OK, time I think for what is going to become an annual Downer. It's around Remembrance Day and I think it's important to remember what soldiering is all really about and how badly things can work out for too many people. I've never been sure whether this photo from 1917 shows British or Canadian kilties. The photo is sometimes credited to The Official Canadian War Photographer. Sadly, the guy I was going to ask, Tim Cook at the Canadian War Museum, died suddenly a couple of weekends ago. He was a good guy. Anyway, click here to see the photo  – <a href="/index.php/14-titles/81-wardead" target="_blank&quot;">War Dead</a></p>

The BBC has a science programme called Discovery. It causes me some concern. Quite often it profiles leading world scientists. What concerns me is the majority of them come from privileged backgrounds. I don't think scientific ability is dependent on, or even linked to, parental income. This suggests to me that genuinely talented working class kids are not being given a chance. And the exclusion of talent must mean our science is far more mediocre than it should be. England seems to worst for this, Scotland and North America, though no meritocracies, appear to be slightly better, say children of school teachers, and the sole Aussie was, if I recall correctly, was the son of a working class single mother. Now I don't know how hard it is to get a job as a scientist. But one English princess decided she wanted to be a journalist when she graduated from Oxbridge. Hey Presto, Princess gets a good job as a journalist handed to her. Then she decides she wants to be a scientist instead. Hey Presto, she gets a good job as a scientific researcher. I'm not saying she is not a good scientist. What I am saying is that equally, or more, talented folk from humbler backgrounds were pushed aside to make way for her and never got a chance. We all end up losers when Privilege closes ranks to make sure their kids get all the good jobs. Can the UK really afford to stifle talent so that Nigel, Charlotte and Tim can have first pick?

The problem with new recipes is that many require a pinch of this or a dash of that. But the shops seldom sell ingredients in pinches or dashes. And suppose the the recipe is not a success. You end up with a bag or jar of something you may never use again. What's the answer? Some kind of cookery club where everyone agrees to try the same new recipe on the same weekend and divvy the pinches, dashes and snatches out from a communally purchased jar or bag? Even then there would have to be a lot of club members to avoid bring left with 4/5ths of a bag or jar of whatever.

Last weekend the BBC World Service news carried a highly critical item about the Taliban hosting a news conference in India which barred female journalists. Grounds indeed for censure. My problem was that half an hour earlier my radio had a BBC programme that used to boast that it was uncontaminated by any male contribution. Employment equity laws made such a boast unwise and it's been dropped. But somehow I doubt if any males are on the programme production team at this time but the lawyers are happy. The content remains 100% female. So, how can it be wrong for the Taliban to bar females when the BBC half an hour earlier banned males? Is it not a bit hypocritical of the BBC to run an item critical of sexism while engaging in it itself?

Last weekend the BBC World Service news carried a highly critical item about the Taliban hosting a news conference in India which barred female journalists. Grounds indeed for censure. My problem was that half an hour earlier my radio had a BBC programme that used to boast that it was uncontaminated by any male contribution. Employment equity laws made such a boast unwise and it's been dropped. But somehow I doubt if any males are on the programme production team at this time but the lawyers are happy. The content remains 100% female. So, how can it be wrong for the Taliban to bar females when the BBC half an hour earlier banned males? Is it not a bit hypocritical of the BBC to run an item critical of sexism while engaging in it itself?

Does anyone else remember TV Detector Vans? Sinister vehicles with a revolving antenna on the roof that supposedly prowled the streets and could tell what television channel you were watching. And if you didn't have a licence for that television set - kapow. An older person now, I suspect the vans were a con. I doubt they could detect a switched-on television with any degree of accuracy and certainly not which channel it was tuned to. By the time I left home nearly 100% of households had a television. So, all the TV enforcement folks did was check which houses to not have a licence and target them. When I first lived in Inverness I got a letter demanding to know why I didn't have a licence and threatening several unpleasant happenings if I didn't get one. I didn't have a licence because I didn't have a television. Some folk might say that the best thing to do then was just ignore the letter. I knew better. I knew of too many doors kicked down by the TV licence people, who regarded evasion as up there in the scale of criminal activity alongside raping your little sister, cutting her throat was a jagged tin can and feeding her body to the pigs. I went to the Post Office in Queensgate to explain my lack of a licence.

