Lots of IT people came together to troll this chap and it’s well worth switching your machine off and on again

Spare a thought, if you will, for economist Andrew Lilico who suggested online that the IT implications of Brexit – not a phrase we thought we’d be using today – were being vastly over exaggerated.

The main purpose of "transition" is to make life easier for the EU by leaving its budget in place to the end of 2020. It is only in the UK's interests insofar as being friendly & helpful to the EU is in our interests. We don't need a transition & it definitely isn't "vital".

— Andrew Lilico (@andrew_lilico) September 3, 2018

And here’s the line that really bugged people (Andrew’s other interests include Christianity, Conservatism, and singing).

People say “transition” is needed for customs procedures & IT systems. These are all “expand to fill the time provided” matters. We could have systems in place in five minutes. They’d be inefficient systems. But it’s better to be out earlier with inefficient systems than to wait.

— Andrew Lilico (@andrew_lilico) September 3, 2018

And if you ever wondered what it would look like if a whole bunch of IT people ganged up to pour a bucket of shit over someone, look no further.

This has produced some……pushback from people who know about IT systems….. https://t.co/1UO3THFDPL

— Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) September 5, 2018

He’s not kidding. Here are our favourites.

1.

I run a small IT software house. Systems in place in 5 minutes? It takes months to prototype stuff, that would be buggy, slow, full of errors, errors not properly handled. You really do not have a clue what you’re talking about mate.

— Paul Hallett #FBPE 🇪🇺 (@HairyHallett) September 4, 2018

2.

So you think we can have an imperfect system in place in months. Fine. We have seven months, & we’ve already done some prep. Home & hosed.

— Andrew Lilico (@andrew_lilico) September 4, 2018

3.

No, I think we could have a bare bones prototype in months, which would be buggy, unreliable, full of holes and as we don’t know any of the actual details, and possibly wouldn’t until next year, you’d be creating vapour ware. You’re wrong. Again.

— Paul Hallett #FBPE 🇪🇺 (@HairyHallett) September 4, 2018

4.

Exactly. You think we could have systems. They’d just be bad systems. Which was precisely what I said.

— Andrew Lilico (@andrew_lilico) September 4, 2018

5.

No I didn’t, I said we’d have a prototype at best. No one, not one sane person on earth would release a prototype they are mainly smoke and mirrors – Vapourware; they do not work in scale, have error handling, they fail You simply do not know anything you’re talking about.

— Paul Hallett #FBPE 🇪🇺 (@HairyHallett) September 4, 2018

6.

Again, you’ve said we can have a system, but your judgement is that using such a system would be worse than staying in the EU for longer. That judgement is not something about which you have the slightest expertise beyond that of any ordinary voter.

— Andrew Lilico (@andrew_lilico) September 4, 2018

7.

Which bit of “WOULD NOT WORK” is it you’re having trouble with?

— Mark Allan (@MarkXA) September 4, 2018

8.

My last Windows 10 update took longer than five minutes. You really don’t know what you are talking about.

— Dinesh Fernando (@dineshfernando) September 4, 2018

9.

Yes I do. For example, I know that I’m not talking about installing Windows.

— Andrew Lilico (@andrew_lilico) September 4, 2018

10.

Please explain then.

— Dinesh Fernando (@dineshfernando) September 4, 2018