By now you've heard a lot. Some po­ten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing al­le­ga­tions, some tech­ni­cal jar­gon, some ex­cus­es and open pol­i­tick­ing on both sides.For­get all of that.This is what should be im­por­tant to the gen­er­al pub­lic: What Dr Row­ley read from in Par­lia­ment were print­outs that pur­port to rep­re­sent gen­uine e-mail con­ver­sa­tions that took place be­tween nu­mer­ous named peo­ple.

This is all we need to fo­cus on: val­i­dat­ing the au­then­tic­i­ty of that ev­i­dence or, put an­oth­er way, check­ing to see whether those print­outs tru­ly rep­re­sent what is be­ing claimed that they do.That is easy to do and re­quires ei­ther con­tact­ing Mi­crosoft and Google di­rect­ly or go­ing through the US Jus­tice De­part­ment with a war­rant for in­for­ma­tion, if re­quired.Ei­ther way, 48 hours tops and we could know if there is any­thing to this, if the print­outs are re­al or fake.

If they are fake then Dr Row­ley is go­ing to find him­self in some hot wa­ter with the vot­ers.His cred­i­bil­i­ty will be ir­repara­bly dam­aged and the par­ty will have to take firm and de­ci­sive ac­tion if it is not to be too bad­ly dam­aged by the neg­a­tive fall­out.If it is true it will be very bad and will quick­ly get worse be­fore it gets bet­ter.But let's find out if it is true be­fore we open up that can of worms.Step one, ver­i­fy. Noth­ing else can be done un­til that is.

Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der

So­cial & po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist