Jonathan Gault, this is for for you. Do you consider your native Britain to be an "international laughing stock?"

Just think of it from a sports perspective. Most fans don't just watch the NFL or the Premiere League. They have a team they passionately root for. In reality, there isn't much of a difference between the Red Sox and Yankees - both are rich, entitled spoiled teams - but try telling the two fan bases that they are really the same thing and should just merge and it would be very much more efficient as you could save on overhead, office staff, medical, etc.

Britain has been in a downward spiral down since they conceded the War of 1812 to the colonies.

rojo wrote:

It's a light week in terms of actual athletics news so I'm searching far and wide for links for the hompeage this morning. I came across an article in The Independent where British journalist Tom Peck talks about how things have changed so much since the 2012 Olympics.

I couldn't believe how negative he was. Check this line out.

"We were on our way to becoming bitterly divided, politically banjaxed and an international laughing stock. A basket case of a country, hopelessly broken in two by dint of having asked itself a profound question, and returning an answer that has broken all before it."

Jon, do you agree?

Can someone tell how in the world Britain is viewed as "international laughing stock?"

I kind of agree (and I know many Brits who feel the same). Leaving the EU has been a huge mess. It's cost two prime ministers their jobs already, and now the guy in charge is one that many view as a joke. I mean I'd say that the US is a laughingstock because it's bitterly divided and we have a moron for a president. The UK is in a very similar situation.

Should do an assessment of the AW year end rankings published on the 19th. Drum up a bit of intelligent debate about message board posters opinions of distance runners.

There are so many problems with Brexit. First of all, it was done without a plan. It's like agreeing to an arranged marriage, if you were already married to a spouse that 48% of voters were already happy with. If the vote was for a specific Brexit plan it never would have passed, because a lot of people liked the idea of it but hate the reality.

People say that immigration was one of the top reasons for the way the vote went. I guess that's hard for me personally to understand as a descendent of immigrants in a cosmopolitan city in a nation of immigrants (and a few million Native Americans...). Tribalism is one of the baser instincts that modern societies aim to combat.

Trade with the EU makes up half of all of the UK's imports and exports, and it's hard to imagine a system that would be better for the UK than one that makes that free and easy.

The situation in Ireland is ridiculous too.

Good luck guys.

Sitting here in North Yorkshire, dark here at 4:30 pm. How Athletics Weekly survives in weekly print is quite amazing. Might out last Sports Illustrated as a weekly sports mag.

- Apple's CEO Tim Cook said, 'We are very optimistic about the UK's future, and we are all in.'

- James Dyson who created his own vacuum said, 'We will create more wealth and more jobs by being outside the EU'.

- Jaguar sales director Andy Goss said they 'are committed to ensuring manufacturing remains the backbone of the British economy'.

- Canada's trade minister said, 'We are already on track to have the UK and Canada have an even closer foundation for our trade relationship'.

- The CEO of Norway's oil fund said, 'We will continue to be a significant investor in the UK'.

- Barclays CEO Jes Staley said the UK 'will continue to be the financial lungs'.

- CEO of a £70.7 billion pension fund, Bourbonnais said, '...London is and will remain the financial centre of Europe.'

- UK General Electric's CEO said Britain was 'a good place to do business'.

- Anthony Bamford wrote, 'I believe that JCB and the UK can prosper just as much outside the EU'.

- Wetherspoon's Tim Martin supports it.

Leftists want to change society by bringing in more migrants who will work for a smaller salary, put a burden on the NHS, and put stress on the housing situation.

Like we care that a bunch of fascist leftists laugh at us? You’re a disrespectful punk.

actually many in the uk like boris that why he won a landslide

Jonathan Gault wrote:

I kind of agree (and I know many Brits who feel the same). Leaving the EU has been a huge mess. It's cost two prime ministers their jobs already, and now the guy in charge is one that many view as a joke. I mean I'd say that the US is a laughingstock because it's bitterly divided and we have a moron for a president. The UK is in a very similar situation.

Boris Johnson reciting a chunky passage from the Iliad from memory.

In Ancient Greek.

I kind of agree (and I know many Brits who feel the same)

Well the thing is more Brits disagreed when we had a vote, and the outcome of the General Election that's just been held reaffirmed it beyond question.

It's called democracy.

That's funny Americans 'not understanding' Brexit when you're the only country in the world that doesn't even take the United Nations seriously. Sure you'd be happy to be run by Angela Merkel and a bunch of unelected clowns in Brussels.

