We must have coped somehow, or else the landscape would have been littered with parched and hungry people and starving dogs.

But no longer – the Government has decreed that we are not to be trusted with such simple tasks, without interminable – and eye-wateringly expensive – instructions from the pen-pushers of Whitehall.

Not a month passes without some new finger-wagging lecture from a government determined to interfere in every aspect of citizens' lives – and this week has produced a bumper crop.

First up is a quango called Envirowise – no, I'd not heard of it either, but it consumes £10m a year of your money. It advised firms to appoint a "tea monitor" to ensure workers don't overfill the kettle when they pop into the office kitchen for
a brew.

It says all you need to know about the unelected quangocracy that rules much of our lives that these people see this as a priority at a time when many firms are fighting for survival.

No doubt the public sector is chock full of Kettle Level Enforcement Officers – £50,000 a year, six weeks' holiday, index-linked pension – but, sorry to break it to you bluntly, chaps, it isn't going to happen in the real world.

Next up is Defra, which used to be the Department of Agriculture but which now changes its name every week, probably so another team of pen-pushers can dream up baffling new acronyms.

Defra's boss, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn, probably entered politics with grand ideas of changing the world for the better. Instead, this week he issued new codes of conduct for pet owners, including detailed instructions on caring for a cat that run to 26 pages.

The codes remind pet owners to feed and exercise their animals and states that you need to find somewhere suitable for your pet to live and "somewhere for it to go to the toilet". In the unlikely event that an owner didn't realise their pet needed somewhere to go to the toilet, they would soon find out. Do we really need well-paid bureaucrats to point out the blindingly obvious?

Not to be outdone, along come the packed lunch police – otherwise known
as the Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) – yet another quango which costs you £80m a year. They have ordered people not to buy a sandwich at lunchtime, but instead to raid the fridge in the morning for the previous day's leftovers.

Enough! Haven't these people got anything better to do? Clearly not, which prompts the question, would anyone really notice much difference if Envirowise, Defra and Wrap were simply abolished?

The money saved could then be spent on something actually useful or, even better, returned to the people who earned it – the taxpayer. And it may give us all a small break from this incessant nannying.

Tripe... and tripe

Defending the BBC over the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross scandal, director general Mark Thompson came up with a very revealing analogy.

He pointed out that if you don't like a particular programme, you are not forced to continue watching or listening.

He added: "If you go into a restaurant and they've got tripe on the menu and you don't like tripe, don't order tripe."

But what if the waiter insists that although you didn't order the tripe, you
still have to pay for it? And then he threatens to have you dragged off to prison if you refuse.

That's a more accurate reflection of the licence fee payers' relationship with
the BBC.

Thompson's comments illustrate perfectly why he doesn't understand public anger and probably never will.