On the today programme this week John Humphrys repeatedly interrupted a Sinn Fein spokesperson who had described the IRA volunteers as seeing themselves as 'soldiers' with the challenge: "But soldiers don't blow up children, do they?" Well, do they? Max Hastings asks 'What would you have done?' about Hiroshima and of Nagasaki. On a similar theme... "Give us your bombers and you can have our baskets." Why the Battle of Algiers was ahead of its time.

Apparently there are more than 600 Polish bus drivers employed as bus drivers in the West Midlands (so be careful with your pronunciation when asking for a ticket to Walsall... although personally I could find a minimum of a thousand better reasons for going to Warsaw rather than Walsall). Anyway, looking at The Guardian travel, Gdansk looks well worth a visit. The article, by way of a neat link, is written by Niall Griffiths, a scouser who lives in Wales and writes graphically about both, and often with a tad too much violence for my squeamish stomach. Griffiths is often described as the Welsh Irvine Welch and it is easy to see why. I have just finished his latest book, Wreckage, but the characters since his first book, Grits, have become interwoven. Well worth reading, but not too soon after breakfast I would suggest.