Well, possums, just seven days to go to a winter poll which will radically effect all our tomorrows one way or t’other.

Since the Advertiser kindly offered me this platform, I have taken a self denying ordinance in the matter of whom to vote for or why.

It’s not that my sympathies are exactly a secret – just that you get bombarded from every other quarter on raw politics, and you deserve a breather in your local paper.

Yet there is one political thought, with a small p, that I really want to share.

READ MORE: Ruth Wishart: Your vote still counts – so have your say on election day

I have covered elections for some decades now. So I have a reasonable basis for comparison. And I have to report, hand on heart, that I have never witnessed such deliberate misinformation. Never read so much ‘fake news’. Nor heard so many barefaced lies.

In part it’s down to social media. Some of the people behind the campaigns are very skilled at manipulating Facebook, Twitter and email accounts so that the authors’ true identity is deliberately concealed. Worse still, is when the culprits are named and shamed, their party colleagues are usually a regret free zone, concocting ever more risible alibis.

As I say, this is not a party political observation, but it has to be admitted that one of the more egregious recent examples was Tory campaign HQ changing their Twitter handle to suggest it was an independent source of fact checking

This was particularly disturbing not just because of what was posted on the site, but because it was branded as something the poor bloody voting infantry could trust as they tried to manoeuvre their way through the thicket of claims and counter claims.

And so brazen have some politicians become in repeating things they know to be untrue every time they are in front of a camera, that the whole basis of campaigning has been debased and devalued.

READ MORE: Ruth Wishart: Casual prejudice now has far too much room to flourish

Recycling a lie does not make it less of one…but the calculation is that if you intone something often enough, it will lodge in the brain of the undecided electorate.

It is a sad business, and a sad reflection on the dearth of instinctively honourable politicians.

I think of people like ex Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve, hounded from his own party by sticking by his honestly held beliefs. I may never share his world view, but I have nothing but respect for his decency, and I hope his electors share that view.

So I would urge only this. When you put down your cross next week, put it against the man or woman whom you believe will not just reflect your own beliefs, but be an honest addition to the Westminster benches.

READ MORE: Check out all the latest news headlines from around Helensburgh and Lomond here