Something like 45 years ago I was a regular on a BBC Radio Scotland teenage current affairs programme called Sunday Club. It involved a panel about six school kids interviewing two or three of the country's news makers. One Sunday we were interviewing a Czech dissident. He started talking about a beating his son had been by the Czech secret police. Because of what of you were doing, we asked. "Oh, no," he replied. "I'm proud to say he asked for it." Few Scottish parents at the time would have been proud that their kid had got a kicking from the police. While most youngsters only appeared on the programme three or so times I did a lot more. I suspect that was because I wasn't the sort of kid my high school would have picked to represent them on the wireless.

I wonder how many British children died from suffocation in the 1960s and 70s after climbing into an abandoned fridge. Certainly there must have been enough that the government made a public education film warning kids to stay clear of fridges. Or was it telling adults to take the door of the fridge before illegally dumping it? We were also informed by the telly that if we did not use the underpass on the way home from buying New Shows our dads would almost run us down in his car and our grannies would be very perplexed. Was the kid or Charlie the cat who burned the house down by playing with matches? Or did Charlie talk the kid out of playing with the matches? I never did get to stagger around the country in an RAF boiler suit suffering from hypothermia. Downed RAF aircrew in the final stages of hypothermia were seldom seen on my street. I think the government perhaps maybe had some interesting ideas about the kind of lives most of the population were experiencing. New Shows, killer fridges, talking cats and hypothermia. They were obviously interesting but dangerous times.

I'll never forget the day that I didn't meet singer Elvis Costello. It was a Saturday in Lerwick. Most Saturday afternoons I would go for a couple of pints at the Thule Bar, down by the harbour, with my flatmate Lois. But that Saturday there was an old film I'd always wanted to see showing on Channel 4. So, I didn't go that Saturday. Lois was a long long time coming back. When he finally did get home it turned out he'd spent the afternoon boozing with pop star Elvis Costello. Costello and his then wife were on a cruise ship that had called in to Shetland to let the passengers stretch their legs. Costello didn't get further than the Thule on the quayside.  Lois said he was good guy and had promised to come back to Shetland and play. And lo and behold, he did come and play at that year's Shetland Folk Festival. Just him and his guitar. If he hadn't already been a star, you would have said he was going to one. He was bigger and broader than I'd expected, the TV made him look a bit scrawny. I can't remember the name of that film that was on Channel 4.

Yep, you read that correctly. When I was a kid a person could get hurt in a children's playground. And I don't mean from a junkie's needle through the foot. I think something we called The Cheese-cutter was the most dangerous piece of playground equipment. It was basically a heavy wood beam that swung back and forth. A bit like a medieval battering ram that you could sit on. Another kid, not paying attention, could walk into the path of the swinging beam and kerpow, a fractured skull. There was also something called The Witch's Hat, but I can't remember why we thought it was dangerous. And then there was all the gravel or Tarmac surfacing to fall headfirst onto from the slide or climbing frame. Nowadays the playground surfaces seem to be rubberised. Anyway, the good thing about the old fashioned playgrounds was the role they played in Natural Selection. Most of the kids who got hurt were doing something stupid. Maybe better out of the picture before their stupidity could kill someone else. Maybe best they were out of circulation before they were old enough to get a driving licence and their dangerous stupidity killed an innocent person.

When I was a reporter on Tyneside I lived in the Heaton area of Newcastle. But I worked in South Shields on the other side of the Tyne. I used to cover Hebburn Magistrates Court. I was surprised how many, going by their addresses, of my neighbours in Heaton showed up at Hebburn Mags charged with house breaking or theft in either Hebburn or Jarrow. It took me a while to work out why that was. Heaton was once home to a sprawling British Rail goods yard. It was pretty much closed by the time I moved to Newcastle. But the guys showing up at Hebburn Mags were from families who for generations made their living from stealing from the railway goods yard. When it closed, they had to spread their crime net wider. Our fridge broke down during a heat wave and we carried it and its contents into the backyard. Within 24 hours the gate had been forced and the fridge was stolen. I wonder if it gave off a cloud of toxic death spores when it was opened.

