Politics, Swiss style

A funny thing is happening around Lausanne. There are posters, everywhere, of a cartoon woman with her mouth open, screaming, and her hands covering her ears. There is a speech bubble that says "Schengen? Non!"

Schengen? What's Schengen?

Well, it's a joint agreement between so-called Schengen countries (i.e. the EU, mainly) on matters of border security, justice and migration issues. The Swiss are having a referendum on 5th of June on whether on not to be part of Schengen. The gun lobby are not happy bunnies, as this means waving ta-ta to their guns, in line with the EU's much stricter weapons legislation. The Left are twitchy about the centralised criminal database, and that people might use it to spy on ordinairy Joes instead. But whatever your politics, if you're a Swiss person, there is a debate to be had.

But why - here comes the rant - reduce all that to the simplest, stupidest scaremongering? A woman from a horror film screaming "Non!"? (Then again, maybe she'd just seen my Big Hair.) I got very annoyed by that "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" Conservative campaign, but at least in it they made statements about x or y where there was a 'because' implied. I didn't agree with them, but thanks for not treating me like a stupid person. Or at least not like a really stupid person.