9 September

The government released a ‘roadmap’ out of the pandemic yesterday. The metaphor tells you everything. Nobody uses roadmaps any more, we all use GPS. Real-time data adjusted to constantly changing conditions. Somebody wanting a roadmap is somebody wanting to ram their way through an obstacle, in this case the complexity of a rampant lethal virus. Business wants ‘certainty’, that’s what this is about. Life is never certain, business is a terrible guide for how to run a society or a pandemic. Like these mega-roads, you get a bit of a muscular feeling of driving things forward. Eventually it all just collapses back into congestion. The roadmap will fail.