It is 13 January as I write this and it already seems like a very long time ago that we were drifting in the no-man’s land after Christmas and before New Year, not knowing what day it was and trying to fill those in-between days with pursuits that didn’t increase the pressure on our bank balances and overstretched livers which would be put to the test again come Hogmanay.

Well, that was where I was drifting, and for a few of those days, I managed to fit in some reading, some much needed walking and some much delayed domestic overhauls in my flat which was beginning to resemble a long abandoned second-hand shop. For those who know me, I have to confess that all of these pursuits were accompanied by the odd beer or glass of wine, for purely medicinal purposes you understand, and to maintain a decent level of stamina for the coming storm of a typical New Year’s eve and 1 January.

Much like those dedicated footballers who keep up a middling standard of fitness in the summer to try and alleviate the gut-wrenching rigours of full-on pre-season training. Well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

As with the beginning of every other year, firm resolutions did not feature in any shape or form for me. Most new year resolutions tend to be made either by people who are extremely drunk and therefore deluded as to their actual capacity to keep to them, or by people who somehow convince themselves that “this year is going to be different.”

Only to then find themselves battling to get to the bathroom with a stomach full of alcohol-induced bile whilst climbing over a mountain of classic literature which they’ve always wanted to read, rather than just have it lying around their house in full view to impress guests who just happen to have the same pile of unread classics in their houses. This tends to happen around the middle of February.

During the in-between days, I did read an article which lamented the unrelenting march of technology, particularly artificial intelligence and social media and some of the inherent dangers within, and which also cast a misty eye to the past and the loss of so many simple things which people of a certain age would recognise immediately. Bus conductors, milk floats, telephone boxes, people selling fish from boxes in pubs, going to Blockbusters to rent a video on a Friday night, and house parties to mention a few.

And this wasn’t just some saccharine-laced trip down memory lane. It was about how we actually communicate with each other and a serious look at how we have lost so much human contact while also watching ourselves being slowly sucked into a dark, unruly world of lies, rumours and rancour populated by conspiracy theorists, people who are vulnerable and frightened, and where the truth is nothing more than an inconvenient shadow slowly disappearing from the screen. All run by megalomaniacs vying to be the world’s first trillionaire.

Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta announced that it would be dismantling its fact-checking apparatus in order to, as he put it, “get back to our roots around free expression.” What this actually means is that anyone on let’s say Facebook, will be able to say almost anything whether it’s true or not and it will not be moderated in any way.

In the same way that anyone spewing misinformation and lies on X, the platform owned by Lone Skum, sorry, Elon Musk, can do at present. Basically, each of these men have handed the keys to the asylum to all of the maniacs who hide in the dark and spout malignant garbage which is then picked up and regurgitated by all of the other maniacs in all of the other asylums. In essence, they are trying to put the final nail in the coffin of truth.

Both of these men are in complete thrall to Donald Trump and the slimy paths they have trodden in order to get close to him have nothing to do with free expression or free speech but everything to do with avoiding regulation and sucking up lucrative government contracts which will add billions of dollars to their bank accounts.

Rich already I hear you ask? Well Zuckerberg was wearing a $900,000 watch when he made his announcement, and Skum spends his spare time sending rockets into space like some phallus-obsessed Bond villain.

I’m not so naive as to suggest that we can turn back the effluent-ridden tide which Skum and Zuckerberg surf on, but all of us with a social conscience and a modicum of respect for facts and expertise should do all we can to call out bare faced lies and repugnant, ignorant interventions from anyone, and particularly from self-obsessed psychopaths who think that money equals legitimacy.

If we don’t, the truth won’t be a shadow, it will be a corpse. ■