National Algorithms — Living With Data-Based Government
Or ‘The Problem with Government-By-Numbers’
A 5-Minuter from Wonk Bridge
Conventional wisdom about the COVID period holds that it’s a good time to be an ecommerce monopolist, a communications facilitator, or the proprietor of an online gaming platform. It also holds that it’s a very bad time to be a tourism-dependent economy, a high-street retail chain, or a traditional educationalist. It is, more broadly, a very bad time to be precariously employed, or old. It is also a very bad time to be young.
As much as to the beleaguered rest, one’s heart goes out to the class of 2019–20, with portion preserved in the instance that it might also need to go out to that of 2020–21. With the reopening of university campuses adjudged high-risk, many prospective first-year students may have to live with the fact of an often superb and always formative rite of passage (oh! To be a fresher) being indefinitely suspended. More troubling than the situation of those who might have to pursue their studies from afar is the case of those who might not get to study at all.
The A-levels results fiasco/debacle/controversy (eliminate according to preference) is one of the UK’s highest profile administrative bahíacochinos of the entire COVID period. The pantomime in short…
