‘A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and quietly strangled,’ as Sir Barnett Cocks, clerk of the House of Commons, once pointed out. Well, Sir Barnett should certainly have known. He served on enough of them. Or in the words of an anonymous American wit: ‘A committee is a group of the unwilling, chosen from the unfit to do the unnecessary.’ Just so. And they do it so brilliantly well. Whether in a college dorm, or in the walnut-panelled boardroom of an international conglomerate, or around your own kitchen table.
