Where are we now?

Either there will be some kind of thin trade deal with the EU. Or there will not.

Either way, there are many things that need to happen, many of shich are computer systems.

Over the past couple of days, there has been a virtual Conservatve Party Conference, only on Friday the hosting platofrm failed and no one could join.

Arranging a Zoom meeting for a few hundred people is in a different league to designing and rolling out a system that has to be able to cope with 400,000,000 customs declarations a year, and dovetail into EU and other country's systems.

There are 88 days left this year, and all the multiple computer and IT systems have to be up and running in that time, deal or no deal. Does anyone really think they will be?

There is clarification from the UK Government on the Nortern Ireland Border Model, on how freight to and from NI and beyond is going to work.

But if there is no trade deal, there is no deal on anything else; travel, data, security, lan % order, financial services, and on and on.

Let's be honest here, no deal will not be the end point. Soon after the realities of a food, fuel and medicine crisis will force deals of kinds to be struck. But for days, maybe weeks, even months, there will be chaos. And this will cost more than COVID had done, it already has, but the effects have been slow, prices have gone up little by little, or pack sizes have shrunk. But our weekly shop has gone up £20 in a year, without us noticing, really.

Then there will be the distuption to supply chains. The job losses brought on by the end of furlough will be nothing to those in January and beyond.

Yesterday, Sir David Frost complained that one of the issues that a deal has to be done before the next EU summit, a situation 100% the fault of the UK Government and Johnson and his insistance that the UK is going to leave the transition agreement on New Year's Eve, ready or not. And the UK is not ready.

The head of Dover port was asked if he feared January 1st: he said no, as that was a bank holiday. January 2nd, however......