Concise, clear and utterly logical appraisal of the problem.* ++

Unfortunately, as I found out to my cost a few years ago when I meditated on the same subject: Testing methodology, best practices and a pig in a hut., when you dare to question the status of their Holy Cows ("precious snowflakes"**), they'll either:

• dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand until you either give up; or (in my case) respond with frustration; and then they'll take the "moral high ground".

  Basically, they'll do anything -- except discuss with logic -- to shut you up.

• Or, as seems to be the case here; simply ignore you.

  Bury their righteous heads in the sand and hope you'll go away.

The only alternative I can see for the problems you describe is to write a complete and distinct alternative to the steaming pile of O'WoE ("pedagogical exercise in a ivory tower"**) that is Test::*.

To that end; I humbly offer Assert.pm which might form the basis for the replacement for Test::Simple/More that would remove a dozen or so layers of that "faux-abstraction"** that make those modules the poster child for the art of obfuscation-through-over-structuralization. (If you decide to; and need help?)

't'd be nice to think that Perl's pragmatism would prevail here; but I wouldn't hold your breath.

**Shame you're on the "wrong OS" to be taken seriously!

*Love your turn of phrase!