Rabbit Foot Spasm Band frontman and devoted working class dad Stuart Macbeth on the "warring personalities and Euro babble" of the 'Brexit' debate.
Can you believe its 35 years since Bucks Fizz won the Eurovision Song Contest with Making Your Mind Up? The night should be remembered as a rare example of the UK actually winning something in Europe.
Cheryl Baker and Co bounded on stage in colourful tops. They looked like a giant pack of Haribo. Styling themselves on Abba from Sweden, the girls whipped off their skirts. Even with all that effort - we only narrowly beat the Germans.
Making Your Mind Up will get played a lot in the 101days between now and the EU Referendum.
So far the Referendum seems less a case of “Making Your Mind Up,” and more one of “In, out, in, out, shake it all about.”
ALL I see are warring personalities. All I hear is Euro babble. I don’t understand the “In” campaigners. Least of all our Prime Minister.
If anyone deserves to put a solid, fact based argument together, it’s you Dave.
Having flown over to negotiate EU reforms, and flown back like Neville Chamberlain after a booze cruise that’s gone badly wrong, surely you could compensate with a few solid stats?
What about the impact on the car industry? What about firm figures to help the Great British public make up their minds about Brexit?
Instead, when it comes to job losses, it’s all “it could do” and “it might do”. And that won’t do. Labour, who back remaining in the EU, seem to say nothing.
What irritates me most is the desperate scaremongering of “In” campaign.
Many ordinary people in this country are concerned about immigration. But in my experience, modern British people, of any ethnic background, are not racist. Their concern about immigration boils down to stuff like overcrowding. People want to live in a world where you can actually find a car park space outside Sainsbury’s on a Saturday afternoon.
How the Tories in the EU “In” campaign jump on this. “Vote out of the EU” they seem to say, “and we will be overtaken by migrants!” They play on the fears of people who will be voting on 23 June, and it’s a cheap tactic.
If we leave the EU, Middle Eastern men will not sneak through the Channel Tunnel undetected, raid our beach huts, and convert them to Islam. I promise – it won’t happen. This week, when the word “Armageddon” came up in a Tory argument, I spat my strawberry jam out.
How can you trust any industry or grassroots argument for remaining in the EU, when the people at the top predict Armageddon?
All you can do is to take the Eurovision Song Contest as your template. Attain some facts.
We’ve been in it for 58 years. We’ve lost 91 per cent of contests. We came second 15 times. For a country which produced Lennon and McCartney, we delight in getting trounced by Latvia. This is the EU experiment, expressed in a contest people can understand.
And yet, I’d still think twice about not taking part.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel