AS EVER WAS...

It`s not been a good week so far. Apart from suffering from what could be a mild form of swine flu - possibly piglet flu - I`ve been seriously confused about a number of the big issues clogging up the news media. There`s a lot going on right now - too much to comment on all of it - but taking just three items of current affairs leads me to the conclusion that it`s becoming more and more difficult to trust what anyone says about just about anything.

The first big issue is our old friend climate change/global warming, currently being discussed by no less than 15,000 delegates to the Copenhagen Conference. Now I simply don`t know whether climate change is happening at all and, if it is, whether mankind is responsible for any or all of it. The science is baffling, the politics are, as usual, not to be trusted (how else can a `fuel escalator` be justified when it does nothing but raise taxes?) passions are raised by the believers, deniers are ridiculed and those in the middle of it all, like me, are really none the wiser. But I have my doubts. I have a feeling in my bones that whatever mankind does or does not do, the planet will look after itself and continue with its own periodic cycle of cooling and warming, as it has done for millennia. I will take some persuading that it is otherwise.

Today`s big issue has been the Chancellor`s Pre-Budget statement to the House of Commons which has confirmed the unholy financial mess we are in. Now, if it was my personal financial mess, I would have done something about it by now or faced the consequences, so why hasn`t HM Gov. grasped the nettle and got on with it? Quite simply because there`s an election on the horizon and so yet another in a seemingly endless line of self-serving political decisions is intended to convince us that there`s nothing to worry about. I don`t trust them to do what`s best for the country or what`s best for me, but I do trust them to do what`s best for their own narrow political interests.

And then there is the ongoing big issue of the Chilcot Inquiry into Iraq, the coverage of which is getting further down the agenda. So far, there have been some useful `contributions` from people like Sir Christopher Mayer, Lord Boyce and Sir Jeremy Greenstock but far too often the opportunity to even ask the searching question has passed the Inquiry members by. The latest example being the appearance of Sir John Scarlett, the former Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee who had some guarded comments to make about the difference between the text of the `dodgy dossier` and its foreword by Tony Blair. The Inquiry seemed reluctant to question him about the influence brought to bear on the presentation of the case for war by such luminaries as Alistair Campbell. If they can`t be trusted to ask the right questions, you can be pretty sure we`ll never get the answers we deserve.

And so, with just these few examples, you can see why I find it difficult to trust anything that anyone in any kind of `authority` says any more. I thought I might have been confused this week, but actually it`s all very clear. And, as once more I shrug my weary shoulders, crawl back into my shell and resume my battle with the piglet `flu, I guess nothing really changes and that it truly is as ever was.