@Sazza, after you progress above a certain level into the realms of Band 7 / 8, you carry out more paperwork and less hands on as the focus of you role shifts, (have a look at the changed priorities of the A4C job descriptions).
Not so much administration (as you refer to it), as supervisory / managerial.
Look at your own department, how much time does you Manager spend on the bench fixing things?
Do you class him/her as a Biomed or an administrator (or both).
Sometimes you have to look a bit further than the end of your nose, and I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the value of managerial / communication skills in any biomedical department. All the boring paperwork, regarding budgets, equipment approvals, staff development, compliance with statutory legislation needs doing by someone.
Some free advice, the expression of dismissive views towards a significant portion of the workload of supervisors / managers is hardly going to help your personal advancement.
