the progress of humankind. Otherwise, music would still consist only of banging two rocks together. Where the excuses get toxic is when they lead to division and so-called reverse discrimination. Two wrongs don't make a right. All discrimination is wrong and ultimately harmful.

If one more motorist who runs me down or almost runs me down announces "I didn't see you", I'm going to drag him or her out and beat them savagely. They didn't see me because they weren't looking. Too many motorists only pay attention to what other motorists are doing to the exclusion of everything else. Yesterday I had eight or nine vehicles ignore the flashing lights on pedestrian crossings that should have stopped them. I'm not sure whether it was five or six vehicles zoomed past, one actually accelerating, at the first crossing. The third guy at second crossing half an hour later only just missed me as he accelerated to follow the first two in turning onto the road despite the crossing lights being activated. Motor vehicles weigh a lot and the physics says that if they hit a pedestrian or cyclist there will be a surprising amount of damage done to bicycles, internal organs and bones at even low speed. Driving involves a degree of care which fewer and fewer people these days seem prepared to exercise. The fact that someone didn't mean to kill or veggie me and is sorry is not really going to be much of a comfort.

What is a “suspected shooting”? Either shots were fired or they were not. And yet the BBC is comfortable reporting a suspected shooting. Sometimes it seems that the world is becoming mired in ignorance and stupidity. How else can the standing ovation for an ex-SS man in the Canadian House of Commons during a visit by Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelenskyy just over a week ago be explained. His acclamation as a “Canadian war hero” also takes some explaining. And how can something be “pretty unique”. It is either unique or it is not. The ignorance extends to adjectives. Why Italy Prime Minister. Why nor Italian Prime Minister. Could be because so many so-called journalists don’t know the adjective? Of course few of the people who cover Scottish matters for the London-based BBC programmes are Scottish. But Our Scotland Correspondent jars for me. Why not Scottish Affairs reporter or something like that?

Striking up a conversation with the person sitting next you at the beginning of a long journey can be a risky business. I believe everyone has at least one good story. But maybe the chances of it coming out during a casual conversation on a bus, train or plane are slim. Most often the conversation dies out to the embarrassment of both parties. Many people seem to forestall conversation by putting on headphones almost as soon as they sit down. That's not to say I haven't got lucky a couple of times. Once the Australian woman next to me turned out to be the sister of a girl I was at high school with. When their parents split, one girl stayed in Australia with her mum while the other returned to Scotland with her dad. Another time the guy next to me worked with a former colleague of mine. Sadly my seat mate was flying to Scotland to be at his Dad's deathbed. And there was the rail journey to Inverness. For some reason the carriages were the old fashioned compartments with four seats facing each other and a long narrow corridor down one side, or perhaps doors opening directly out onto the platform . I deliberately didn't start up a conversation with the only other occupant of the compartment until we were only half an hour, 45 minutes, from Inverness. What a mistake. The guy was incredibly interesting and amusing. I have no doubt he would have been incredibly interesting and amusing from the moment we left Edinburgh or Glasgow, I forget which.

Three things struck me when I used to cover Hebburn Magistrates Court. Actually, four things. I decided that if I ever committed a crime I would flee to Scotland and commit another, bigger, crime rather than face England's medieval justice system - magistrates court was only slightly fairer than trial by combat. And I think it was while I was working as a reporter in South Tyneside that I was finally older than most of the accused. Thirdly, the number of crooks who were let off Scot-free provided they fulfilled their supposed "career dream" of joining the Army before their case was called again was noteworthy. If Hebburn Mags was anything to go by, The Light Infantry must have been composed of 80% house-breakers. The fourth thing was how many of my neighbours from north of the Tyne were caught thieving in Hebburn or Jarrow south of the river. It took me a couple of months to work out where I lived was next to a former railway goods yard and for generations whole families had made a living stealing from it. The closure of the goods yard meant the young generation had been forced further afield to pillage.

