by Gordon Craigie

Is it déjà vu or Groundhog Day? For independistas like me, surely one of the most wearisome aspects of our continuing fight to restore Scotland’s independence is the absolute keich spouted by people who have no right to impose their opinion, never mind their will, on Scotland or the people of Scotland. If you think that opening sentence gives you your own feeling of déjà vu, fear not dear reader! I used that exact sentence to introduce a wee rant in Issue 59 (When is enough really enough?) which in itself represented a form of Groundhog Day as I was introducing a piece that I’d originally written in 2014. That got me going on a wee retro theme so, in Issue 60 (There’s a love-bomb in Downing Street!), I revived another two articles, but this time originally dating back to 2011 – 9 years ago! Yet they were all still, sadly, relevant today. As we’re all enduring some form of Groundhog Day existence during this lockdown period, it seems appropriate to dig yet another one out of the archives for your delectation which, again, and again sadly, still retains its relevance despite being written in 2015… Lies, damned lies, and… eh, experts? A funny thing happened to me during the Scottish Independence Referendum campaign last year – I pretty much gave up on a lifetime habit of reading newspapers and generally ended up avoiding TV news and current affairs programmes too. As far as I could manage it this continued, in truth intensified, during the recent UK General Election too.

Why? I was, am, fed up, frustrated, outraged and, well, just generally hacked off with being lied to or hearing interminable and unintelligible spin masquerading as fact.

Now, I’m not naïve, I expect to be lied to by politicians, that’s just what they do. But they are getting worse. More blatant. Sometimes they don’t even try to spin to disguise the fact they’ve lied, they just blunder on regardless and either hope we haven’t noticed or, more likely, they simply don’t care. And too many journalists appear all too happy to perpetuate their lies.