The Sketch: A glimpse inside the bran tub of a politician's brain

Education questions fell between two stools yesterday. It was sufficiently interesting to be boring without being so boring as to be actually interesting. At their best, education questions are so boring that they're fascinating. Their great capacity to interest is when they reveal – what?

Answers to questions about education? Don't be ridiculous. When they reveal a glimpse the infernal world of education administration; a world of misleading statistics, foolish initiatives, bewildering acronyms, inflated claims, debased results, concealed failures of blight, poverty, illiteracy, idleness, inability – all wrapped up in the annihilating jargon of an imperial but invisible bureaucracy. At its best, looking at education questions is like staring at a miasma through cataracts. An acquired taste, perhaps, but worth acquiring.

At any rate, one shocking thing happened. The silvery old git Dennis Skinner referred to a Liberal Democrat as a "creeping Jesus", and the departmental civil servants fell about laughing. They're not supposed to do that, are they? Civil servants? Aren't they constitutionally bound not to laugh at Dennis Skinner? Normal people don't laugh at Dennis Skinner because he's not funny, but civil servants can't laugh because they're supposed to be preserving the public appearance of impartiality. Perhaps in the post-Jo Moore world they're just not bothering any more.

The Speaker stopped Mr Skinner and told him to withdraw his ugly remark.

"What?" Mr Skinner asked mutinously. The Speaker persisted. And, at last, he sullenly agreed to withdraw "creeping".

People assume Dennis Skinner is a character because he makes stupid, almost sub-verbal interventions. It's hard to criticise him, in the same way as it's hard to criticise someone competing in the Special Olympics. That shouldn't stop us trying, even in this educational culture.

Evan Harris asked about redundancies in medical schools. He said the Government was keen to centralise praise but devolved bad news to the bodies responsible: "It's nothing to do with us, guv", was the Government's attitude.

Margaret Hodge replied in her heavily weighted English. This which follows took almost two minutes to say. You will see that it's not absolutely without content (a quality which would have got her into the finals) but it hints that it might glance at the appearance of the shadow of content: Here she goes: "I'm amazed that the honourable member advocates central sort of control over members of staff in each institution. Can I just say to the honourable member he should be very careful not to muddle certain facts.

"There have been mergers between London hospitals and that has led to certain changes in staffing structures by local decision makers and local managers. There have also been changes made in the amount of money hospitals have received and universities have received to cover the training of medical students out of research assessment exercises. Some have gained and some have lost, and it is in that content that some hospitals ..."

At that point the Speaker told her to belt up and sit down. The glimpse inside the bran tub of Mrs Hodge's brain was too much. All the prizes had gone.

There was nothing but sawdust left.

simoncarr75@hotmail.com