The abundance of information is a characteristic of our age. It arrived in our computers in the 1980’s and seeped into the smaller more portable devices that we now carry. So it is that our mobile phones are portals – doors, not only to our friends, but to the universe of stuff.

Information is interesting stuff. The intelligence agencies, whose bread and butter and toast, is information, have distrusted information since…well the Trojan wars.

‘This horse looks like a good thing to bring into our city.’

Well no it wasn’t.

So when intelligence is received it is assessed and graded between one and six. One is not likely to be true and six is true.

Just to be even more precise as to the veracity of stuff, they also grade the source of the information and grade it between an unknown source and a trusted source. In between these on the scale are the blended variations between the two.

Thus you end up with information that is A1…really top stuff or D4; forget it. And these building blocks are then set in patterns or constructions that is intelligence. In the language of the philosophers, information has become knowledge. And if the information is of the best quality, then the knowledge will be worth acting upon or at least, given serious consideration.

This may seem fairly abstract and it is intended to be so. Because I am trying to highlight the distress caused by not sifting the wheat from the chaff – even though it is difficult. Just because something is written down and appears on a website on a mobile phone – and has the same appearance as something trusted and true – does not mean it is true. Likewise, if it is true it does not mean it can glibly be denounced as false.

You wouldn’t think that educated and skilled negotiators like politicians would have trouble with identifying wheat from chaff. You might think that Mr Donald Trump would use his teams of advisers ( many recruited from intelligence backgrounds ) would be giving him tried and tested ‘stuff’.

This would enable their president to not only challenge other people’s versions of the facts as ‘fake’ but say why. One can only suppose that he his quite clever enough to repeat the reasons he has been given as it why something is ‘fake’. Perhaps he doesn’t explain himself because he want to confuse his followers with explanations – something that in other countries would be considered condescending.

In the UK we have a prime minister equally withdrawn when it comes to any sort of explanation. Her presentations on Brexit are aspirational and void of  knowledge. She believes strongly in the referendum on leaving Europe as a ‘voice of the people’ – ignoring the fact that the nation and the people are more than ever, split down the middle on this issue. It’s easier for her to think that what is true is that everyone wants the UK to leave Europe. She doesn’t believe in listening to the ‘voice of the people’ more that once and rejects a second referendum for this abstract reason – rather than attempt to address the schisms and unrest. Perhaps she is not going to call any more general elections on account of their having been one before.

She uses either misplaced optimism or the mystical ability to predict coming events – by announcing that after Brexit the UK is going to ‘thrive’. Now who told her this or why she thinks it, would need detailed knowledge that we apparently don’t need to know.

So ironically, the more information we have, the less able we become to process it and present it as workable and common sense knowledge.

And if I can make a prediction, in the future, historians will look back on our age and not only deplore the lack of knowledge displayed by political leaders. They will be aghast at the lack wisdom in how to use that knowledge.