Ever since reading Jon Ronson’s book ‘So You Have Been Publicly Shamed’ I have tried to make sure that I do at least some research to back up my writing. This means that any opinion I offer, whether you like it or not, is hopefully based on facts.

Occasionally I get pulled up, either by friends, kind strangers, or as was once the case, a conservative party activist threatening me over comments made about the lurid sex scandal involving an MP who had just signed up to a ‘Christian Values’ act.

Anyway, the other day I wrote an article about religion and mentioned in passing the father of Theresa May, Hubert Brazier, who died in a car crash way back in 1981. I said in my piece that he was a highly respected Oxfordshire vicar.

I wrote this because, despite my atheist views, my assumption was that most vicars are highly respected. I didn’t do any homework, I just assumed he was highly respected as I had never heard anything to the contrary.

A friend of mine politely picked me up on this, saying whilst he enjoyed my article, I should look further into the life of Hubert Brazier, as he may not have been as highly respected as I assumed.

So I did some research and it wasn’t long before I was in the dark web reading stuff without any coherent substance about poor old Hubert, linking him to serial killers, paedophile rings and government cover ups regarding establishment child abuse.

See here. https://theswamp.media/theresa-may-s-father

When you start reading these things you invariably follow various links and end reading things about the Queen being a lizard and the holocaust being a fantasy whilst you are listening to a mad Irishman on a David Icke sponsored radio show. It is intriguing nonsense, I will give them that, featuring obviously intelligent people whose brains have ran out of control.

What I am saying is that everything becomes so ridiculous that if there was truth in some of the allegations made against Hubert Brazier or anyone else linked to the establishment, by the time you have turned your browser off, you assume the world has gone stark raving bonkers and that the truth, whatever the truth is, no longer has relevance or is extremely hard to find; I am none the wiser about Hubert Frazier.

I guess that’s how Brexit happened and people like Trump get into power; you can have all the evidence to suggest such things are total madness but if some loon comes out and says that Brexit will make Britain great again and save the NHS or that Mexicans are in fact, all rapists, bring it on. As a more sane man, Barack Obama said whilst mocking Republicans. “If you go to 100 doctors and 99 of them tell you you have diabetes … you wouldn’t say, ‘Ahh, that’s a conspiracy, All 99 doctors got together with Obama to keep me from having bacon and donuts.’ You wouldn’t do that.”

You’re wrong Barack, Americans have, metaphorically at least, done just that. They don’t like facts any more. Facts suck.

There are even some conspiracy theories that these conspiracy theorists are employed by the establishment to make allegations against prominent members so preposterous that no one will believe them. Of course the these allegations are written off by the establishment who say that it is only mad conspiracy theorists who would claim that a government would employ mad conspiracy theorists.

Call me a conspiracy theorist but I can’t help but think that this post truth confusion is some sort of non-linear plan to have all of us not knowing what the fuck is going on and whilst we try to work it all out, governments can pass things such as privacy bills without us knowing about them until its far too late.

Of course, there are those who say that the reason that Hubert Brazier is removed from Wikipedia is because he is irrelevant in 2017, whilst others claim that he is very relevant as he may be one of the reasons that a establishment abuse scandal inquiry was abandoned without evidence.

I’m fucked if I know but what I am sure of is that these, shall we say, more eccentric conspiracy theorists, are more likely to get in the way of the truth rather than establish it. Whether that is a plan or not, confusion is a fantastic distraction to keep the pitchforks at bay.

I will leave you with a small section of a forum I read about the alleged scandal surrounding Hubert Brazier; it did make me laugh.