If you listen only to the BBC you'd think the sole problem Afghanistan faces these days is lack of access to education for females. You might conclude that one of the Bs in BBC stands for Bourgeois. Because what we're getting is bourgeois interviewing bourgeois. The average Afghan villager isn't planning to send his daughter to university. It's an upper middle class and above issue. Here in Canada when we asked what our soldiers were bring killed and crippled for in Afghanistan, the best the government could answer was Girls' Education. In the long run girls and women have lost out because in the minds of the Taliban their education is associated with foreign military occupation. Afghanistan is, as far as we know, at peace. Afghans apparently do not agree that female education is worth dying or being crippled for. Though, that doesn't make what the Taliban is doing right. But let's hear more in the western bourgeois dominated media about all the problems Afghanistan faces and how we can actually help.

One of the few useful things we could have been taught on the journalism course at Napier, but weren't, was table etiquette. You know, which implement to use to eat which food. This was brought home to me shortly after I started work in Inverness. There was a fancy meal hosted by British Rail to celebrate the launch of a new train service. I was sitting next to a senior executive and we were chatting away quite happily until plates with an avocado in each were placed before us. I had no idea how to eat an avocado in a formal setting and suddenly felt at a disadvantage. Our places had been set with at least nine pieces of cutlery and I had a feeling picking the avocado up with my hands was not the way it should be done. If only we'd been taught this skill at Napier.

The radio tells me I live in Amiskwaciywaskahikan, rather than Edmonton in Canada. That's the old Cree Indian name for the area the city stands on. Only, it's not the only name for the area which predates the rebranding to honour a part of London. It has long been an attractive locale and the Indians long fought over it. At one point the North Saskatchewan River, which cuts the city pretty much in half, marked the boundary between the Cree and the Blackfoot. The Blackfoot called it Omahkoyis. The radio station which harps on about Amiskwaciywaskahikan is south of the river. So, if it wants to remind us of the evils of colonialism and settler culture maybe it should be using Omahkoyis. There are even third and fourth names- Titâga from the Nakota Soiux and Nââsʔágháàchú, anglicised as Nasagachoo, from the Tsuutʼina. And dollars to doughnuts, none of the above were the first inhabitants of the area. Shame no-one recorded what they called it. The radio also refers to Planet Earth as Turtle Island. Once again, not all Indians subscribe to the Turtle Island legend. And the radio is certainly wrong when it claims the Innuit of Northern Canada describe it as Turtle Island. It strikes me as much akin to the radio describing Edinburgh as Edinburg.

Twice while driving between Oban and Campbeltown on the A83 I met a vehicle coming at me head-on on the wrong side of road. I swore if it happened a third time, I was going to quit my job and no more driving the A83. Of course, I may not have survived that third encounter with a nut behind the wheel. You can't quit if you're dead. The A83 was, and for all I know still is, a nasty road. Once, on a curve, the office van hit some loose spilled gravel or oil from a vehicle and briefly went onto the verge. I managed to get it back on the road but not before a rock tore out a back tyre and damaged a wheel arch. Another time I slowed down to walking pace on the approach to an almost 90o turn onto a bridge across a burn because I knew the road might be icy. The van only made an 80o turn. I could have got out, the van was moving so slowly, and interposed myself between it and the bridge parapet. But vague memory of High School physics and the momentum of even a small van made me think crushed shins. I think I got off with a broken indicator. Minutes later the council sanding truck went by. I miss several things about life in Argyll but the A83 isn't one of them.

It's an old trick: a supposed question that's really an accusation. I think I heard one recently. Until comparatively recently the Canadian federal government sent Indian kids to what were known as Residential Schools, usually far from home and their parents. The schools were often run by churches. It's hard not believe that their primary purpose was to destroy the kids' sense of their heritage. In the past couple of years there has been a lot of talk about the kids being abused by staff and this has now transformed into tales of hundreds of unmarked graves in the grounds of the old schools. Even of mass graves. Cree writer and musician Thomson Highway attended one of these schools and was pretty much asked why he continued to insist he had no complaints. Question as accusation. The accusation being that was he refusing to back the clamour and was therefore betraying the kids allegedly murdered in a century long "genocide". Some in Scotland may recognise the residential school scheme as being very similar to what happens to kids from the remoter islands. Anyway, good for Mr Highway.

