I couldn't agree more. User interfaces especially those of UK high street banks are appalling but nowhere near as poor as the UK government web sites. These have been designed to guide you through a process that you find it hard to circumvent. It's almost like someone took a script / flowchart out of a book and tried to turn it into a web based menu driven system. When I access the site I want to see a log on and log out button somewhere near the top of the page, nope, all of this is hidden until they have determined what you "might need to do today". Then it's a matter of answering 4 or 5 questions with button clicks which take you from one page to the next. Almost as though someone thought, "hey we'd better keep the pages small but lets have loads of white space to make it look clean". Shoddy beyond belief.