What is it about people in public life that makes them find it so hard to say they are sorry when they are responsible for inconveniencing people?
Yesterday's fiasco in which permanent secretary for tax David Hartnett said he had nothing to apologise for over the mistakes which led to millions of people paying the wrong amount of tax was all too typical.
At least he then did a U-turn and ultimately did apologise, albeit apparently under pressure from an "incandescent" chancellor George Osborne.
It brought to mind the current Mersey Tunnels nonsense. Readers of the Liverpool Daily Post will know that we took them to task recently for failing to make provision to remove the weekend contraflow from the Mersey Tunnels when Liverpool or Everton are playing at home.
Thousands of Wirral-based fans have been inconvenienced, being caught up in massive tailbacks on the tunnel approaches and, as a result, missing the start of matches at Anfield and Goodison.
The reasons the tunnels management have given have been fully reported by us, but we remain critical of an organisation that seems constantly careless of the convenience of its hugely overcharged captive audience of motoring customers.
I won't go over those arguments again, but I have to say I was shocked to discover that, in all their explanations, the simple words: "We realise that this has caused major inconvenience to many of our customers, and for that we apologise", have been completely absent.
An apology wouldn't compensate people for the anger and frustration that they have put them through, but it does at least make the motorist think that there is some degree of empathy and understanding from those who run the tunnels.
Instead we get the blinkered arrogance of the bureaucrats, so beautifully illustrated once again by Mr Hartnett yesterday. But at least he didn't have the cheek to suggest that the media should apologise to the Inland Revenue.
The tunnels chief actually wrote to our letters page once again defending their actions, but also calling on US to apologise to their staff for our criticism of their performance.
We work very hard to get things right, but when we do get it wrong, we are not afraid to say we are sorry. It is the right thing to do.
But did we say sorry this time? Nope, because we aren't. And they definitely should be.
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