The worst kind of bureaucracy

What's the worst kind of bureaucracy? The kind where red tape is created without even the intention of making things better.

Take Ryanair's tussles at Charleroi airport. The little airport's been subsidising Ryanair's landing fees for years. In the process, the airport's grown, the region's economy has received a boost, and planeloads of tourists get to discover yet another destination on the cheap. Everyone wins, except perhaps the environment.

But these 'subsidies' (which are discounts for a steady customer, not subsidies) have been ruled illegal. And new rules and regs have been drawn up. Not because they thought it would make anything better - just purely because they wanted to be able to dictate terms, and the best way to do that is to write laws.

It's one of the few really bad things about the EU: the surging, irresistible urge to control. An urge that's led to a sevenfold increase in UK regulation in the last 15 years, with a cultural backwash that red tape's unavoidable, leading to other areas like the doubling in size of the UK tax code since New Labour took power. Creating yet more drag on the productivity of every worker and every business, as both wallow endlessly in the suffocating oily sludge of red tape.