Whitey Grandad

Confidence is a very fragile object. It takes years to build it up yet it cab be shattered in a few moments. I see no signs at the moment that any of this recalcitrance is merely down to negative talk and no amount of talking up is going to persuade businesses to part with their hard-earned money for new ventures in the current climate. This uncertainty could very well pertain for the next five or six years.

Yes, everywhere seems to be very quiet at the moment and has been for a couple of months or so. Eventually it should begin to pick up once inventories are exhausted but any form of discretionary spending is likely to struggle.

And how do they look in Dollar terms?

They can afford to work less and have more leisure time. Their productivity is way beyond ours. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/18/uk-productivity-gap-widens-to-worst-level-since-records-began

Too much money involved. The whole business is one big overhype.

I don't think it's the absence of trade deals that is restricting either deals or trade. There are many other aspects such as contract laws, terms of payment, anti-corruption laws. In dealing with Europe there is a common legal framework which underpins confidence.

Whilst wer'e at it, what is it about our membership of the EU that prevents businesses from 'building closer trade relationships' with China and India that we can't do already? Could it be, perhaps, that one market is on our doorstep and the other is on the opposite side of the world? But this is beside the point. We need as much trade as possible in order to pay our way in the world. To talk about relative percentages is meaningless except to illustrate the relative importance of each sector. We cannot survivce without the customers who live alongside us, me old china (do you see what I did there? )

On the contrary, the conditions were set precisely so that they would never be met. It was a political way of stating that the government was in favour of joining the Euro whilst making sure that we never would.

And so is accesss to the Single Market. What we need to do is to convince the other 27 that Britain, as an offshore crowded island, is a special case and as such requires special considerations. This will not be easy.

A plan so cunning that even Baldrick would be proud of it. There's just one question... ...how do we get this massive increase in exports to the rest of the world, and why aren't we doing it already? (Please don't say that we are being held back by the EU, my poor split sides would never heal up). Of course it's more possible that exports to the EU will fall by tens of billions and we could reach your target of 25% that way, but by that stage we would all be really stony broke and banging on the door begging to be let back in.

Thereby hangs one horn of a dilemma. In the words of the song, 'you can't have one without the other'.

Those figures are for Germany as a whole, nothing about UK-Germany trade.

Perhaps you'd like to check again? £61bn deficit with the whole EU, not just Germany. The figures are distorted somewhat by the 'Rotterdam Effect'. This is because a lot of the imports/exports go through Rotterdam which means the EU.

The Single Market is absolutely essential. Without it there would be trade but nowhere near as freely and easily as now. Where do you get this £100bn figure?

Well at least he won't be saving any rivals from relegation.

I expect he limped and struggled all the way to the bank.

Dissent would be just a yellow and the wording for a red has now been changed to 'offensve, abusive or insulting language and/or gestures'. On a Sunday morning it can be seen as a bit harsh to send someone off just for the actual industrial wording that was used so some referees will change their report of the words and issue a yellow for serious dissent.

Good idea but it needs enforcing. A few early red cards until it settles down might be needed.

Then you must be top of the list of targets

Built in Barrow-on-Furness, based in Faslane.

So do I

And gives us a seat on the UN Security Council.

The Russians agreed to enter the war against Japan 3 months after the defeat of Germany and indeed commenced operations on 8th August (between the two bombs) and I'm sure the Americans wanted Japan to be defeated before the Russians established any influence in the area. The invasion of Okinawa was so costly that the US balked at invading Japan itself. Morally, I'm in two minds about this. The firebombing of Tokyo killed hundreds of thousands and I struggle to see the difference between dropping one bomb or hundred. They all kill indiscriminately. The question we should be asking, I suppose, is whether Japan would have attacked Pearl Harbor if America had had nuclear bombs at the time.

'Good' that we are selling off our technological assets?

We could keep a sovereign base (with agreement). We have two in Cyprus.