Sometime in the next half hour or so...

...the Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is set to announce a reduction in the standard VAT rate from 17.5% to 15%; an announcement that will send financial controllers up and down the country, often accompanied by their sales and marketing staff, in search of their IT support staff to ask the following two questions:

"Can we deal with this in the next 6 days?"

and

"Can we do it properly?"

The answers in virtually all cases will be "probably" and "probably not".

I await the approach of my local finance folks with bated breath.