Happy Chilcot day, everyone!
After seven years, the gargantuan report on the UK’s involvement in the Iraq war is finally out – all 2.6 million words of it.
The report’s publication earlier today was the starting gun for the entire UK media to work out how little of the huge report they can read before telling everybody else what it says.
According to Mashable, getting through the entire thing will take around nine days.
Reporters were given a head start at 8am, but even four hours prep is unlikely to give you much headway through the evidence, opinion and deliberation contained in its enormous volumes.
The report – in 12 volumes – is so large that it includes five pages of instructions for how to read it.
Sir John Chilcot just about to present his summary of 2.6 million words watch live on @skynews – our analysis will follow at 1130
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) July 6, 2016
Helpfully, report author Sir John Chilcot boiled his findings down into a handy executive summary of just 150 pages – and a public statement which is a relative breeze at only 12 pages.
Nonetheless, experts are promising live responses to a document too unwieldy to actually get through, within hours of of it coming out.
The news, the reaction, the analysis, the verdict, the response, all here: https://t.co/dbQ54Ix5SM #Chilcot
— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) July 6, 2016
The mass speed-reading exercise is unparalleled since the release of the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics back in 2012 – and even that was only 48 pages.
Want to give it a go yourself? The whole report is available for download here. On your marks…
