The anatomy of an (unreserved) apology

It is sometimes dangerous to comment on a fast-moving situation, in this case the long-running UK higher education pay dispute. But the first 8 or 10 minutes of this transcript from the 24/5/2006 UK Parliamentary Education and Skills Committee [danger - link may have broken] is worth listening to. In it you hear Geoffrey Copland and Jocelyn Prudence, respectively Chair and Chief Executive of the Universities and College Employers' Association, taken angrily to task by Committee Chair Barry Sheerman MP, and apologising unreservedly and nervously for issuing a press release which falsely claimed that the Education and Skills Committee had called for the unions to ballot their members on the employers' most recent pay offer. It had done no such thing.