Oh, Really? No, Sir, O'Reilly...

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Brief nod to the Bonzo's in the title, but I'm actually referring to something Joe linked me to this very day: Tim [Sir Tim: he of the creation of what we would now term 'The Internet'] Berners-Lee's seemingly trivial but actually very prescient idea of a compulsory button for all web browsers: the 'Oh, Yeah?' button. This would give a user the opportunity to doubt and then question the veracity of whatever it happened to be they were looking at, forcing the purveyor of said information to cite source and precedent.

This, of course, was a natural for an academic like Berners-Lee, and for his nascent World-Wide-Web, which was, after all, conceived as an extension of his academic universe: a research and dissemination tool to further the goals of academia itself. That the bloody thing grew like Topsy to where we are today only emphasizes just how prescient the man was: fake news, alternative facts and bare-faced untruths spoken at government levels all scream out for the 'Oh, Yeah?' button.

The UK PM's brazen bullshit in PMQ's this week about levels of affordable housebuilding are a case in point - check the figures in question: London-based, natch: the bulk of those affordable homes that Sunak was claiming as the achievement of Mayor BJ were actually built under the aegis of The National Affordable Homes Programme, a Labour initiated scheme that BoJo had no influence over whatsoever. This, unfortunately, is the default political modus operandi at the moment: spout utter bollocks in as confident a way as possible and just hope no-one notices. Except, increasingly large numbers of people are in fact noticing and are determinedly pushing the very large virtual 'Oh, Yeah?' button, that weirdly and appropriately, is the modern bloody internet itself. Nicely circular.

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