Can I be really bitchy for a bit? Well of course I'm going to be anyway; this is fair warning.
One of the delegation members really annoyed me, so much so I found myself arguing the opposite of whatever he was saying. It wasn't that he was wrong, exactly; more that he had that insufferable smugness which attends (a) civil servants and (b) middle-aged men. You know? When they just know everything there is to know about a particular topic, and have no need of other viewpoints on the matter, even though their knowledge tends to consist of a string of banalities? When they're not willing to discuss issues, but they're more than happy to tell you how to think on any given topic? And he was a researcher by designation; shouldn't they have a little more intellectual curiosity?