It seems to me, increasingly, that we're living in a world in which facts are in extremely short supply - or at least where indisputable facts can simply be ignored if they don't fit a political agenda.
Where spin and interpretation carries more weight than reality.
Where the Juggernaut of 'what we're doing' takes precedence over why we're doing it. (I personally think that nice Mr Blair has much to answer for in this regard - he took us into an Iraq war that was not based on fact or reality, but on his pre-agreed support for his mate Bush, which he then 'fitted' the facts to justify).
Where, inevitably, vested interests are more important than reality. And we're falling for it.
In a month's time, according to Al Gore in 2007, the Arctic will be free of ice. By 2012 there should have been 50 million climate refugees forced out of their home countries because of climate change.
Yet we ignore the fact that these ridiculous forecasts have not come to fruition and we carry on regarding man-made climate change as real.
While every prediction of climate doom and gloom fail to arise in reality, we continue to base our global energy policies on this fairy tale view and the belief that we can control the climate.
To the detriment of developing countries and the detriment of our own prosperity and energy security.
But the facts don't matter a jot. I'm all for renewable energy and the development of 'cleaner' and 'sustainable' alternatives but not on the basis of our having this ludicrous gun to our heads whereby we must 'act now or it'll be a global disaster' and where this faux urgency means that we have to subsidise green energy to a ridiculous extent.
More on 'green energy' here.
There are many other examples of where the facts simply don't stack up but politicians continue to tell the lie regardless.
The major one that concerns me is about our potentially leaving the EU: Ken Clarke, Mandelson, Clegg, Danny Alexander and Miliband continue to tell us that our leaving the EU would be a disaster for the UK economy.
Without having a single verifiable fact to support what they say. The tired old '3.5 million UK jobs at stake' bollocks continues to be rolled out when there is simply no evidence that it is true. Tell a big enough lie often enough and it will eventually be believed.
The fact is that the EU is a failing, bankrupt project. It is the only major global economic bloc that is shrinking and yet these people think we should tie our prosperity ever more closely with these unelected muppets in Brussels. Look at Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal where more than 50% of 16-14 year olds are unemployed and have very little prospect of having any kind of prosperous future. Look at France which has been bankrupt for years, propped up by the EU to keep them sweet. Germany is on the brink of another recession having effectively blown its recent boom years which have been achieved on the back of economic meltdown in southern Europe.
We (UK) are the Eurozone's biggest customer. There is a £46billion a year trade deficit in the Eurozone's favour on it's trade with the UK. If you think that the EU would impose punitive sanctions against UK trade if we left, you're a moron. They simply could not even begin to think about such a thing. It would tip the entire Eurozone from its current depression (not too strong a word) into total collapse.
But these 'facts' are not even mentioned in the EU debate. We are the 5th or 6th biggest economy on the planet. Would we not be able to organise our own trade deals with our commonwealth friends in India, Canada, Australia, parts of Africa, without the EU? We're better connected with these and other countries like China and the USA than any other country in the EU. So by handing over our trade negotiations to the EU we are effectively reducing the positive effect of our good relations with these major trading powers to an inefficient 'collective' that has much less clout than we do.
More on our status in the world here.
Once again, the facts are there, readily available, but ignored by our politicians and main stream media for purely political reasons.
I could respect and respond to people putting forward 'facts' that contradict what I'm saying. I could examine them and if correct, could adjust my views accordingly. But there simply aren't any that hold water. And yet we're being told these things as if they're true, over and over again, to the point where people who can't be arsed to engage and actually do some research, believe them.Most are too busy watching xfaxtor or some other such cheap, humiliation TV bollocks and don't realise that their futures are being put at risk by these muppets.
It's infuriating. And depressing.
Sometimes it makes one consider giving up pointing this stuff out.
But the consolation is that Facts are facts. They don't change just because some powerful people wish them to. The planet is not warming (climate is changing, always has, always will) and we cannot control the planet's climate via CO2 emissions. As the earth cools, cyclically as it always has, and warms as it always has, someday - and I think soon - we will realise that the scaremongering is just that. Maybe then science will return to being about finding stuff out rather than trying to prove a pre-ordained result which is both stupid and inflicting massive damage upon the credibility of our global scientific community.
And if, (oh happy day, not only for the UK but also for everyone who is now trapped in the Eurozone) we do manage to extract ourselves from this utterly flawed EU project that has caused so much damage to so many people; we will also see that the facts of our being a trading nation that doesn't need the EU (whereas it needs us to survive and continue its destruction of ordinary people's lives), will also be borne out.
So I'm not giving up. Any. Day. Soon.
Thanks for reading.
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