France Life Pushing Papers

I thought it time to update you all on another aspect of french life, red tape.
For those that are UK based, be thankful. France has layers upon layer of paper shufflers in just about everything you can think of. It is said that 50% of the people here work for the government and I can believe it. Well, I can believe the 50% but not too sure about the "work".
We have just applied to accept the french equivalent of luncheon vouchers. The procedure is that you collate 5 pieces of paper and send them to a centre who check them, authorise them and as a result give you permission to apply to another department. The papers all have to be dated within the last 30 days , so you can never use the same ones, each time you have to apply for a copy which of course costs.
The most ludicrous is the birth certificate. Whenever J has to produce a birth certificate it has to be dated within the previous month. Mine was given to me in 19** and has sufficed ever since. But for J it means she has to ring the Marie of her home village and request a copy which is then sent through.
Our insurance company send us at least one letter a week, changing something, asking for extra information, updating this or that. we have a yearly health contract but they send us each a monthly authorisation.
Likewise no utility like water, electricity etc uses one office so one department will write to you asking you to send something to their company but at a different address. You do as required but they don't then communicate with each other so they ask again or assume you haven't sent it

I once visited China and was amazed to see about 100 men with wheelbarrows moving a pile of coal from one side of a piece of land to another. My thoughts at the time were " why use 100 men when a couple of JCBs would be much more efficient?" The answer of course was that China had 100 men to keep busy and better that 100 earn from working than 2 work and 98 go on benefits. I suppose the same applies in France so whilst people push papers around we will just have to grin and bear it