What if we voted no to Lisbon again?

ShooterSF wrote: »

Ah see that's better. Now your not claiming we should leave but that the other nations should gang up and kick us out. Thankfully people with that opinion won't get their way as you can't kick a county out of the E.U.

i didnt say i think it will happen i said they should do it. they should do it as they obviously believe that the treaty is the best thing for their country and they shouldnt let a tiny country of 4million dictate the lives of hundreds of millions?

No link huh?
Sure there's polls right here on boards that show a strong no.
See the "Lisbon 2: prepare to bend over and recieve ur destiny!" thread on AH.

ill take your suggestion to use ah as a credible source of opinion as a joke...a good one though. your link is more than a month old the report said these polls happened last week ill try and find it for you

PeakOutput wrote: »

i didnt say i think it will happen i said they should do it. they should do it as they obviously believe that the treaty is the best thing for their country and they shouldnt let a tiny country of 4million dictate the lives of hundreds of millions?

Ok. Then I'll ask again do you thing France and Holland should have gone when they rejected the Constitution?

Scofflaw wrote: »

There's two absolute certainties about an EU treaty referendum in the UK - that it will be a No, and that it will have nothing whatsoever to do with the treaty.

That's a bit unfair of you the prejudge the citizens of the UK's actions.

This is another one of those statements that is unfortunately rendered meaningless by a failure to distinguish between the EU as an organisation/entity and the EU member states. The EU as an organisation probably can't even be meaningfully said to "want" Lisbon, since it shakes up the way they do things. The other member states, on the other hand, including the current UK government, do want the reforms in Lisbon - but can't do anything to preclude or provoke a referendum either here or in the UK.The current UK government is quite willing to prevent the probable next UK government from running a referendum. That's internal UK politics, though, and absolutely nothing to do with the EU.

Based on the prior form of the Tories, Cameron must be pretty certain that Lisbon 2 will pass here...but then, I am perhaps a little cynical about the Tories.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Maybe I'm being the cynic now but I have a feeling the other member states of the E.U along with the current U.K government came up with the solution where they don't have to pass the treaty individually again in an effort to circumvent the probable next government from giving the people of the U.K what they want (assuming they elect the torries on said promise) i.e a referendum.
I doubt it was the U.K's idea alone. So maybe I shouldn't use the term E.U. rather the other member states are working to circumventing the people of the U.K from getting a say on the treaty, something it now appears they want, because those member states dont like the probable result of it.
Now that's not in the spirit of the situation.

Scofflaw wrote: »

I don't think it has anything whatsoever to do with the possibility of a UK referendum, since UK referendums aren't even binding (if the Tories actually made good on the promise). It has a lot more to do with the domestic politics of all member states - in every case there were and are groups who either oppose the EU, or oppose whatever the government is favouring, and who have had to be fought down, appeased, outfoxed, and so on. So, yes, they're not interested in going through the necessary deal-making, consensus-building, legal challenges, and outright silly-buggery that would be involved, if there's any route that doesn't involve it.

I can only presume you feel that this is in some way wrong, and that it should be difficult?

cordially,
Scofflaw

I don't see it as the same situation though. In those cases the oppositions are in the minority and they can bypass them as such but this is the point of democracy. Would you rather we just get rid of oppositions and let an elected government do what they want unquestioned?

Anywho back to my point. Most Yes voters argument that other countries don't have referendums is they dont want them and they elect representatives on issues and their representatives support the Lisbon treaty. Up to this point that's a solid argument, however, at the time Labour were elected they promised a vote on the then Constitution. That obviously never happened as the Constitution was dropped. However it means that Lisbon wasn't an agenda when they were elected. Now it is an agenda it looks like the majority (which is the difference to the other member states domestic issues) will elect a government on the promise of a say on Lisbon. Therefore, the majority of citizens of the U.K want a referendum and therefore yes I do feel they should get one. It's not about making things difficult, it's about doing what's right in a democracy.
Now the problem is that the member states that renegotiated the Lisbon treaty with Ireland were aware of the situation and made an effort to circumvent the want of the majority population of one of it's member states because they fear they will reject the treaty.
I consider that unethical. Surely if it appears that the majority of a member state would like a say on the treaty other member states should respect that. After all the treaty is only meant to be passed on the support of every nation surely it does no harm to allow the U.K to clarify their support or lack thereof for it if it looks like they want to.
I can only assume you feel that the will of a majority populace of a nation should be circumvented in favour of the will of other member states governments.

Of course this all on the basis that a Conservative government is elected.

