Letters / Slanted truths
I see that there’s been a certain amount of reaction to Louise Thomason’s article, which expresses support for the idea of Scottish Independence. I took a look at the ‘Yes’ website earlier (specifically, http://www.yesscotland.net/news/scotlands-economic-strengths), and was struck by how many suspect-looking claims seem to have been laid there in favour of Scotland ‘going it alone’ after September.
For instance: three of the supposed contributions to ‘Scotland’s Ingenuity’ on that webpage seem to have been slanted to make it appear that the basis of MRI scanning, penicillin and television in particular sprang right out of nowhere in the minds of Scottish inventors: whereas in fact, MRI scanning began as an idea in 1952 in the USA (and was then developed by 1980 into a workable mechanism, at Aberdeen University); the ‘discovery’ of penicillin that occurred in 1928 was predated by its original discovery in 1875, by John Tyndall, in England of all places; and that what we now know as television actually began life as far back as 1884, in Germany, and the general history of its development hardly gives the Scottish inventor Baird’s system a mention.
My question is this: if that much of the content of the ‘Yes’ website can be seen to be half the truth for the sake of no more than half-an-hour’s online research, how much of the rest of that website’s offerings have been similarly ‘tailored’ to evoke a positive response? I don’t have time at the moment to take the whole website apart and find out for myself at first hand – but that’s what’s coming next.
This brings us back to the most important question of all: ‘how do we know that we can trust information sources such as that website, or know that we can take the word of our elected representatives at face value?’ The short answer is that we can’t – because there are (demonstrably) no legally-enforceable penalties in place for our MPs and their apologistic websites, telling us lies and slanted truths to fool us all into making the wrong decisions.
Worse than that, there’s nothing to prevent the MPs themselves stealing from the public through inflated or dishonest claims for expenses, even now, as we’re seeing in the news yet again; and there’s no mechanism in place either to make it possible for MPs who indulge in fraudulence or other forms of dishonesty to be stripped of their assets, incomes, savings, pension rights and anything else they came by through behaving dishonestly – including their liberty. That, of all things, is the one issue that desperately needs to be addressed now, and preferably during the term of office of the present government – because we have to know that honesty among that class of people can be enforced (or penalised) in a court of law. At the very least, it might serve to cut down the extent of disinformation that’s confusing and hamstringing us all, and help us all to make the right choices in the future. I shan’t be holding my breath, though – because everything happens for a reason, especially in highly-organised setups like central and local government, and too many would take a financial ‘hit’ from a general clean-up.
On that basis, ‘which of the above?’ becomes ‘none of the above – and here’s the list of reasons why’.
Philip Andrews
Unst
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