This is a job for super-wonk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/feb/07/simon-hoggart-sketch-mark-carney

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It was "get Gove" day in the Commons, but then it very often is. MPs on all sides lined up to tell the education secretary what an idiot he'd been. More on that story later. First came a select committee interrogation of the new governor of the Bank of England, who is coming to Blighty after doing the equivalent job in Ottawa.

Dr Mark Carney is – how can one put this? – very Canadian. Ask him a question and he answers it, sometimes at merciless length. For instance, the Treasury committee had sent him a string of queries about his views. His replies covered 45 closely-printed pages, making roughly 26,000 words. Mmm, take that for your holiday reading! I can almost see the pina colada stains!

And when he was asked why he had at first turned the job down but later accepted it, he launched into a long description of his daughters' educational needs until being crisply interrupted.

He also got a bit more of a pasting than he might have hoped over his pay, which amounts to around £800,000. The correct answer to this is: "I used to be a banker in the private sector and frankly, one and a quarter million Canadian is small change." But it would have been the wrong place to make this point.

While it is entirely untrue that Canadians lack a sense of humour, the funniest ones tend to head south: Dan Aykroyd, Jim Carrey, Michael J Fox.

Dr Carney managed to make the committee chairman, Andrew Tyrie, look like a high-spirited bundle of fun, which in its way was as startling as seeing the Churchill statue in the Members' Lobby perform karaoke.

The fact is that the new governor is a policy wonk. He must be the wonkiest wonk ever to appear before the committee. Clearly at this grim time a wonk is what we need. They tried to test his wonk credentials. David Ruffley asked as if he knew what a "liquidity requirement" might be. This is like asking David Beckham his understanding of the term "free kick". What did "unwinding QE" signify? "To return the balance sheet of the Bank of England to its historic level," he replied. Easy-peasy for super-wonk!

Over in the chamber, Michael Gove was explaining why he had backtracked on his changes to GCSEs. "It was one reform too many … I have decided not to make the best the enemy of the good." He didn't look too sorry; indeed apart from that one small teensy error, everything was hunky and dory, tickety and boo.

That was as close to an apology as we were ever likely to get from the minister. However, it didn't save him from a mauling by his opposite number, Stephen Twigg. It was "a humiliating climbdown," Twigg said. Every time he wanted to change something, "he gets out the fag packet and writes down his latest wheeze".

This would not have troubled Gove too much, but there was an edge to the questions from the Tories too. Tracey Crouch, speaking for headteachers, begged him to "end this constant tinkering". Mind you, Tobias Ellwood did have kind words for his "rare display of humility", which is praising with faint damns, I suppose.