In today’s troubled world, we are fed stories intended to convince us of the rightness of the direction in which we’re travelling. I’ve chosen some that have been circulating in the UK for a while now and comment on them afterwards: remember, question everything! While I’ve paraphrased the stories, I’ve tried to represent them as accurately as I can. You can always click on the links to access their source. I stress that I’m not claiming there’s no evidence for these narratives; there may well be, at least for elements of some of them. I offer them simply as the stories they are, ones that are repeated often, widely circulated and widely believed. The evidence or absence of evidence for them is neither here nor there. It’s the stories as presented by those who want us to believe them that count:

The number of people with autism, children in particular, has expanded exponentially recently. We don’t fully understand why this should be but as we’ve found out more about autism, we’ve come to realise that far more people have the condition than was previously thought. In fact, we now recognise that everyone is on the autistic spectrum somewhere. What this means, for children in particular, is that extra provision needs to be made for them in school and additional money must be found to address their problems.

Except… Dame Uta Frith, the psychologist who first proposed that autistic traits were on a spectrum now says the attempts to diagnose and place every one on this spectrum somewhere is not what she intended. In fact, the overreach that has led to this represents a broadening of the definition of autism to the extent it has become meaningless. In consequence, those who do exhibit genuine artistic traits are overshadowed by those with traits well within the boundaries of normal and are often overlooked. This story, therefore, doesn’t stand up.

Unless we reverse or halt climate change, the planet, and life on it, is doomed. To achieve this the UK must go further and faster, eliminating all fossil fuel vehicles by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050. It doesn’t matter how much this will cost households, businesses and the UK economy: for the sake of the planet, Britain must be a world leader in this endeavour.

So many questions! (Some already addressed here.) Is climate change as calamitous as some scientists and unqualified commenters suggest? There are other scientists who think not. And what about those dates? Where did they come from? Were they chosen arbitrarily or is there good scientific evidence that if they are missed there will be no reversing climate change? Which leads to, ‘can climate change really be reversed? Can it even be halted?’ We might ask too how much the current, liberal bombing going on in practically every part of the world is accelerating climate change (and why doesn’t the media ask this question?) Does the UK’s importing of gas and oil from other parts of the world really reduce its greenhouse gas emissions? (No) How much gas and oil are involved in the making, functioning and maintenance of wind turbines? How much agricultural land will be lost when the planned 500,000 additional acres of countryside are given over to solar farms? How many animal habitats will be destroyed? Why must the UK, with its 0.8% contribution to carbon emissions, be a (or even the) World Leader in Net Zero? Does any other nation notice or care what the UK is doing? Do China, USA, India or Russia feel compelled to emulate the UK’s virtuous example? (No). Is Net Zero unachievable in any case?

More stories next time…