Peter Rhodes on slow counting, mixed wards and Trump's invitation to the Palace
According to the old gag, in just a millisecond a computer can make make a mistake that would take a team of humans years. The sheer speed of computers is dazzling. So why do some things still take ages?
Consider, for example, the edict from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper that a breakdown of crimes committed by migrants must be on her desk “by the end of this year". Surely all this information is already stashed away in the memory banks of the prison service, the courts system, the probation service and the Home Office itself.
In this computer age, producing the collated figures of crime by nationality should take a couple of minutes, not eight months. So what sort of counting system are they using in Whitehall – an abacus?