I hope the families of those killed in the 1994 Mull of Kintyre Chinook Crash don't give up on their campaign for answers. Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has denied a public inquiry into the deaths of 29 aircrew and top security forces personnel from Northern Ireland because the Ministry of Defence has advised against it. That's like taking the fox's word that there's no need to make the hen house more secure. But I hear that those former colleagues who remember Starmer as a lawyer say there wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell that he would order a new inquiry. I also understand that the only family members of the dead who aren't demanding answers are those of the MI5 agents. Why is that not a surprise? Most normal people continue to wonder why a helicopter crewed by two the top Chinook pilots in the RAF would fly into a hill side at the Mull of Kintyre. An attempt by senior RAF officers to blame the pilots failed. The safety record of the actual Chinook involved was queried. A computer system controlling the engines was notoriously unreliable. Boeing, the Chinook's maker, was heavily involved in the investigation from the beginning. A cynic might feel that the team was more interested in protecting Boeing than finding out why 29 Limeys died. The initial RAF finding of pilot error would have suited Boeing. Many of the papers relating the crash have been sealed until 2094. Who or what is being protected? Perhaps the papers shine too bright a light on the Chinook procurement programme and how many, if any, retired RAF and Ministry of Defence personnel were on the Boeing payroll at the time.  A cosy berth in the arms industry after retirement from the RAF has long been a perk for senior officers. Previous inquiries have been flawed for one reason or another. Perhaps too many vested interests. 

Next time Kate "Hawhawsdottir" Laycock tries to tell you on Deutsche Welle Radio that the British invented concentration camps, email and ask her about Shark Island. Though it was built three years after the last British camps were closed, in 1902, Shark Island was far more like what most people think of when they see the words "concentration camp". Arbitrary execution by guards, starvation, disease, inhumane medical experiments and death through over work were all hallmarks of Shark Island in 1905 in what is now Namibia. The main cause of death among the Boer women and children held in British concentration camps five years earlier was disease caused by incompetent healthcare administration, not a policy of near genocide. Similar incompetence meant far more British soldiers died in their camps than on the battlefield. Shark Island was part of an attempt by Imperial Germany to wipe out the rebellious Herero and Nama people. Some of those involved in the deaths of up to 3,000 prisoners at Shark Island played a role in setting up the Nazi camps just over 25 years later. And by the way, the British got the idea of corralling the civilian population to stop them supplying guerrilla fighters from t Spanish operations in Cuba. And in view of Deutsche Welle's penchant love of American propaganda maybe they should ask themselves whether Indian reservations were not the inspiration for the Spanish in Cuba.

When I had a real job, as a journalist, if I was told to do something I wasn't sure was the best way to tackle the story, I would say so. Maybe perhaps that's why I don't have a real job anymore. I don't think that folk realised that what I was doing was actually a sign of respect. There is no point engaging in a discussion with a complete idiot. They won't change their minds. I never tried it with the pair whom I considered the two biggest clowns at the Edmonton Sun. In way there no point because their far more sensible deputies would do the common sense thing anyway after the clowns went home at the end of their shift. But it's a shame that some of those deputies didn't realise that discussion was a sign of respect.

When I was checking how many British soldiers were killed during the First Gulf War in 1991 when the Americans attacked a halted armored column I was struck by one thing. That was the similarities between the 1991 incident and the US attack on a Canadian live fire exercise in Afghanistan in 2002 which killed four Canadian soldiers. Both incidents involved the Air National Guard, which has a load of civilian passenger jet pilots irresponsibly put in charge of military hardware. But main similarity was that the pilots involved just wanted to kill someone and they didn't care who. Just as long as it wasn't a fellow American. Then they might be trouble. The third similarity was the gross stupidity, lack of professionalism and incompetence involved in both fatal attacks. Both incidents were closer to reckless murder than accident of war. Is there not a song with the line Shot a man Reno just to watch him die. Maybe National Guard has a version along the lines of Bombed some guys in Iraq just to see the body parts fly.

