We’ve - at least should have - a certain sense of emergency about gaining housing for Ukrainian refugees:

A British family has been barred from hosting Ukrainian refugees because their home has bare floorboards, as council officials start to check Homes for Ukraine accommodation.

One householder was ordered to board up an internal glass door even though it had safety glass, while another was told they would be rejected if they failed to put locks on all their windows.

Council checklists warned against stairs that were "excessively steep", bannisters with gaps that were more than 100 mm wide, looped cords or chains for blinds, low windowsills, poisonous plants or any damp or mould.

The checks being rolled out by local authorities come amid anger from British hosts at red tape that has left some out of pocket after paying overseas hotel bills for delayed refugees. Others are still waiting for applications to be granted after three weeks.

So much for any sense of urgency then.

We should though be grateful for this little window into how the system actually works.

Economic growth is the doing of new things, also, the doing of old things in new and better ways. The speed of economic growth is the speed at which we can do the new things or, again, the old in the new ways. Having an entire army of bureaucrats which delays the doing of those new things, or new ways, slows economic growth.

It’s not just the wasted effort of all that labour which could be put to better uses. It’s the weed and barnacles slowing the entire ship of the economy. The insight we gain from this story is that everything, just everything, is slowed by that army of clipboard wielders.

We are all made poorer, forever, by this system that has been built around our lives and our ability to do anything new.

There has been talk that Brexit would allow us to have a bonfire of red tape. The lesson coming out of the Ukrainian refugee story - that thing we should be grateful for - is that what is actually required is a flamethrower turned on the bureaucracy.