From Chris Dillow’s blog:

Bank bosses have played a trick which countless ordinary workers do. The IT support guy who introduces lots of “security features” to his firm’s IT systems, or the secretary who has an incomprehensible filing system, make themselves indispensable by inconveniencing others.

I think people who make arguments like this are basically trying to claim that they are smart enough to do any job, and that if by chance there is any job too complex for them to understand, it’s not due to a lack of their abilities (oh no!) but rather because there is some conspiracy to make the job more complex than it needs to be. It’s basically vanity. I mean, maybe this chap is quite clever. But until he knows when to use ‘fewer’ and when to use ‘less’ I wouldn’t be employing him even in his current journalistic capacity.