SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO

The age old British conversation starter has been replaced recently. Rather than awkward silences being filled with:

‘So the weather’s crap today isn’t it?’

I’m getting this kinda thing left, right & centre:

‘So what you voting then? In or out?’

And I do my best to bat them off. I tell them I haven’t made my mind up yet. I’m still weighing up pros & cons blah blah blah. Or sometimes I’m cheeky and say ‘wouldn’t you like to know LOLOLOL’. But the truth is I don’t really say an awful lot ’cause I haven’t got the first clue what I’ll be choosing on 23rd June. And quite frankly, I’m not 100% sure exactly what I’m voting for either.

There. I said it.

And I can guarantee I’m not the only one.

I think a lot of people have made their mind up based solely on an argument they’ve heard through the grapevine. Y’know, my neighbour said that if we stay in then we’re gonna have to take on the Euro, the NHS is going to combust and we won’t be able to eat spaghetti hoops anymore.

That’s not me though. I feel like a wally if I don’t know the whole story. I wanna know the in’s and outs of the whole predicament, no pun intended.

When I was at Southend for Girls, a Sixth Form where I stood out like a sore thumb, there was some important vote we had to make then. The school spent the whole day educating every student on the different policies and what all the jargon meant around the whole thing. It was bloody fantastic.

At the end of the day we left with a neat little book with all the pros & cons of each way to vote.

And that, my friends, is exactly what I need right now.

I tried to watch Question Time, but TBH it’s a hella lotta waffle in parts. I’ve received a lot of gumph through the post, but it looks a bit like propaganda. And of course, I’ve done a lot of what everyone does nowadays when they don’t know the answer to something; I’ve googled it.

And so, my friends, these are the main points that I’ve come across. Thought I’d share them with you and we can bumble through it together.

ARGUMENT TO LEAVE:

When I first heard the word ‘Brexit‘ I thought it was a person. Like a little, angry revolutionary with a tie around his head. Only tonight did I find out that it’s a merger of the words ‘British’ & ‘Exit’. Clever. Could be enough to sway me. Lols.

1. It’s costing us mega dollar. Apparently, it costs around £55m a day to be part of the EU Club. What the flippin’ hell? That’s the most expensive club to be a part of everrrr. I hope we get 1274 magical unicorns a year for that. Brexit, that person I invented, claims that leaving the EU will save us paying this silly fee and in turn, saves us money in the long run. Sounds fair.

2. Control of the borders. That contentious argument that keeps popping up in every discussion; a hot topic on Question Time. If we leave, we have more say about who can come into the country, and in turn this should relieve pressure on our strained NHS, schools and benefits service. Brexit, that rebel, say’s let’s reclaim control of our land. Like we’re Vikings. Let’s live like bloody Vikings.

3. Trade. And I’m not talking Pokemon cards (although I wish I was ’cause this one is the hardest point to get my head round). So ATM, our ridic fee to be part of the cool kids club means that we’re involved in ‘free trade’ with all our mates. But we wanna make new mates. We wanna go be mates with China and India and Brazil. We heard they’ve got shiny charizade cards. We wanna be part of that club.

4. Britain wants to be a sassy ‘Independent Woman.’ Appaz Europe is run by unelected secret squirrels. So effectively we’re letting unelected secret squirrels make decisions about anything as crucial as our healthcare system or as petty as the curvature of bananas. Uh huh, that’s a thing. Brexit says ‘lets be British and make British decisions’.

ARGUMENT TO STAY

Cue East 15’s ‘Stay’

*Baby if you’ve got to go away…don’t think I can take the pain*

1. The grass isn’t always greener. So we might wanna go be pals with other countries, but the majority of our trade at the moment is with countries inside the EU. If we leave, then we’re putting these relationships at risk. And we can’t just dump our chums and expect them to be amicable can we?

2. Continue frolicking around Europe like a backpacking bohemian. So yes, being part of the EU means that we have a constant influx of people into our country, but guess what? Us Brits like to dance across the borders of other countries too, drinking sangria into the sunset and skiing around France like a snow queen in an 80s shell suit. Not forgetting all the ex-pats that have just absconded to sunnier skies for retirement, scoffing their way through heaps of paella and tanning themselves up to the max.

So if we stay, we can continue to move around Europe as free as a bird, but we must also come to terms with the fact that so can other people. And the UK looks pretty ace to a lotta people across the way.

3. We’d be a small fish in a big pond. From what I can tell, we’re part of the biggest, baddest gang in town with all the power and probably all the shiny bomber jackets to match. Who’d wanna leave that behind? Leaving would mean turning our backs on our friends and thus all the mega power in the world. We’d have little influence, little power and no god dam bomber jackets. Big ol’ trade partners won’t take us seriously and won’t make us top priority. Or so I hear.

4. Your job could be depending on the EU. Apparently, apparently, apparently. 3.5 million jobs in Britain are linked to the EU. This fact has been known for quite some time. Leaving could have a negative effect on these jobs. But no one can actually tell us how many jobs would be at risk if we left. So this point is kinda void. It’s like me saying ‘Oh don’t go over that hill ’cause a bear might eat you’. Well it might. But it might not.

5. The price of wine will skyrocket if we leave. Shock horror. Better start bulk buying people. Wink wink. But fo’ real, it is suggested that the price of alcohol will go up if we leave our EU gang.

 

Obvs there’s a hundred and one other reasons for and against, and they’re all intricately tied together in a web of argument that makes my head hurt. These were just the ones that kept coming up time and time again that I felt were worth a mention.

And come on, no one really knows how it will go either way and we sure as hell aren’t gonna see any big changes overnight. We’re playing a long game people.

But just to be clear; the aim of this post isn’t to sway you one way or the other, but rather just to get you thinking about the subject itself.

Think long and hard and please, please please don’t forget to vote.