Little wonder you don't get Brexit if you think EU is just about 'free trade'. If it was just about free trade, Brexit wouldn't be such a complicated mess. Something like 70% of UK's laws are (or were) made by unelected, overpaid, foreign bureaucrats.

Britain is not an 'international laughing stock' any more than it was when it decided to be the only country to resist Hitler against seemingly impossible odds.

Brexit might prove to be the most important geopolitical event in the 21st century if (as likely) it leads the ultimate break up of the EU (and perhaps the end of the trend of globalism submerging national identities).

Rojo is drumming up political drama yet again. Happy Holidays, everyone !!!

I agree people are tribal; once they were also constantly armed & prepared to kill any trespassers. Equally intermarriage was allowed if the tribe found an outsider worthy.

Things have changed. Now survival depends on working together.

It’s this site that’s a laughing stock

Does anyone want to know what I think?

El Keniano wrote:

Does anyone want to know what I think?

Come on, hit us! Don't hold back.

Brexit will be the biggest boondoggle in the 21st Century.

I am following this very closely for two years. And I also learned a lot about the EU in that time.

The biggest takeaway is that the EU is the biggest peace project on earth. The EU is so much more than just a trade union. Since it's a big organization things sometimes get a little messy but overall the EU is a very efficient organization. That was also visible in all of these negotiations with the UK in the last years.

Brexit is the first looser out of this new era of fake news and an out of control socialmedia (facebook) where foreign interference led to different election results.

Soon we will see the real problems of Brexit when Boris Johnson will realize that he won't get a great Brexit deal. The best deal was the EU but that is over now. 2020 will be a year of disappointing negotiations and after that there are out, maybe even with a hard Brexit, which will have catastrophic results.

Let's not forget that the UK is the first country in history who gets rid of existing trade deals. And these are not just the trade deals with the EU. These include also all the trade deals the EU has with over 90 countries.

rojo wrote:

So is it crazy to think people are going to want to put a border around their own country, not melt their tribe with all of Europe? The very same feeling that made the Brits enjoy their Olympic success so much is why many of them voted for Brexit. They want to be a part of a unique team not a single European team.

I don't want to get political here but it amazes me that so many writers/politicians can't understand that the open-borders/one Europe type people are fighting against human nature where we're in tiny little clans throughout history. Intellectuals can argue we'd be better off if we were all part of "Team World" but all I'm trying to show is you are fighting human nature.

I get what you're saying here, but a person can consider themselves "English" and "European" at the same time. They're not mutually exclusive identities. The UK didn't cease to exist when it became apart of the EU. Just like Wales and Welsh identity still exists despite being in the UK.

Tribalism definitely is human nature, but what tribe people consider themselves apart of is constantly expanding. What the "Team World" people are really fighting against is stubbornness and fear of change. There used to be numerous city states in what is now Greece. The people in those places didn't consider themselves in the same group of people as citizens in near by city states. Now they are. Same concept all over the world. People used to only identify themselves by what neighboorhood of a town they lived in. Then it became what town they lived in. Then state. Now it's by country. The European Union experiment (and globalization in general) is just a continuation of this trend that has been going on for thousands of years. It's not a bad thing. I think people understand not every city should be its own country due to how incredibly inefficient that would be, but they're not willing to expand that logic.

There are obvious economic benefits to intergrating with your neighbors to allow easy movement of capital, people, goods, services, and ideas. I think trying to go against this is a bad idea that will leave places like the UK worse off than they could have been. I have a hard time believing they'll be able to compete on their own for business and talent in a 21st century globalized, inter-connected world against mega-economies like the US, China, the EU, and the rising India.

It will be interesting to see how the UK handles this in the coming years. Most likely what is happen is they'll become a tax haven. They'll probably ask to rejoin the EU in 20-30 years. My $.02

rojo wrote:

It's a light week in terms of actual athletics news so I'm searching far and wide for links for the hompeage this morning. I came across an article in The Independent where British journalist Tom Peck talks about how things have changed so much since the 2012 Olympics.

I couldn't believe how negative he was.

I can believe it. British journalists have a long history of being critical and negative about themselves, their sports heroes, and their country.

Check out the first time that Boris Johnson was on Top Gear. Clarkson said he was the opposite of a normal politician, the veneer of incompetence on the outside but intelligent on the inside.