When I was a newspaper reporter I never described a crook as bold, or brazen, bandit. Criminals to my mind are scum. There are no excuses. The bleeding hearts always seem the least likely to be victims of crime. And the people who want most to see the thugs jailed are their neighbours, the most likely to be those preyed upon. I was seldom allowed to say in my articles what I really thought of those behind the crimes. I writing about. Sometimes I could get away with the odd knife wielding thug. But I never used a term that suggested any admiration. Not even an "ingenious".

I've heard a couple of news reports that suggested that simply because there were no criminal charges that means that the person arrested hadn't done anything wrong. And therefore the police had been heavy handed and had over reacted. So, if the police want to avoid that accusation they should charge everyone? The media pundits want people to have criminal records, even when there are better ways of dealing with them? It's a crazy old world when giving someone a break means you end up being castigated.

In the Old Days juries had the power to have a man hanged. I sometimes wonder if we should have super panels of folk recruited in much the same way as a jury run the country. Could a gang of randomly selected citizens run the country better than elected members of parliament? Maybe a better question would be could they do worse? Probably not. Getting elected takes money. That money comes from somewhere and the people who provide it expect a return on their investment.  Also, power corrupts. So perhaps it would be fairer on all concerned if the exercise of power was limited to a period five years, when the next parliamentary panel is selected. And having no need to fixate on the short term as politicians all too often do, we might see some projects and policies which look beyond the next election.  Plus we'd probably get a wider breadth of knowledge and skills than presently provided by the political hacks and former lawyers who dominate the elected legislatures.

I heard a woman interviewed on the BBC World Service who was being applauded for fulfilling her childhood ambition of being a war correspondent. It made me uneasy. Would she have received the same adulation if she had said that since she was a child she had wanted to report fatal traffic accidents? I've encountered war reporters in Kosovo and Afghanistan. I was very seldom impressed by them. I can't do better than quote the American journalist and war reporter Martha Gellhorn. "Wars are frightful, wicked things, and anyone who wants to specialize in reporting them is either a charlatan or else lacks a scintilla of humanity."

Years ago I heard a Scottish teacher interviewed on Canadian radio about how she spent every summer on Cape Breton island in Nova Scotia. At the time a number of Scottish people had realised that Cape Breton was a bit like of a Gaelic world captured in aspic. Some of the Gaelic folk traditions on the island had almost died out back in Scotland. Fiddling was big. Cape Breton had absorbed a lot of Highland immigrants in the 19th Century, many ending up as coal miners and steel workers. This Scottish teacher was a Gaelic speaker. She could tell by the variety of Gaelic spoken in various parts of Cape Breton where people's ancestors came from. One village obviously had been settled by folk from Lewis while a neighbouring community was evidently settled by people from Skye, etc. This was in the early 1990s. Sadly, I suspect the number of Gaelic speakers on Cape Breton has by now drastically shrunk.

When I was an office boy at the Glasgow Herald one of my bosses gave me some advice. It was not to ask out women who were a good laugh on the phone. His theory, or experience, was that the women with the best phone personalities often turned out to weigh 100 stone or have beards. The good looking are able to get what they thought they wanted without needing personalities. Kind of a superficial notion, but with a possible grain of truth. A couple of years later when I was working as a reporter there was a charming, fun, young woman I spoke to regularly on the phone who was always talking about films she wanted to see at the cinema. Even I knew what expected of me. I think what stopped me was that most relationships don't work out and I didn't want to risk losing a good contact thanks to the almost inevitable breakup. A while later I spotted her standing outside her work. She was drop-dead gorgeous. So much for my Herald boss's theory.