Even more interesting than the question during my interview with the Scottish Office than who I would invite to a dinner party was whether I would lie to a journalist. Lies are nearly always found out in the end. So, lying is not a good idea. The question placed me in a dilemma because I knew British Government spokesmen did lie. A guy at the Ministry of Defence had just lied to me about the deaths of nine British soldiers at the hands of the US Air Force during the First Gulf War in 1991. I didn't want to appear naive when answering at the interview. But having never been to a dinner party, I probably wasn't going to get the job anyway.

Well, the folks in charge of the BBC have shown yet again that they're not fit to run a bath. They've just cut off overseas online access to British and Scottish radio news bulletins. So, no more Good Morning Scotland, no more The World at One. I'm not getting up in the middle of the night to listen to them livestreamed. Even if that was possible. Now, you'd have thought in a world of misinformation the BBC would have an interest in providing as much news content as possible. I guess I'll just have to rely on MAGA Conspiracy sources and that nice Elon Musk chappie, the one who believes the British jail system is filled with political prisoners. I don't think letting folk listen to the same news as people back home get costs the BBC extra. Did you know the BBC has a programme that no men are allowed on - The Conversation. The creators boasted no males were allowed at all but I think they ran into problems denying guys jobs on the production team - ie sex discrimination laws relating to employment. That doesn't mean they don't discriminate, just they can't boast about it any longer. Jolly Good Show.

I recently managed to watch the 1916 film of the Battle of the Somme. It was the most viewed film shown in British cinemas at the time and may still hold some kind of a record. Anyway, I was interested to see how one of the biggest disasters in British military history was portrayed to the public back home. Let's just say no outright lies were told but folk might have been left with the impression it was a victory: footage  of captured German positions and long lines of prisoners. One of the things that struck me was that nearly all the prisoners were wearing the soft feldmutze caps and not helmets. Who were these guys? 

Long time passing in a place far far away there was a guy on a journalism course. The course was part of the Printing and Media Department's empire at the college. So when the printing students went on a visit to one of the biggest book printers in Europe, the department head took along the journalism student guy to record his triumphant progress through the plant. The printing plant included a miracle press which had cardboard, paper and ink fed in at one end and kicked out palettes of finished books at the other. Some joker had put a For Sale sign on. It turned out from  talking to print workers that the miracle press chewed up thousands of books when it was started up and a similar number when it was shut off. The tour guide must have been a very bitter employee. He told the students that a far smaller printer had ordered some specialist ink that the big printer suddenly needed. The big guys phoned the supplier and demanded the ink. They pointed out how much their business was worth to the supplier and what they got from the little guy who placed the ink order. They got their ink and maybe the little guy went to the wall because he couldn't fill an order. The day after the class trip the journalism guy was summoned to the department head's office and told if he wrote about anything he'd learned on the class visit he would be kicked out of college. It wasn't clear if it was the miracle press's poor performance or the ink hijacking that was the problem. The department head obviously didn't know much about journalism and the need to double-check information. Getting kicked off the course would probably mean no job. What do you think our hero did? 

I heard something on the radio about a controversial bravery award in Afghanistan. Putting aside the allegations of dishonesty involved, some, if not all, of the blame lies at the door of the battalion of The Rifles involved. In their rush to get a gallantry medal credited to the unit, the officers failed to investigate the claim properly. I doubt if many in the medal winner's platoon applauded the highly dubious award. Sadly, the number gallantry awards credited to a battalion is as good an indication of military value and combat effectiveness as a body count of dead Vietnamese is a guarantee of ultimate victory. I understand in the early days of the SAS the unit subscribed to a more traditional regimental ethos that scorned bravery award applications because very high standards of conduct were par for the course in the unit. I know of at least one Crimean War Victoria Cross winner who was chosen through a vote by his whole battalion. Either approach would have saved The Rifles a great degree of ridicule. I can't be alone in thinking that an out and out popularity contest is just, if not more, likely to produce a deserving recipient than the way things are apparently done at the moment.