Pie in the Eye in the Sky
One small (not so small) detail of the Brexitshambles is its impact on UK involvement in the €10bn Galileo project, from which the UK is set to be excluded by virtue of becoming a third country. The UK government has said that if the EU doesn’t let us use their satellites then we want our money back—12% of the cost—and will develop a satellite system of our own, so there. (For 12% of the cost of Galileo? They could call it Poundlandsat.)
But this Twitter thread from someone with inside knowledge points out that the UK can’t launch its own sat nav system even if it builds one because it doesn’t have its own spectrum filing. Apart from the implications for UK drivers who have come to rely on sat nav, this means that all the unicorn-flavoured technological “solutions” for the Irish border will come to nought—even more abruptly than they already would have for being ruinously expensive pie in the sky.