What the fuck is Prescott for?

It's been two days: DK may well be having his stomach pumped in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for all I know. The show must, however, go on. From the BBC:

The Cabinet Office has refused to say how often the Cabinet committees chaired by John Prescott have met. It followed a freedom of information request from the BBC.

Releasing details would make ministers "less likely to make use of the Cabinet committee system and... significantly undermine its effectiveness", it said.

Stand by for one of the most grotesque examples of Sir Humphrey-ism you'll see in many a day:

In dismissing the request, a Cabinet Office official wrote to the BBC: "If ministers and officials suspected that once a decision was reached, information pertaining to the process by which they reached that point was to be released (such as the timing and sequencing of meetings), they might be less willing to engage in full and frank discussion of the available options."

If I'm reading that right (and I might not be, given that I learnt English at school, not I've-a-stick-up-my-butt mandarinese), they're saying that if they told us - after the event - when meetings took place, the lazy bastards might just stop showing up to them. As DK might say, what the sopping panty-cunting fuck?

But wait, there's more;

The official added: "We consider that disclosure of the information you requested would erode the space within which policy is developed, including the convention of ministerial collective responsibility for government policy."

You what?

You could be forgiven for thinking that the BBC had asked to set up a webcam in the toilets, rather than merely [and utterly, utterly reasonably] asked how many times the relevant committees had supposedly met. How many times. That's all. "Erode the space within which policy is developed"? What space? What policy? What the fuck? Bunch of fucking twats.