Gimme some truth

I remember reading the story of Tory MP Nadine Dorries a couple of weeks ago and thinking: this can't be right. Don't get me wrong, politicians telling fibs is hardly front page stuff, but still - it just doesn't sit right with me. This is the quote I find most offensive:

According to documents published by the Standards and Privileges Committee, Ms Dorries responded: "My blog is 70% fiction and 30% fact. It is written as a tool to enable my constituents to know me better and to reassure them of my commitment to Mid Bedfordshire. I rely heavily on poetic license and frequently replace one place name/event/fact with another."

Quite. Especially when it comes to where you live. Or, more precisely, where you get paid to live. But surely, when you are reading a politician's outpourings (or anyone else's for that matter) you assume that they've been able to get to grips with the subject matter and what you are reading (give or take the odd Lib Dem swerve ball) reflects what they feel about the particular topic under the hammer. If you don't know from the outset that it is nothing more than a yarn and is proffered as a work of fiction, then the boundary between truth and lies is nothing more than an optical illusion.

Unlike Nadine Dorries I am not answerable to thousands of constituents (I answer only to the current Mrs Medd) so what you read here on these pages may be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But then again...

Generation X - Gimme Some Truth (1978)