Some interviews reward considerably closer counting than most viewers bother to do
Dear diary, I sat through a genuinely lengthy select committee session today and kept a running count, purely for my own satisfaction, of how many times the minister under questioning avoided giving a direct answer to a fairly straightforward question, arriving at a final tally I found genuinely striking once I actually added it all up.
The specific technique deployed repeatedly involved answering a slightly different, more comfortable question than the one actually asked, a genuinely skilled evasive performance that I suspect most casual viewers, watching without my particular running tally, would not have fully registered as evasion at all.
Why I Think This Kind Of Counting Matters
I believe holding ministers to account requires exactly this kind of close, patient scrutiny, since a single evasive answer barely registers, but a pattern repeated a dozen times across one session reveals something genuinely significant about how comfortable this minister has become avoiding direct accountability.
What The Committee Chair Actually Did About It
To their credit, the committee chair did eventually press back directly on the pattern, though not until relatively late in the session, by which point several genuinely important questions had already slipped past without a proper answer.
A Small Reading Break
I caught up on a genuinely sharp piece of contemporary satire about select committee evasion techniques generally, a fitting companion to my own afternoon of careful counting.
What I Am Doing With This Tally
I am publishing the full breakdown, question by question, since I think readers deserve to see the actual pattern rather than just my own summary verdict on it.
More committee scrutiny and political accountability always documented at my page.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/author/margaretcolley/
