Kev Kennedy's Blog

Bureaucracy drives me mad

There are several things they never told me when I was a kid about being an adult. They never told me how exciting it is to be able to walk into a toy shop and know I could buy any size Lego kit I want. (I don’t because I have a wife and she has a say in what we buy, but the important thing is I could.)

I was also never told how moronic government bureaucracy can be. Now, admittedly some of the people you’d expect to be hard work are surprisingly easy to get along with. I have always found staff at the Inland Revenue friendly when I’ve had to phone them up, for example. But there are other departments who I have less time for…

Like the people who collect National Insurance contributions, for instance. I got a letter last year saying I’d underpaid my NI contributions by £16.00. I didn’t think that was right, but after a couple of long, useless phone calls, I gave up and sent them the £16.00. Then a couple of months ago I got a cheque from them repaying me the £16.00 I’d “overpaid”.

It’s as if some jobsworth thinks for a bit of comedy they’ll demand money, and then send it back to you later with a stroppy letter blaming you for paying too much.

I wish shortly before I’d turned 18, someone had taken me to one side and said: ‘You’re almost an adult. You need to get used to dealing with morons now. Read this booklet and it’ll show you how.’ It would make life much easier.
 

Created on Mon 30th March 2009 12:40