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American Gods (based on Neil Gaiman's book) starts today, hope it won't be a disappointment!

Now I know where you have all gone. Not sure I should re-instate young Max as my picture as he is likely to be leaving this summer. The present coach seems determined to ruin his confidence and get rid (a bit like Magrat) and I am losing a little of my desire to stay after 68 years as a supporter. Anyway, nice to see you are all well and 'fighting fit'

There are no anti-globalists in government or any senior ones in the leave campaign. This whole we are going to trade with the world rhetoric which dominates is probably going to lead to cheaper food and a loss of exports for Ireland, France and Spain's agricultural industry and that is about it. In terms of the state of the UK economy there are more serious systemic problems. These might be addressed if the government are forced into action because of Brexit fallout, but that assumes competence where there probably isn't any. Werner's recent research suggests GDP growth in the United Kingdom over the last 30 years was not the result of trade with the continent but came from debt being used to fund productive capacity. Something which has been extremely low because we are primarly using money creation to fund the housing market and have allowed private bankers to print money and lend to whatever gets them the biggest quickest bonus which isn't small businesses and productivity. What places like Sunderland need is access to credit for productive means. Small and medium businesses in the UK notoriously can't get access to credit. I think a good place to start would be John McDonnell's proposal for regional investment banks, mimicking the German model which funnily enough the ECB are trying to destroy. Staying in the EU or leaving the EU really wasn't going to make a difference economically to poor people in Hartlepool. But they can hope that their screams were heard. Trump's isolationism beneath the surface is recognition of the reality that something is fundamentally going very wrong in international trade whereby countries are having to cheat each other to get ahead because non of them have anything unique. Big business crossing borders freely has created a situation where governments compete to entice them in. Innovation is no longer in job creating activities. It's in job destroying activity. Investment in productivity isn't coming from governments or banks anywhere near where it needs to be, It's left up to big businesses to buy up supply chains and move it around, make it cheap enough to drive consumption across the West, create mass consumers, zombies gorging on products. When Trump says China is cheating he's not far from the truth, the big US corporations are going to China to take advantage of cheap labour. The Chinese haven't invented anything, big US businesses just went in to drive their bottom line down. That doesn't mean bringing jobs back is feasible, but investment in new technology, in productivity, in innovation is where success is. Trying to beat everyone else is a questionable approach and never ending game. In North East England mines and shipyards were closed and the Thatcher government gave state welfare and goodies to Japanese mega firm Nissan to open up, which have continued and been extended by every government since. When it comes to international trade it is all about cheating. Britain as you can tell is pretty bad at cheating in manufacturing. It is very good at financial fraud however. Very good at financial corruption. Easily the biggest finance sector cheats on the planet. The only thing the UK has to lose in trade talks with the EU is it's current cheating in the city of London. The rest of the country isn't cheating. One terms are agreed maybe the government will look to find a new sector to cheat with if it needs to. Britain needs to find it's way back to innovation. Not going to happen with this banking sector which has basically turned us into a credit card mortgage junkie economy of mass consumers. Theresa May is an nanny knows best statist conservative. I don't know how much she will give to the libertarian Thatcherite's but she certainly seems to want to meddle in people's economic life so there is going to be plenty of attempts at industrial cheating under her tenure.

Close to blocking @Cicero because of that damned Jon Snow avatar.

They've also got the incentive to make it unappealing as fuck for anyone else to leave the EU, because like Brits, they're going to be approaching this from a self-interested point of view rather than caring about the British public. They're fighting to keep the world's largest trade block in tact. And yes, it has become a political union (rather than the economic union that we were promised when we joined) - but they're fighting to keep Europe strong in global trade and to keep the EU stable. And considering the rise of populism in the West, I think that's understandable. Ultimately what's best for the EU and the UK are favourable terms for both parties and for their citizens living in the UK, and ours in the EU. But there are more political considerations at play than just the economy... and those are going to make an impact on how negotiations play out. I think that's a pretty simplistic view of things and it skips the obvious steps between where we are today and where we will be. Some of our biggest trading partners will remain major EU countries, by necessity. Whether you like it or not, they're major trade partners and our economy is tied to doing business with them. Trade talks being sorted will relieve economic uncertainty, which is good for everybody. With the likelihood of NAFTA being renegotiated and Trump being very pro-Brexit, it would probably be in Britain's best interests to try to become members of NAFTA (despite not being... in North America). As that's the largest consumer nation in the world, a former commonwealth country, and a large manufacturing country (albeit incredibly unstable because of the aftereffects of the U.S. war on drugs). Despite Trump believing that NAFTA is a bad trade deal, if it is renegotiated it's likely that Canada and Mexico will be able to secure better trade deals than were negotiated in the 90s - and that gives us a chance to walk up to the negotiation tables to land a new and beneficial trade deal. It is likely that once we're out of the EU, NAFTA will be the largest trade block. It won't really appeal to the nationalists and isolationists, nor does it promise to bring back manufacturing to this country (which, by the way, the real time to fight back against that was in the 1980s... rather than 30 years later after, with Western world wholly embraced globalism and convinced China to play along). But it does stand to not provide stability to British exports and our economy. But this could be the economic (not political) union that the EU was when we first joined. Engaging in trade deals with NAFTA nations and the commonwealth is key for us going forward. The big concern then is... are we a country for sale to corporate interests. Are we going to increase privitisation of healthcare and education to be more in line with America? Are we going to remove worker protections and rights we've had under the EU to be more in line with the worker rights of the US (and as someone working in the US, I'm not sure that will be a very popular switch...) - do we have to make major changes so that we can survive in the world economy (because globalism is not going away). Can the UK economy be strong enough to prevent a major brain drain?

Merkels move is just part of the gamesmanship to come. The EU's primary target is to extract as much money from the British taxpayer as possible. Rejecting trade negotiations is trying to force the issue they want and preventing the UK from having a similar trade deal to Canada who don't have to pay a penny. They're going to fight to make this generation of Brits accept giving a debt burden to unborn babies to fund projects that have no ROI for the exchequer.