5th July 2026

Opening Reflection 

If there’s one thing that gets my goat more than almost anything else, it’s bureaucracy.

Not sensible regulation.

Not common-sense rules.

I’m talking about the endless, mindless bureaucracy that seems designed to make running a business as difficult as possible.

Running a business is hard enough without spending hours filling in forms, chasing departments, sitting on hold, and trying to convince organisations that common sense should prevail.

Sometimes I genuinely wonder whether the people designing these systems have ever run a small business themselves.

Because if they had, they surely couldn’t have created something so absurd.

The Gas Bill That Shouldn’t Exist

Let me give you an example.

A few weeks ago I received a bill from British Gas demanding more than £700 for gas usage at one of my farm shops.

There was just one small problem.

The shop doesn’t use gas.

It’s entirely electric.

After receiving increasingly threatening letters, I eventually gave up trying to ignore them and phoned to find out what on earth was going on.

After a long conversation I finally discovered the £700 wasn’t an actual bill.

It was an estimate.

An estimate for gas that I have never used.

The Wild Goose Chase

You’d think that would be the end of it.

Not quite.

I was then asked to find the gas meter, photograph it, and send them proof that no gas had been used.

So off I went around the estate searching for a meter I never wanted in the first place.

Eventually I found it.

The photographs clearly showed that there had been no gas consumption whatsoever since I took over the premises.

Case closed?

Not quite.

The £2-a-Day Meter

British Gas accepted that I hadn’t used any gas.

But they then explained that I still owed money.

Not for gas.

For the meter itself.

Apparently I’m charged around £2 every single day simply because the meter exists.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t use it.

It doesn’t matter that I never intend to use it.

It doesn’t matter that I didn’t install it.

The developer installed it years before I arrived, yet somehow I’ve inherited the bill.

Then came the conversation that left me completely speechless.

The customer service adviser told me there was a way of reducing the £2-a-day standing charge.

“Great,” I thought. “Finally, some common sense.”

But no.

The only way to reduce the daily charge was to take out one of their service plans.

Just think about that for a moment.

I have to buy a service I don’t want, for a fuel I don’t use, in order to reduce the charge for a meter I never asked for.

I actually laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because it was so unbelievably absurd.

If someone wanted to write a comedy about British bureaucracy, they couldn’t make it much more ridiculous than that.

Rather than solving the obvious problem, the system simply creates another product, another process and another layer of administration.

Common sense loses every time.

The only other way to stop paying the standing charge is to have the meter removed.

Except that’s not straightforward either.

The developer doesn’t want it removed because a future tenant might decide they want gas.

So I’m trapped.

Paying every day for something I neither use nor need.

If that isn’t bureaucracy gone mad, I don’t know what is.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

People often ask why running a small business is becoming so difficult.

This is why.

Not because of one enormous problem.

But because of hundreds of tiny, unnecessary ones.

A form here.

A charge there.

A regulation.

A compliance check.

Another phone call.

Another department.

Another afternoon wasted.

None of these things individually destroys a business.

But collectively they drain time, energy and enthusiasm.

It’s death by a thousand cuts.

The Wrong Environment for Growth

Politicians constantly talk about economic growth.

They encourage people to start businesses.

They praise entrepreneurs.

But then they create an environment that seems determined to make entrepreneurship harder.

Surely we should be asking ourselves a simple question:

Are we making it easier for people to create businesses, or harder?

Because from where I’m sitting, the answer feels obvious.

Time Is the Most Precious Commodity

One thing I’ve learned after more than 25 years in business is this:

Money isn’t the most valuable resource.

Time is.

Every hour spent battling pointless bureaucracy is an hour not spent serving customers.

Not spent creating jobs.

Not spent developing new ideas.

Not spent growing the business.

The irony is that the very people capable of creating growth spend an extraordinary amount of their lives dealing with systems that create none.

Common Sense Has Left the Building

The most frustrating part is the complete absence of common sense.

Nobody seemed able simply to say:

“Mr Emmanuel-Jones doesn’t use gas. Let’s solve the problem.”

Instead, everyone followed the process.

Tick the box.

Follow the script.

Move to the next department.

We’ve become a society that values procedure over practicality.

Rules over reason.

And somewhere along the way, common sense quietly slipped out of the building.

Closing Reflection

I don’t expect life to be easy.

I certainly don’t expect running a business to be easy.

But I do expect fairness. 

If governments genuinely want more entrepreneurs, more investment and more growth, then perhaps the greatest gift they could give small businesses isn’t another initiative or another strategy.

It’s simply getting out of our way.

Because most entrepreneurs don’t mind hard work.

What we do mind is wasting our time fighting systems that should never have existed in the first place.

Britain is full of people with ideas, ambition and the courage to start businesses.

The question is whether our systems are helping them succeed or slowly wearing them down.

From where I’m standing, I think we already know the answer.

Onwards.