Lisbon: One Week On, Anyone got Buyers Remorse?

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

If there is another referendum i am going to vote no. What do these Euro dictators not understand about the word NO. If we had a yes vote would they make us do the referendum again? Absolutly not.

Explain to me how they are Euro dictators?

All this ignorant talk of dictators, fascism and Naziism from some people on the No side is what generates the condescension from some people on the Yes side.

If there is another referendum and you think voting no is the right choice then vote no. It's not that big a deal. They're not going to have a referendum every week until they get the answer they want like some sensationalists would have us believe.

andrew wrote: »

Creating a document which doesnt require referenda isn't undemocratic. Democracy doesn't mean that everyone gets a vote on everything. TBH I don't think we should've gotten a vote on Lisbon. The govt. should have done what they're elected to do and made the decision for us. Which they could have if they wanted, but thats a different kettle of fish.

anything which changes the constitution of the country MUST be voted on by the people

rossie1977 wrote: »

yet germany are in a recession for what seems like donkeys years, france has it problems with immigration and italy has corruption at every turn, i think they have enough problems of their own to deal with

and even without them running the show we manage do quite well in human development index, economic freedom, quality of life and sustainablity interestingly enough, well ahead of germany and belgium in all those areas

Any links for Germany being in recession?

Btw, going on the No vote, Ireland has it's problems with immigration.

I can see why France would, with colonies etc. but a country that exported people for decades, I don't know!

CtrlSource wrote: »

Please someone correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't recall the same negative rhetoric being directed at the French & Dutch 3 years ago when they ruled out the Constitution.

Well 6/7 countries ratified the constitution afterwards, including Luxembourg by referendum.

Given the petulance of the YES vote and the EU bureaucrats, look at the claims:

1. The member state's governments were democratically elected to represent their people and in ratifying the treaty they were simply applying their mandate.

Were they? Were they all elected on the basis that the people supported the ratification and didn't require or expect to be consulted? Or is it possible that they assumed a mandate for themselves without consulting the people? The UK is a case to point -- a country where the people are in general hostile to any further interference from the EU, were promiosed a referendum, which was then scrapped as the government knew the NO vote would be overwhelming. That is not democracy, and if it is what the EU is to be based upon then the EU will continue by definition to be undemocratic.

2. Anyone who didn't understand the treaty should not have voted.

In a true democracy, when a group seeks election to run the country, people don't make their voting decision in the complete understanding of every policy proposed. They know that in the term of the elected government there will occur issues that could not have been forseen at the time. Therefore they vote having decided that the group they elect will truly represent their interests and will consult them again in the event of any issue that involves major changes to their way of life or government. In other words, a referendum or a general election. Therefore to say that anyone who didn't understand Lisbon should not have voted is to also say that in general elections virtually no-one should vote.

3. Lisbon was simply a tidying up exercise to make the EU more efficient and didn't threaten democracy. Rather, it strengthened it.

By drafting the treaty in such a way as to permit the EU to make future substantial changes to its mandate without any further consultation by referenda is not democracy. It is democratic suicide for the people. It is always possible to make an organisation more efficient by structuring it to have no requirement to consult. That is how boards of directors run companies acting on a mandate from their shareholders, and employees accept that in return for their pay. However, in the case of government the people PAY instead of being paid. They are the shareholders not the employees. It looks to me that many in the NO camp wanted to be shareholders and not employees.

4. A lot of very clever people spent seven years drafting the treaty so it's idiotic to reject it because you didn't understand it.

As said in an earlier post here, the length of time in drafting is no measure of the quality. In any case, Lisbon was a very limited redraft of the EU constitution and it only took two years in preparation because it made few significant changes to that which had been rejected by France and Holland. In business equally very clever people draw up agreements between companies, and it's suprising how often one party finds out later that it has been screwed because it didn't carefully scrutinise the work of the very clever ones. From my perspective, the more clever the people I am dealing with the more careful I become.

5. We will be pushed out into a backwater of Europe now, and we will lose credibility and the support of the EU.

There is little evidence that our 1% of the EU population ever had any particular credibility or influence over its direction. What we actually received was a mass of regulation designed for the purposes of the large European mainland countries without any consideration of whether or not it was relevant to Ireland. Just as one example, we gave up control of our interest rates to the ECB so that when we suffered from rising inflation our government could not carrect it by that means. The ECB rates were set to control the economies of France and Germany, who then needed low interest rates, and so that is what we too got. We are now just beginning to experience the effects of that on our economy. A backwater begins to have some attraction.

6. The EU has delivered peace throughout Europe and so should be supported in it's development and expansion.

No it didn't. It simply stopped Germany having another go at France had they chosen to, but there is no evidence that the Germans had any desire to try that again. Equally there is no evidence that any other EU country had aggressive intentions to another. The EU didn't deliver peace if no-one planned war.

7. The EU turned Ireland from a basket case into a thriving economy and should, therefore, be supported through Lisbon.

Did it? It essentially took control of our economy through the ECB, but it didn't attempt to tailor it to the needs of the country. Instead it allowed rampant inflation, interest rates that were dangerously low in a time of local inflation, an a resulting wild over growth of the property market. The Celtic Tiger has now died through over indulgence and we can return to our basket.

Personally I am a firm believer in a common European market with no barriers or tariffs, but that doesn't mean I want to hand over control of my business or my country to that market. That is not normally considered good business sense.