Abstract
Ministers are very busy and harassed people. Some of them encourage their staff when presenting their work to make what is complex appear to be simple, to draft papers composed of short sentences and cut up into short paragraphs, so that they can be taken in almost at a glance. This process (which has its dangers) is as far removed as it is possible to be from the deliberate and exhaustive methods of formal scholarship. That is why the proceedings of bureaucrats appear to the academic mind to be so superficial.