Grimmer news

At just gone eight last night, word came that France was going to close its border with the UK. I saw this in a Tweet from an ITV journalist.

In the following hour this was confirmed, all accompanied vehicles would be banned from travel for 48 hours from 23:00 Sunday night. All passenger travel and most freight would be banned.

Eurostar announced it would only be running one service a day from Paris to London.

The Channel Tunnel announced it would close from 23:00

Port of Dover announced it was closing "until further notice".

Kent police announced it was implementing Operation Stack; phase two.

A seafood company from Scotland Tweeted it had multiple loads of fresh produce heading for Dover, if it could not get through then the company faces ruin.

This shit is real.

Ten thousand lorries a day use Dover and The Tunnel, flow is even heavier at the mment with the perfect storm of COVID and Brexit.

This morning Dover is traffic free, as the M20 is closed between Junction 9 and 10 coastbound, with lorries already filling up the coastbound carriageway between Maidstone and Ashford. Manston Airport is being readied to receive traffic to stack. Looking at the traffic map, odd to see the roads in port free of delay, something only seen on Christmas Day when there are no services.

Johnson is the chair emergency meetings today, one of the top items should be an technical extension to the transition period to get us through this crisis To carry on would be madness, idealogy over reality. But that's what got us here.

It seems Johnson larbouring the point of the new mutation of the virus on Sunday and claiming it to be 70% more infectioous, a claim used to justify cancelling Christmas, was heard in Europe, and so they acted, though this morning a single case in Holland and a dozen or so in Denmark have already been recorded.

The UK entered the Common Market as the Sick Man of Europe, and it will live the EU in the same state.

God help us all.