I’ve written a lot recently about the dreaded ‘Brexit’ and the pantomime it has and continues to be since the day the word ‘brexit’ was regrettably coined, it’s a comedy of errors that will it seems run and run, like one of the TV soap operas that are well past their use-by date but continue with mind-numbing banality… a word which derives, as much as it can, from its original context in ‘Grexit’, which referred to Greece proposing and then ultimately leaving European Monetary Union, though they do remain a member of the EU (European Union), the governing body that grew out of the Common Market established in 1957 from the Treaty of Rome and morphing into the EU in 1993, a year after monetary union was enacted as a voluntary Europe-wide replacement currency union (hence, the ‘euro’) of any member State wishing to join…
… phew, ok, we got that out of the way (for now), now where was I… oh yes….. the term Grexit is a catenation, albeit clumsy one, of ‘Greece’ and ‘exit’, in part as exit isn’t a Greek word but derived from Latin and now commonly an English word… Greece joined the monetary union at a time their economy was on shaky ground thinking it would bolster it but over a very short time find it ineffective, not least because taxes are anathema in Greece, so they then decided to pull out and reinstate their own currency and still their economy remains shaky, not least because taxes are anathema in Greece… a simplification admittedly but essentially so… and from this evolved the even more so calamitous catenation of ‘brexit’ and although I’m all for language evolving and being fluid this is a word I wish was never born…
… the UK, which includes Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, England and Gibraltar joined in 1973, or the Common Market as it was then, and last year in 2017, largely on the submissive whim of kowtowing to right-wing extremism and a vociferous anti-immigration lobby held a referendum on whether to remain in the EU or leave which, among a 72% turnout, resulted narrowly to leave, 51.9% to 48.1%… and so was adopted the term ‘brexit’, which sounds more like an unsavoury breakfast cereal overdosed with sugar, over-processed with preservatives and padded-out with dried milk…
… brexit itself being a misnomer as it implies just Britain and not the UK, but I suppose ‘UKxit’ wouldn’t have been as catchy, as like I said previously these islands contain four distinct countries and not simply as some in other parts of the world believe is all England… and ‘brexit’ has since been expanded from its Greece origins to imply leaving the EU entirely and not just a monetary union, of which the UK has never adopted….
… the word has grown linguistically and culturally like a disease, a parasite, a divider of peoples, a behemoth of destructive proportions, and is simultaneously used as a verb, “to Brexit”, “brexiting (the act of leaving) Europe”; a noun, “a Brexit deal”; an adjective, “a Brexit approach”; even a collective, “brexiteers” (advocates for leaving)… not to mention ‘brexititis’ (Brexit as seen as an illness, likely terminal), and ‘brexitologist’ (one who studies Brexit)… although I did make up those last two, but they could be……
… writing about it is like a purging, trying to get my head around the whole Brexit sham(bles), at the same time I feel my whole being groan and ache and crumble inwards at its pyroclastic momentum and corrosive fallout… it’s like trying to contain a jack-in-the-box as this tiny word is turning increasingly synonymous with immigration, intolerance, racism, insularity and worrying nationalism… worry not dear reader, not all my blogs from hereon in will be so burdensome, now time for coffee… … …
© 2018 robert greig
Like this:
Like Loading...
