The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #111998 Message #2365775
Posted By: GUEST,JTT
14-Jun-08 - 09:37 AM
Thread Name: BS: Lisbon Treaty: Ireland votes NO
Subject: RE: BS: Lisbon Treaty: Ireland votes NO
I am absolutely pro-EU.
Ireland *was* the poorest country in Europe, and the wonderful help we got from the EU certainly did help to lift us out of that.
(In exchange, they got our fishing rights, the richest in Europe, and their lunatic Common Fisheries Policy has left the seas denuded of fish, but for the dead bodies thrown back by the giant ships that vaccum up the whole sea bed, and throw back any fish outside their 'quota', dead.)
We are also grateful to the multinational companies that came and gave jobs when we had few. Now, of course, they're fleeing to somewhere cheaper, but let it pass.
The reasons we were to vote 'yes' seemed strange to me. The politicians said it would be impossible for 27 ministers to reach a consensus on every question, and so the number of permanent ministers (one from each country) had to be cut to 18.
What? Twenty-seven grown-up men and women can't negotiate and reach a consensus?
Then there were the sneaky bits about common defence policy and common taxes that no one wanted to explain. Some people denied they were in there; some said "Oh yes, but thye don't mean *that*".
Now the Eurocrats, furious at their will not being followed, are saying "Puh, the other 26 countries have ratified it" - not their people, but their parliaments - "and so they can go ahead and leave Ireland outside".
Showing their true colours, eh?
I even heard one person say on the radio that "Germany doesn't have referendums, because of their experience with the Third Reich". What???