So it appears that Ruth Davidson has been lying again.

And as is so often the case, the lie is easy to expose.

Because as Davidson herself notes – while apparently claiming some sort of special exemption from accountability on the grounds of being four months pregnant – the man in question was filming her. And he’s released the video so we can see exactly what happened for ourselves.

Did he follow her through the streets? Well, sort of, a bit. If you want to ask a public servant a question and they’re walking away from you, you pretty much have to walk after them. The distance covered looks like about 30 yards max – it’s hardly stalking, just trying to catch up with someone.

So was he “shouting Indy slogans” at her? No. He doesn’t shout any kind of slogans, or indeed shout at all. He talks in a normal tone of voice at a normal outdoors volume, asking a civil question in coherent normal sentences. (A woman somewhere else in the street can be heard calling out something about “the Scottish people”, but not the man Davidson accuses, who the unseen woman is nothing to do with.)

Were his dogs barking? No. Rather than the pack of feral snarling Dobermanns that Davidson appears to be implying, he has a couple of tiny, well-behaved Jack Russells that don’t make a sound for the entire duration of the video.

So Davidson’s account of events is almost completely untrue, even though she was fully aware that they were being recorded. You need to feel pretty darned invincible in the Scottish media if you’re going to lie about something that you’re fully aware is being captured on camera.

But it’s not like she doesn’t have history of being caught out in falsehoods.

Wings Over Scotland has exposed near-countless untruths from the Tory branch-office leader in the last couple of years, like this one on election statistics and this one on support for a second indyref and this one about the NHS and this one about the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and etc etc.

Fact-check website The Ferret has also pulled Davidson up personally on numerous occasions – including on immigration, the rape clause and literacy figures – on top of her party’s general habit of truth-economy.

Now, however dishonest a politician might be, readers might feel it’s still a wee bit off to buttonhole them in the street. They’re human beings and they deserve private time like anyone else (although the incident in the video occurred during business hours on a Friday, when Davidson is supposed to be doing her taxpayer-funded job).

But the question is – what else is a constituent supposed to do when their elected representative is completely inaccessible by any other means?

Since being elected as the MSP for Edinburgh Central more than two years ago, the number of constituency surgeries Davidson has held can, as far as we can establish, be counted on the fingers of one hand.

While she’s never short of time to appear on Have I Got News For You or The Great British Bake-Off, or write books, or be a pretend soldier, or trot down to London to talk about independence (while simultaneously demanding that everyone else must STOP talking about independence) or attend a wacky photo opportunity, she seems to find it rather harder to get round to replying to letters from the people she represents.

When an MSP won’t reply to written letters or emails, when she won’t hold face-to-face surgeries, when she literally runs away from tricky questions on TV or radio on the extremely rare occasions she’s pinned down and asked any:

[EDIT 30 May]

…and when she spends more time doing celebrity appearances than in Parliament, how exactly are their constituents MEANT to make them answerable and accountable other than catching them by chance in the wild?

That a person asking a question of their own MSP by the only means left available to them can now be portrayed as some sort of harassment is a chilling illustration of the contempt in which many modern politicians increasingly openly hold democracy.

But we suspect that situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, certainly if Ruth Davidson has any influence on it. And even the dogs in the street know that.