Its what they do.

Yesterday saw as clear cut a case of Better Together/Vote Naw/No Thanks dishonesty, that all minds should be boggling violently - if yours hasn't; read on.

That is Jean-Claude Juncker, newly appointed - and not without some squealing from the British Government - European Commission President. He's an ex-prime minister of Luxembourg which if nothing else, goes to show that small countries (Luxembourg has a population of just over 500,000 people) can have sway at the top table in Europe - and since David Cameron fought hard to keep him out of the job - also shows just how much blat the UK Government really has. (Something to ruminate over when Cameron comes on the telly mithering on about renegotiating the UK's EU settlement before the EU referendum...)

But I digress.

In a nutshell, Junckers said this:

"Over the next five years, there won't be any new member states acceding to the European Union.

"It's hard to imagine that one of the candidate states with whom we are negotiating will have, in time, met all the accession criteria."

You can imagine the scene; interns bussed up to work beside highly paid PR wonks at Better Together's Blythswood Square HQ, looking at each other like gnarly old gold diggers who've just found a nugget the size of Blair McDougall's tuba. 

Except...

"Mr Juncker's office confirmed to the BBC that his remarks were referring to countries already in an accession process with the EU and not to a hypothetical case involving Scotland.

Albania, Iceland, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey and Macedonia are candidate countries for EU membership." (From here.)

 Even after that clarification from the horses mouth - Patricia Ferguson (she's a Labour MSP and supporter of a No Vote) was on Scotland Tonight long after Mr Juncker's clarification still claiming his original statement was valid.

The real question is, given that Jean Claude Juncker's office made clear his original statement by categorically saying it DID NOT apply to Scotland - why did Scotland Tonight and the execrable Scotland 2014 still allow Ferguson etc to discuss the issue as if it did?

Patricia Ferguson is a regular on these shows, droning on about what a disaster a Yes vote would be while claiming as evidence arguments that never existed in the first place. Funnily enough, we were joking on Twitter about Johann Lamont's weekend interview with Andrew 'my-jokes-on-This-Week-are-shite' Neil and something called Cognitive Estrangement:

cog·ni·tive

  [kog-ni-tiv]

adjective

1.

of or pertaining to the act or process of knowing, perceiving, remembering, etc.; of or relating tocognition: cognitive development; cognitive functioning.

2.

of or pertaining to the mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning, ascontrasted with emotional and volitional processes.

es·trange

  [ih-streynj]

verb (used with object), es·tranged, es·trang·ing.

1.

to turn away in feeling or affection; make unfriendly or hostile; alienate the affections of: Theirquarrel estranged the two friends.

2.

to remove to or keep at a distance: The necessity for traveling on business has estranged him from hisfamily.

3.

to divert from the original use or possessor.

Essentially, it is the habit - voluntarily or not - of being disconnected entirely from the ability recognise that which is demonstrably & provably true. It seems around the independence debate, many on the unionist side - as evidenced by this episode - suffer from it.

One final but incredibly important sentence:

If you know anyone who is undecided or voting No; you might ask them if it is wise to vote in favour of any proposition when its backers are denying reality & lying through their teeth to promote it.