The older I get the less I am prepared to place much faith in published facts and figures.

I was in the process of drafting this article when a perfect example popped into the public domain.

I am referring to the statement about the economic prospects of Scotland if it becomes an independent country delivered by Alex Salmond MSP and the statement published on behalf of the ‘NO’ campaign delivered by Douglas Alexander MP that directly contradicts the ‘YES’ campaign’s statement.

They cannot both be telling the truth and yet they appear unabashed in delivering papers to the media that they know have been pored over by their spin doctors to produce facts and figures that support their argument but that they must know probably contain a lot of guesswork at best and blatant ‘porkies’ at worst.

We live in a world where truth is becoming a stranger to the general public because no head of an organisation, be it a political party, business, public service or even a religious faith can afford to interface with the public without protecting themselves with press and public relations advisors.

Goodness knows how I did it but I survived for nearly 14 years as head of an emergency service without employing a professional to vet what I said and wrote that was to appear in the public domain.

For a boss to manage without such protection today would be seen as unwise almost to the point of insanity.

Under obvious pressure to ‘come clean’ from Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, the nation’s chief constables have admitted recently that they have been ‘fiddling’ (their word, not mine) crime statistics for years.

What an admission to come from those who head our law enforcement services.

This revelation comes at a bad time for the newly appointed police and crime commissioners who will have a hard task showing that they are making a positive impact on driving down crime in their area when we have nothing with which to compare crime statistics except years of inaccurate data.

An example of creative accountancy to which we can look forward is the declared intention of the South Western Ambulance Trust to average out their response times to high priority 999 calls to mask the fact that such calls to rural areas are in most cases not going to be attended within the eight-minute target set by the NHS.

The trust seems to feel that by making super-fast attendances in urban areas where ambulances are comparatively plentiful, they can escape censure when they publish in future that they are meeting the national standard for 999 calls even though emergencies in rural areas will get a much slower response than the national target.

So much for those situations where we are being given facts and figures that are misleading or inaccurate but what about those situations where we are being denied information altogether? The Chilcot Inquiry into this country’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq finished taking evidence in 2011 but the presentation of the report is being held up by someone.

The report is at least two years overdue and there appears to be no good reason for this.

Naturally, this raises suspicions that it will be damaging to some people but that is no excuse for non-publication.

The Civil Service could give a master class in spin doctoring in my experience.

I have seen reports that it is the ‘Sir Humphreys’ in Whitehall who are sitting on the Chilcot Inquiry report.

The British public are entitled to the truth, but will we ever get it?