RedPlanet wrote: »

It's a good point ShooterSF.

It's like we are being rushed to the polls again in order to prevent our compatriots in the UK from having their own say.
Highly unethical.
Why don't we delay our referenda until after the UK election?
Since the Tories have promised a referenda on Lisbon, surely the democratic thing to do is to allow them their vote.

On the basis that their vote is more important? That we should take turns? No - on the basis that they will almost certainly say No.

Also - "compatriots"? It means "fellow country men".


regards,
Scofflaw

RedPlanet wrote: »

One point is that we have Scofflaw here telling us that it's the NO side that wants people to vote on issues other than the Treaty. And claims that that's what the UK will do if they get a chance to vote on it.
While here i've posted a link from the horse's mouth, that indicates it's actually the YES side that doesn't want people to vote on the text of the Treaty.
Now you are offering a rationalization as to why people shouldn't vote on the text of this treaty.
That's your perjogative. But don't criticize the NO campaign if they do the same.

We are part of EU, the rules of that organ mean they can't chuck us out.
So we've nothing to fear in that respect.
All those other countries could attempt to create a entirely new EU, but call it something else; specifically to work around us, but i think that's unlikely and is just scaremongering from the YES side.

The difference bewteen the Yes and No side in this respect is that what Martin is advocating makes sense and Ireland's place in Europe is relevant to the Lisbon Treaty and vice versa. The No side, on the other hands, want us to vote No because of some domestic policy of the government, because of how some other European model of democracy works, or because of myriad reasons which are represented as being in the Treaty but aren't.

I'm just going to throw it out there. I'm aware it will be probably interpreted as a rant. But I'm trying to put my finger on something here, the which explanatory work can probably only end up sounding radical. So humour me.

Earlier on, Scofflaw compared the offer of Lisbon to the offer of an improved health insurance plan, the likes of which no sane person would want to turn down, assuming that they lived in a society similar to our own.

The moral of that short drama was that the only possible reason that our belligerent hero might turn down the salesman (and hence, act against his own interest) was out of ignorance, and a cocktail of other irrational sentiments, such as a misplaced suspicion of official language, etc. which, I'd think I agree, bears some resemblance to the powerfully incompetent Irish electorate (although, read on for conjecture on where the powerful incompetence of the Irish electorate comes from).

I just wonder whether the allegory is appropriate. I wonder whether Lisbon really is comparable to an improved insurance policy which, despite some compromises, represents a net increase in utility. It seems to be assumed that staying within the EU is completely desirable, because that's the only way to continue on a path that Ireland ought to continue (ie. prosperity, etc.) and that a persistent problem among the NO party is the refusal to acknowledge that continued Irish prosperity and unconditional EU membership must stand or fall together.

I'm not for a moment trying to suggest that they don't come together. But I wonder whether continued prosperity, along the path that we have been following, the large part of which we owe to EU membership, is really as desirable as it is assumed it is.

I don't know, but I for one have been watching the recent and continuing financial disaster with a fair amount of satisfaction. It is like watching the vindication of my deep seated misgivings about the world I have found myself living within. Rampant, short-sighted financial capitalism, I now learn, must expect periods of disaster like the one we're going through. They are periodic. Governments have been equally short sighted, and come in for much criticism in that regard, or in fact... is it that the landscape is so fiendishly complex a system that the level of freedom any government might have had to stave off what's now happening is indeterminately small? That it's more a matter of Russian Roulette than any game of skill. And when I look at the people elected to government in most representative democracies, I can't help but feel there is a grain of truth to that.

And it seems to me that wherever I care to look in detail within the organisational structures of the Irish state, most of our vaunted prosperity has been just utterly utterly wasted. It's unconscionable. The billions wasted in arbitrary restructuring of health boards that have become more of a hindrance on the ground than the overburdened antecedent systems. The millions in government funding to universities that have been squandered on swelled administration, whole fleets of human resources management that only impedes educational purposes, and corporate-style PR campaigns to give the appearance that an improvement has been made.

The superexpansion of wasteful bureaucracy. The vast amounts of money sunk into infrastructure in the Dublin area which has only seen driving within the city become completely untenable, public transport become more complex, user-unfriendly, wasteful and expensive than it was 30 years ago, while the organisations in control of our public transport assets remain immune to transparency or accountability, closing ranks with their workers to defend a regime of inefficiency and wasteful laziness. The stupid amount of money spent on frivolities.

