The new government has promised to “hit the ground running” and its first few weeks in office has indicated that it fully intends to do so. But challenges come thick and fast.
Some of these can be unpredictable, such as the global disruption caused by an outage relating to a minor content update affecting Microsoft Windows systems which occurred last month on Friday 19th July.
On the same day, Wikipedia recorded the global impact:
“Outages were experienced worldwide. As many IT systems across the world use Windows and the CrowdStrike software, outages were reported across many business sectors. More than 1,000 flights were cancelled globally,[15] the travel sector in general being the most affected. The company CrowdStrike whose update has caused the problems has approximately 24,000 customers, and so the number of individual computers affected is hard to estimate as many of the 24,000 customers are large organisations.”
However even before this event, there were major issues affecting international travel and trade, as claimed by our award-winning trade association Logistics UK in a media release on 17th July:
“With summer holiday traffic expected to build at Channel ports from this weekend, Logistics UK – as the body representing the industry across the UK – is urging Keir Starmer’s government to prioritise sorting the issues which have yet to be solved about moving goods across the UK’s borders. In addition, the group is pressing for urgent action to smooth the introduction of the European Entry and Exit System (EES), which will apply to UK nationals entering the EU from Britain from October this year. Otherwise, as Kevin Green, Logistics UK’s policy director explains, delays at the UK’s borders could be commonplace, not simply an occasional inconvenience at the start of the holiday season.”
There is definitely much to be done, but the government will have support in all business sectors, including our own, for bringing renewed growth and economic stability to the UK!