Forbidden Truths.

I noted this week that Julian Assange has lost his UK court case and the way has now been cleared for his extradition to the US. Call me subversive if you like, but it seems to me that his only ‘crime’ was to take such steps as were necessary in order that the people should be given the truth to which he felt they were entitled.

 

And then, at the further end of the socio-political spectrum, I read today that a bishop in Italy has been forced to apologise for telling children that Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist, and that the image of the jolly old fat man in a red gown was invented by Coca-Cola for commercial reasons.

So here we are living in a world in which truth has become a major casualty of the times, a world in which all manner of influential people from politicians to Establishment figures to the burgeoning army of social media users routinely lie as a standard requirement of their stock in trade. But if you tell a simple truth, you’re in trouble.