Before I bag him, I guess I should admit that Peter Hendy is a one-time colleague of mine with whom I have enjoyed the odd convivial beer. Funny how two politically-minded types around an office can have more in common than they have with the non-politically minded, despite being on opposite sides of the ideological fence. Anyway, that said, Hendy is off the planet with this comment on AM this morning:
… if you really have a purpose to reduce red tape in this country, you’ve got to look at reducing the size of government.
On the contrary, it’s actually the longstanding and generally failed bids to reduce the size of government that have mounted today’s red tape. This arises because of the way these bids necessarily intensify the application of policy. The multiplication of red tape is automatic, for - as Eric Hobsbawm once noted - “the state must henceforth — in the interests of withering away — give ever more precise directions about what its funds should and should not be spent on”.

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