Kenny Farquharson Of Scotland On Sunday & Jonathan Freedland Of The Guardian Make My Point About Priggish Revisionist Activity Regarding The 1980s...

A little while ago, I wrote:

It's a strange fact but "nice" people don't like the 1980s. And that dislike runs so deep that things perceived to be good or groundbreaking which happened in the 1980s are often transported to adjacent decades by the likes of the BBC and on-line revisionists.

It's as though nothing of positive importance is allowed to have happened in the 1980s, the scapegoat decade which enables us lovely people to feel better about ourselves now.

Over at The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland writes today:

"A convention, much like the one that met in Scotland in the 1990s, could draw up a written constitution setting out how we govern ourselves."

The emphasis is mine. The Scottish Claim of Right was launched in Edinburgh in July 1988 and the Convention first met in March 1989, and signed the claim.

Just a one-off mistake?

Ah, I beg to differ - witness Kenny Farquharson in Scotland On Sunday:

"Calman's approach seems in marked contrast to that of the Scottish Constitutional Convention's Claim of Right in the 1990s, which simply stated what Scotland wanted and then challenged the UK Government to deliver it."

Two separate pieces, both published on the same day in separate publications, and both containing the same inaccurate information.

So, the Scottish Constitutional Convention and The Scottish Claim Of Right are moved from the 1980s to the 1990s.

The correct information is freely available all over the web. Jonathan Freedland and Kenny Farquharson are not, as far as I know, famous for poor research. So how come 1988 and 1989 have become something as inaccurate and downright vague in their articles as "the 1990s"?

For the correct information, start here: http://www.alba.org.uk/devolution/claimofright.html

It's all so easy.

My own belief is that the constant revising of history and the tendency to airbrush the real 1980s out of existence are dangerous. We do not examine the truth about that decade nor what we are now. We simply revise - tell lies - from the BBC's I Love... TV series to political journalists. It's not just down to personal opinions or biases, history is actually rewritten. Facts are changed.

It all feels fragmented. Unreal. Disjointed. And very dishonest.

And it worries me.