I noted on the news this evening that David Cameron is expressing frustration with the long-delayed publication of the Chilcot report on British involvement in the Second Gulf War. Apparently Sir John Chilcot still hasn’t heard back from some of the people who will be named.

Frankly, I’m feeling a little frustrated myself. While the whooshing sound of deadlines going past is something that I am not unfamiliar with, there are times when you have to meet someone else’s timetable rather than saying not until it is ready. For example, if I’d overrun my Open University deadlines I’d have quickly started to lose marks or flunked completely. If I got a parking fine, I would be in increasingly serious trouble if I kept putting off paying it. I know the report is independent but does that mean that the government is truly powerless to insist on a date? Why can’t Chilcot give the people he is waiting to hear from a deadline themselves – if they fail to respond then what right have they got to complain?

It beggars belief that it is dragging out so long. If this is the best that allegedly brilliant legal minds and earnest politicians can muster then how can we have any confidence in them as the establishment who lead the running of the country?