I am not you. I do not live your life. Just because something is perfectly normal to you and everyone you know please do not assume that it is so for everyone.

Just because you skipped that boring lecture on parsing regular expressions please do not tell me that my email address is undeliverable:

I would guess this email address was deliverable when you were still in nappies.

I, along with eight million other people across England and Wales, do not have a passport so please avoid requirements such as…

Whilst fairly trivial but annoying examples they are symptomatic of a trend which is resulting in people not getting housing or employment because they do not fit neatly into some arbitrary but erroneous requirements…. Dear Estate Agents, I can live perfectly comfortably on one third of the income you assume I need to rent a property.

Worryingly such problems reach right to the top; a Tory MP in today’s Times complaining about the “hordes of twentysomethings with an Excel spreadsheet”.

From there it is but a few steps to the bonfire of red tape madness.

Update:

It transpires that the undeliverable email problem was caused by the company using some bodgers, rather than developers, to create their site and they are paying for the loqate verification services – which clearly do not work.