As I was weeding through my administration of the last 7 years – I’m moving about, so I wanted to chuck a lot of old paperwork out – it struck me that life in one country doesn’t leave nearly as big a paper trail as life in another country does.

In the last 7 years my life was spread out across two continents, three countries. Which life was the greatest bureaucratic burden, nanny-state Netherlands, buttoned-down Britain, or communist China?

There’s something to say for all our candidates. In a nanny-state, such as the Netherlands has turned into, a wealth of social services has left a wealth of bureaucracy, of rules and regulations, all accompanied with a host of checks and balances that require endless cross-referencing and paperwork. I keep forwarding documents from one organisation to the next. Admin-work often piles up as forms and documents sit on my desk waiting for the appropriate attachments to arrive.

Britain’s recent track record of CCTV surveillance, and legislation that infringes on people’s privacy more with every change in policy, doesn’t spell good. A lot of organisations and a lot of companies keep a lot of information on each and every one of their clients. In my experience it’s all rather compartmentalised though, which reduces the paperwork dramatically. Government bodies check with each other, you’re not required to play the traffic warden and forward stream or paperwork-traffic this way and that.

Communist China has the name of knowing where every one of its billion citizens is at any time. It may well be so that it keeps a file on every one of them, but I doubt it very much. If they do, then the Chinese have the most streamlined, well-integrated social security system in the world; how likely is that? Theirs involves very little paperwork. In fact I could only find three or four A4 sheets of paper when I weeded though my admin-stuff earlier today. It’s true that striking down in a Chinese city can be a major hassle – the language barrier undoubtedly sticks its ugly head around the corner here – but in my experience, when it’s done it’s done, and the paperwork just ceases after a while.

In conclusion, let’s throw in a sports metaphor. Paperwork in the Netherlands, it’s like the marathon, or the 4 x 400 meter relay. England’s compartmentalisation is a 110 meter horde, a triple-jump at worst. The 100 meter dash strechtes it for China, it’s more like a high jump: one big, high leap and you’re there.