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I’VE NEVER been to Iraq, North Korea, or China as a journalist; so the most obstructive bureaucracy that I have dealt with is the United States government, which required you to wait in person on a bench at the embassy for half a day, undergo an interrogation about your motives, and if you passed pay your fee in cash only. The border guards still gave you a hard time when you landed. After that in the rankings came Communist East Germany, for obvious reasons, and then the Vatican.
But now, leaping over these strong competitors, comes the diocese of Southwark, which, its website says, employs four “Communications Officers”, not one of whom has a phone number or a public email address. Instead, there is a small box in which to write an email message, guarded by a popup demanding that you click in the captcha box to prove that you are a human. Then you click, and start typing. But it’s not that simple: the popup reappears every 60 seconds, demanding fresh a