As a Brit abroad post-Brexit, I wanted to wear a badge saying: ‘Don’t look at me – I didn’t vote for this!’ | Zoe Williams
As a Brit abroad post-Brexit, I wanted to wear a badge saying: ‘Don’t look at me – I didn’t vote for this!’ | Zoe Williams
28 comments
Not quite peak Guardian but pretty close.
I read it as Brexit is the reason my French is poor and the reason people don’t say merci anymore when travelling abroad.
Imagine being paid to write that level of garbage.
Christ! Imagine being that pathetic? She must struggle throughout life. Almost feel sorry for her if I didn’t suspect most of this has come from her imagination.
I voted remain but Zoe Williams is insufferable. Her entire column may as well be titled ‘I was banging on about this at an upper middle class dinner party last night, and for some unfathomable reason someone pays me to write it down and put it in the newspaper’
I’ve been abroad plenty of times since then and nobody has changed the way they act or talk to me. Most people don’t even mention it, I doubt the average person cares.
Bit self obsessed… no one cares
Obviously you’d have to translate the word on the badge into the language of whatever country you’re in though. Just so the natives don’t think you’re one of those ignorant Brits who don’t make any effort to learn the local lingo abroad.
Why? I don’t suppose the Europeans give a shit. Its our loss not theirs.
Zoe Williams has decent concepts but the finished article ain’t all that.
I’m abroad atm. No one has mentioned anything lol. Maybe it’s different for her, but sounds like she is being dramatic.
Public school girls are arguably even less self-aware than the boys!
What an insufferable bore. I voted remain but 6 years of articles like this are enough now.
Grow up Zoe
Jess Christ get a grip.
She sounds like a young teen who thinks that everyone else is looking at them and talking about them. Usually people realise that it’s worse; almost nobody is really that interested as they’ve got other things going on.
I live in France, Brexit has made zero difference to how the French interact with me. But it has made the bureaucracy more difficult.
I thought I was quite smart until I read that because I honestly have no idea what she’s trying to say. There’s not many Brits on spanish beaches? Vaping is frowned upon? What the hell is she going on about?
No one cares. I’ve lived in three euro countries, and spent a year travelling around the continent, all after the Brexit vote.
It was brought up once, when I was in a Mostar hostel, by a Spanish guy who lived in the UK and was rightfully pretty damn upset about it. That’s it.
This is Zoe self reporting that she has the same kind of GREAT Britain attitude that a lot of leavers had. No one actually cares about us that much in Europe. It’s, for the most part, no big loss to them. Just a fabulous self own on our part.
The USA talks more about UK politics than the EU does.
‘Doesn’t seem to know what to make of us’ we don’t give a shit Zoe, really.
Also Brit abroad. -havent met anyone accuse me of Brexit. Not sure many people care here.
Yo no voté por el Brexit
Je n’ai pas voté pour le Brexit
Ich habe nicht für den Brexit gestimmt
Non ho votato per la Brexit
Nobody is looking at you or cares, stop thinking the world revolves around you. The content of this article is next level whiny, entitled, self absorbed, arrogant and pathetic all at once.
What a wastrel. Go an enjoyable the time with your family and stop being clickbait.
No one in Europe actually gives a shit what you think about Brexit though. Hell I’ve occasionally started pretending to be a full on hard-brexit stereotype when abroad for a laugh, because people either see that I’m obivously taking the piss, or very occasionally riles up people who had anglophobic feelings in the first place who I was never going to get on with anyway. These self-hating windbags are honestly fucking pathetic and can come out with some outrageous shit at times. Saw one talking about the “obvious colonialist subtext of Three Lions” and it’s just like… get the fuck over yourself.
This is the most middle class, out of touch, article I have ever read.
Wearing a badge saying “don’t look at me” is the biggest sign saying “look at me”.
This. This is why brexit won.
> it somehow killed Anglo-French holiday cohabitation, which is why the four of us ended up the sole British family by a Tunisian beach, the only people for miles around who didn’t know whether Fanta was masculine or feminine, and were too thirsty to Google it.
Just bleach my eyes please.
I visit Slovakia a lot, like 3/4 times a year. And meet a lot of people and they hardly EVER mention Brexit.
Apart from when I was actually there during the vote (Flew out the evening on the day of the vote) and me and my friend being called Brexit Boys by our friends.
I wish people would stop referring to this as a British issue. When we Scots travel and tell them where we’re from we get commiserations and looks of pity. It’s like telling them you’re attached to England is like telling them you have a terminal cancerous tumour. Not too far off tbh.