Consequences of the Lisbon Treaty

twinQuins wrote: »

Can someone explain to me how voting is undemocratic?

No, no one can. Because it's not.

Lisbon was only one in a series of treaties designed to bring about a federal Europe.

Or in laymans terms it was us bending over a little bit further so the EU could screw us a little bit deeper.

zephyrz wrote: »

I for one was not old enough to vote at the time of the two referendums held for the lisbon treaty?

zephyrz wrote: »

I've been listening to Nigel Farage a lot recently and he has some good points about this if anyone is interested in researching it!

So you are what 18 or 19 years of age? And you are spending your spare time listening to Nigel Farage.

I call bullsh1t on this story.

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

You don't think 18 or 19 year olds can take an interest in politics?

Of course I do, I was quite the political nerd myself at that age.

But this just seems too obvious - new poster claiming quizzical interest in the issue to get a debate going, then making it clear they actually have a rather fixed and unwielding position, then recommending people go and research the teachings of Nigel Farage.

You know what, maybe it is all genuine and I'm just being a cynic. Carry on.

feelingstressed wrote: »

Minimum wage could have been €1.20 or so if we rejected it :eek:

That's some feat of revisionism there, nice one. I wonder if you'll start claiming now that we were told there'd be mandatory abortions for all if the treaty was rejected.

zephyrz wrote: »

But ignoring the peoples decision because its not the answer you want to hear is undemocratic!

The peoples' decision wasn't ignored. "Ignoring" the people's decision would have involved enacting the treaty anyway. Instead, the government of the time examined the reasons why the treaty was rejected, got legal guarantees from the EU to allay the fears expressed by the "No" voters, and then put it to the people again.
I would be all on the side of "they were taking the piss" if they did nothing and put it to the public again. But to be fair to them, showers of ****es and all as they were, they took the "No" campaigns from the first referendum, obtained all the necessary documentation and proof to show that their objections were unfounded or not possible, and then they asked the people again.

zephyrz wrote: »

Is it true the french and Dutch said no to the European constitution, and the EU just renamed it the lisbon treaty, so only Ireland would have to hold a referendum to accept it?

No. Or at least that's too simplistic a way of looking at it.
The constitution was rejected by those populations, and then the Lisbon treaty was created, strongly using the EU constitution as a basis, because it still contained a massive amount of useful and necessary stuff. It wouldn't have made sense to bin the constitution and start from scratch.

The reason Lisbon only needed a referendum in Ireland is because the powers it granted to the EU over member states is much smaller than what would have been granted in the EU constitution.

In reality the Lisbon Treaty hasn't and won't impact on the day-to-day lives of people. It was a high-level document full of mundane items about the functioning of the EU which should never have been put to referendum.

zephyrz wrote: »

I remember at the time the two main parties were in favour of it even though the people voted no the first time around! This to me seems very undemocratic!

Guarantee's were added and some terms were changed second time out. This wasn't like the Nice treaty where nothing changed and we were asked to vote again...

Undemocratic would be agreeing to it without a vote. The fact that we voted second time out for it doesn't make it undemocratic

Using the logic here, unemployment nearly trebled after the No vote.

Voting No trebled unemployment.

There have been plenty of jobs announced since the Yes vote but some people seem to think Lisbon was going to cure our construction and retail bubble and the resultant unemployment.