This isn't just any bureaucracy, this is M&S bureaucracy: Miriam Gross was told by the high street giant that she needn't worry about her lost card. That's when she should have started worrying.

‘Have you, like me, secretly felt in certain locales that you have been parachuted behind enemy lines?’

‘If teenagers want to pick up rubbish in parks or read to the blind, nothing prevents them — apart from red tape. Most do not do community work simply because they do not want to’

‘Stowe, being new, promised a ruling class more suited to the 20th century’