the Irish 'no' to the Lisbon Treaty...

sewa · Post by **sewa** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 6:56 pm

...poses quite a big problem for Europe. Its not a decision I can easily understand, especially in a country that dependent on EU funds (at least in recent past) as Ireland.

It will be interesing to see what happens now...

JonSolo · Post by **JonSolo** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 3:46 am

Yea, I read that. I don't understand the full ramifications of it but it seems with everything else going on the world is coming unglued.

Solo

Post by **Sharp** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 3:48 pm

The reason why the no vote was so high is because most people had no idea what we were evening voting for. I'm one of them too. I have no clue as to what Lisbon is about.

Listening to the radio stations and tv its the same story nation wide.

Regard
Sharp

sewa · Post by **sewa** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 5:29 pm

The Lisbon Treaty (for our American friends) is a revised treaty that regulates the functioning of the European Union. The EU right now functions under the Nice Treaty. The Lisbon Treaty introduced some significant amendments like the EU minister of foreign affairs, diplomatic staff, permanent presidency and a lot more. Its a lenghty document as it regulates procedural aspects of the EU machinery in a great detail. For that reason its not easy to understand. Even professionals tend to specialize only in certain chapters of the Treaty, depending on the policy they're dealing with.

The complexity of the matter makes it relatively easy for eurosceptics to raise unfounded objections and spread unreasonable fears such as taxes, which the new Treaty supossedly allowed to harmonize (not true).

All that makes me think that projects like that should not depend on a public vote. A reasonable discussion is hardly possible when internal politics is involved, no matter Ireland, France or any other country.

sewa

RiotNrrd · Post by **RiotNrrd** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 6:09 pm

This is precisely why representative government was invented. The general public cannot be reasonably expected to read and fully understand highly technical and/or complex legislation. So it should fall to them to elect people (that they hopefully can trust) to represent them who can take the time to develop a well informed opinion and vote in their stead.

Obviously, this isn't a perfect solution (that whole "trust" thing can certainly be violated). But it's better than pretty much all the alternatives.

"Pure" democracy is a nice idea, but really only works well in small groups of people and with relatively simple choices. At a certain point it just becomes too unwieldy to have everyone vote on everything. So it's better to instead just have everyone vote for the people who will vote on the picayune details, and then let them do their jobs.

Post by **Sharp** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 7:31 pm

sewa wrote:All that makes me think that projects like that should not depend on a public vote. A reasonable discussion is hardly possible when internal politics is involved, no matter Ireland, France or any other country.

sewa

The problem there though is that there is no such thing as an honest politician. Our national radio stations take the piss out of them daily for the crazy and totally off the wall stunts they are pulling.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern ....

What a joke.
Unemployment is at it's highest here for years now and there is going to be a big bang yet. People are pissed off, so yeah, I can well imagine why the no vote got through.

Regards
Sharp.

ausser · Post by **ausser** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 4:12 am

Here are some fun comments about it - after the article blurb - scroll down.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/b ... _no_t.html

Some more things....

http://www.libertas.org/content/view/293/139/

But campaigners for a no vote mobilized under the efficient leadership of Declan Ganley, a businessman who argued that the treaty took power away from Ireland.

Ganley, who formed the group Libertas to campaign against the treaty, said that the vote would force the Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen, to renegotiate the treaty and secure a "better deal."

"We want a Europe that is more democratic, and that if there is to be a president and a foreign affairs minister, they should be elected," he said in an interview.

I agree with Ganely on the vote issue - I mean if the US president has to do it, why not the European president?
The whole, leave it to the officials thing, is a bit too east of Germany for my liking.

I also heard rumours about some type of interferance with schools in Ireland from brussles - media debate and presentation of the REAL issues regarding the constitutional change and EU were infuriatingly spartan by those to whom we pay taxes for RTE wages.

And no, I don't agree that non-civil servants can't understand pivitol legislation when the effort is made to present the points clearly, simply and of course, honestly.

Peace
Ausser.

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sewa · Post by **sewa** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 4:34 am

ausser wrote: The whole, leave it to the officials thing, is a bit too east of Germany for my liking.

What do you mean?

AnthonyB · Post by **AnthonyB** » Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:57 pm

And, just over 1 year on.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8288652.stm