Viewpoint: Principles versus PC

Tony Bridgland wrote a long-running satirical column in Insurance Age from 1992, firing barbed broadsides at insurers and regulators alike and, for seven years, was the insurance watchdog for the Sun newspaper. Now he comes out of semi-retirement to put the Financial Ombudsman Service on the rack.

We live in strange times. On the one hand, we seem to be buried under an increasingly high mound of new rules and regulations; witness the 3,000 plus new ones that the late Blair/Brown government brought in. And the regulators have been sweating away at Canary Wharf dreaming up cartloads more, so little of which has any obvious purpose other than to keep themselves and battalions of 'jobsworth' compliance officers in work.

On the other, longstanding rules and laws are being ignored and, as an