Sinkov, we would have to pay 20 billion euros as a leaving settlement even if we leave with no deal.

These are payments that we have already signed up to - and surely you are not one to renege on your responsibilities?

I retired last May and today I called in to see my old colleagues today.

No deal will be a disaster for them. 75% of trade is done inside the EU. The 45 people who work there come from 11 different countries - mainly EU. Their wages are good - they are experts in their field (IT).

Doing business with a EU country is brilliant - exactly the same as dealing with an English company, frictionless trade, no customs checks, full regulatory alignment. Delivery usually one or two days. And these customers/suppliers have been built up over many years. Trust takes time.

And that is why I get annoyed when I hear politicians spouting bollox. "It's a big world out there. We can replace our trade from Commonwealth/Asian/South american companies"

Let me tell you how much more difficult it is to deal with these countries.
Firstly, the paperwork and bureaucracy. We have to obtain up to 12 documents per shipment. And every country has different requirements. Certificates of Origin, Quality standards etc etc.
Kenya for instance. We have to fill in ten documents, and have the goods independently inspected before they can be shipped.
The Kenyan government then decreed that the wooden pallets on which the goods were shipped had to be treated to avoid beetles entering their country. Ballache.
But we still dealt with them, and have done so for over 10 years.

Then there is the distances involved. If we place an order with an Australian, Asian, Canadian, US company, inevitably, because of the size of the order, it will have to be shipped via sea freight. So we have to pay our money up front and wait up to 10 weeks before receiving our goods.
You can imagine the potential trouble trying to sort out faulty goods. And we are vulnerable during the shipping time to exchange rate fluctuations (which can work in our favour as well).
But we still trade with countries outside the EU - why wouldn't we?

It is not either trading with the EU or trading with the wider world, it is both. We spent years researching all the worldwide markets..but the EU is infinitely preferable for so many reasons.

Since the Brexit vote many many business partners of ours have told that, because of the loss of frictionless trade, customs checks, bureaucracy, regulatory alignment etc. that they are actively looking for an alternative to British suppliers. And i can't blame them one bit - we would be doing the same.

Can you remember what a mess our economy was in the 70's? contrast this to our economy before the financial crah in 2008 (nothing to do with the EU) We were booming and it looked like we were unstoppable. And much of this was because of our brilliant, free trade with the EU.

Believe me,trading wise, our country benefits much, much more from being in the EU than the 9/10 billion Euros per year.

Let's see where we are in a year, eh?