The wasteful chatter of local government, where commissioned reports and planning proposals soak up millions (millions!) of euro without any eventual enactment, while career politicians surreptitiously support the encroachment of corporate interest at the expense of their constituents in anticipation of goodwill benefits. The lavish splendour of environmental, architectural, gastronomical and otherwise perks enjoyed by our elected officials, not excluding the regime of high salaries, all-inclusive expense allowances (e.g. cosmetic beautification of media conscious government leaders is not, and never ever will be, a valid expenditure) and the liberal improvements made to the grounds of the seat of government. The inexplicably random, ad hoc public works, that has led to continuous road modification and construction without an apparent shred of logical & prescient systematization, such that our expensive roads and streets still undergo disruptive keyhole surgery, which still does not alleviate the infrastructure crunch in gas, electricity, broadband, water, sewage and television.

Everywhere I look, I see institutionalized, trained, intransigent incompetence. It seems to me one of the most objectionable facts about our recent wealth that we have been thereby disposed to waste more money than we ever have before. It's just criminal. In fact, it may be literally criminal, since corruption and mismanagement of funds seem to have revealed itself across the board, from the government to the financial sector to the planning sector, the world over.

What are the advantages? I have seen, during my conscious political life, an education system I was only just learning to understand was in fact valuable and vital to the intellectual wellbeing of this state substantially disimproved, and hamstrung. Institutional PR proclaims that we have become more "competitive" on the world stage. In fact, quite the opposite is true. I have seen a staggering public health scheme and medical establishment based, admirably, on good social principles worsen and worsen because of, well, a rainbow of problems: hesitance, indecision, incompetence, bureaucracy, ignorance, denial, careerist political pragmatism and bull-headed libertarianism.

I've watched the cultural blight of other English speaking countries: celebrity culture, cronyism and cretinism, populist ignorance and commercial interest-driven tabloid demagoguery, all take hold as the natural outgrowth of unchecked and directionless consumerist boredom. The ancient heritage and natural environment of this body of land have been left to fend for themselves.

What are the benefits? I don't see them. We are richer... so we can buy DVD boxsets at Christmas, and feed our children too much, spend far more on houses than anything is ever worth and contribute, cumulatively, every Friday and Saturday night, to the public health crisis that will arise when the abusive, and yet socially acceptable drinking habits of a spiritually impoverished Irish population with two much disposable income starts to manifest as diseased organs down the line.

We are entitled to squander our gains on consumer diversions, and let our collective civic and intellectual faculties atrophy, and read broadsheet newspapers that are now no better or truthworthy than the tabloids, and grow so fat and ignorant that our appreciation of the civic and political institutions that have given us all of this boisterously wasteful and complacent wealth rises not an inch over simplistic and obfuscatory sloganism. Collectively, it is far more attractive for us to make believe, to spin a more exciting story about what's going on out there in the real world (which means no more than the world outside of Sky Sports), so we get all puffed up about "neutrality" and "commissioners" and self-righteously believe ourselves to be fighting the good fight against some "elitist" common enemy in Europe when we march out to vote on a document none of us has ever even looked at.

This powerful collective stupidity rationalizes hypocrisy... it's ok to vote blind on a treaty that nobody's ever read. It's ok to get involved in democratic processes without really understanding them, because it's "our right." It's ok not to understand the discourse on rights, or how to use them, or what the duties incumbent on their uses are, because, hey! they're rights! And they're ours. That must be good, right?

We feel alright about this because cretinism as regards civic duty and political process is the norm. Everyone grows up hearing other people ignorantly spout about "the people" and "the government" and so on. And so everyone starts their political reasoning in a bubble of conventional wisdom, which isn't, as it turns out, worth spit. But that's what drives our political order. That's the hot air that lifts the balloon of populist democracy in this country. That's the supposedly rational electorate.

The people we put in charge of this country are given a mandate by mass behaviour trends under the influence of bullshít. It's refined bullshít, too. It's so far from being not-bullshít you could fertilize "the desert of the real" with it. And in fact that's what happens. So, we happily gobble our own bullshít up in daily newspaper-sized portions.

