Blog Post

Swexit

Becky Bond • May 27, 2016

Are EU sick of hearing about In or Out? Then join me for a 'Swexit'...

...A swift exit from any more television coverage about the EU.

Is there anything more crashingly boring than a presenteress in a bodycon dress, banging on/explaining what it means to leave or remain? The faux serious face twinned with the knowing nod and lean forward when a politician of any leaning spells it out 'in laymans terms' how likely it is that we will go to war if we don't tick the right box at the end of June.

The general glazing over usually kicks in around about the time of the first graphic. Sooner, if I've made inroads into the something sparkly. I just find myself in a trance, watching their over-fettled eyebrows straining to convey deep understanding of whichever gimp has been trotted out and plonked on the media couch in studio five.

How awful it must be, I fantasize, to get stuck next to someone like that at a media 'do'. How I'd be all smiles, as I dusted off a smoked salmon nibbly bit whilst sipping free vino and casually dropping something shockingly politically incorrect into the rah-rah, yah-yah conversation. Then (the fantasy continues), we only become bff's by the end of the night - as the presenteress weeps on my shoulder, admitting that all along, she just wanted people to think she was clever - and deep down she yearns to have a show like Kirsty Allsop's Christmas Nik Naks.

Almost as annoying as the TV politicos are the people who, having watched all this coma-inducing coverage, feel they have come to a balanced opinion on what should happen to the whole wide world. Acquaintances, whom you can normally get away with a conversation about last night's Breaking Bad/who's husband's the biggest b******/that new gadget for cellulite, suddenly feel compelled to ask me if I'm in or out. To which the answer usually is; 'depends which way they're shaking it about.'

Then there's all the bumf through the letterbox. Straight in the bin with the new pizza-cum-dog grooming parlour pamphlets and thinking-of-selling-your-house nonsense. Well, yes, I'd willingly give my house away in return for one day where nobody but nobody even thinks about the EU. Where the penalty for saying anything that rhymed with Europe (now you're thinking) was to have their genitals lightly roasted on a burning barrel of tar on the edge of the Gorbals circa 1948.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not going to not vote. No point the suffragettes going to all that hassle for nothing.

You see, I've had this discussion with my friends - who are all reasonably well educated. We have a clutch of degrees between us (OK, mainly from The University of Life or a northern polytechnic). But the point is, though we have varying political opinions, the only thing we want to know regarding the EU is this: which side do we have to be on to get the cheapest deal to Crete this summer?


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