I think consumerism putatively funds the cretinization of the electorate. Not to say that the Irish electorate was ever in particularly fine shape, but it certainly doesn't help when, in the absence of anything else, the prime goal of our lives is to amass wealth that we can then spend on commodities. We are supposed to want commodities. We are supposed to cultivate an urbane interest in the diseased "entertainment" products that pass for culture, or develop a disinterested aesthetic need for a different car every year. Our desire for these commodities is seen as a necessary impetus for the economy. If we don't spend, the economy flaccidifies. So now we're buying this shít so that the economy doesn't droop. But the economy supposedly is good because it justifies our wealth, and our wealth, in this social order, is perceived as good because it enables us to buy Nintendo Wii's and Dutch Gold and Dunnes Stores Home Store products and sex toys and Mercedes and carpets. And meanwhile, we're so exhausted by the effort of maintaining employment towards these ends, (three hour commute anyone?) and so diverted by the use of such frivolities, that we relinquish any chance of being the informed credible collective body that democracy demands we be in order for it to work properly. It's ok to get all hot and bothered over the nebulous possibility that the Lisbon treaty will make us all have to have abortions (or, for a different electorate, that the first credible black presidential candidate is, in fact, a gay-loving, communist, Islamo-fascist, terrorist, Hitlerite, non-national, white eyed devil, or alternatively, a Messiah figure!). That's ok, because who has time to actually read about these things, or think about them? Reading is for the Sports section, or the odd foreign language film, and thinking is for lawyers and philosophers. Politics should be easy, simple, and consumable in ten second soundbites! Anything else is undemocratic.

This Western democracy is asleep. In fact, that's what financial capitalist Western democracy has come to represent to me. A citizenry asleep, dreaming dreams of Blu-Ray and faux-scientific detox schemes, and the Telegraph and Paris Hilton and diverting political fictions like nationalism and liberalism, and almost veritably annoyed when it is shaken for an opinion on something important, surfacing only enough to mumble a vindictive opinion, half-based on indignation, and half on the content of its dreams, that is passed into law before it nods off again. And all around a sleeping beast called reality which shows every sign of waking up every few decades, and when it does, rips everything to shreds: the preface to everyone else's rude awakening.

I am sure a clamour of voices will say, "sure, but maybe you should go live in a 3rd world country, then." But that's sort of close to the bone, really isn't it? Because our membership of the in-crowd, which in guaranteeing our fiscal advantages entitles us to our 30gb of iTunes downloads a month, and our subscriptions to Rolling Stone and Playboy, and a surplus of luxury processed materials that don't deserve, scientifically speaking, the name of "food," is precisely an international world order which, driven by the sort of egoism that is sacred in our most hallowed economic philosophies, monopolizes resources, exploits foreign markets, mobilizes national governments and military to interfere and destabilize foreign governments in service of national interests, passes into international law restrictive intellectual property regimes that work directly against the free exchange of information, and stand in the way of the proper administration of key problems in third world countries, and generally perpetuates, alongside the defeatist, mock-apologetic hand-wringing of world leaders, the phenomenon of "the third world."

All the while we appreciate our putatively stolen wealth by flushing it down the toilet. It is possible, in this country, to be seriously annoyed at someone else because there is a dispute about whether we'll watch HOUSE MD or BSG tonight. What sort of conditions have to be present for that sort of ludicrously marginal concern to seem important? In what sort of diseased stupor do we spend our lives, that we could waste calories of precious energy being annoyed about something so utterly irrelevant? No. "Go to live in a third world country" isn't really a valid riposte. The third world isn't the alternative to our way of life. It's, in no small part, the outcome, the side effect, the effluent.

And this is the status quo that we ought to be preserving by voting YES, and weathering this economic storm, so that we can carry on as before? This is a contemptible status quo. Since I became old enough to think, I've felt that there was something contemptible about the society I live in. This was initially a disembodied anxiety, and a resentment that simple things, like bus timetables and college administrations, didn't work properly, and that getting educated to get a job to get money, although the default life-trajectory, didn't seem particularly pleasing a prospect.

Education brought the joy of learning for its own sake, and the joy of finding out that the idealisms that underpin the political order of our time are not corrupt, are not bankrupt... that they represent respectable and admirable ways of conceiving the world, and trying to shape it. But it also brought with it the sad realization that few people really understand this, and that most of society is patently ignorant of how democracy is supposed to work, and happy and intransigent in that ignorance too. I discovered the possibility that I was not, in my earlier teenage resentment, just some crank who doesn't like the way things are... the possibility, reinforced by respectable streams of thought, that our society is, in fact, just rotten, just broken and contemptible.

It allowed me to understand (but not appreciate) the inarticulate rage that comes out of the East to us, lethally throwing itself, without much effect, on the symbolic centres of our social order, and in the process bringing about a despicable loss of life. And to understand (but again, not appreciate) the restless, destructive decadence that sanctioned with equivocity, in our public spheres, random and senseless disproportionate wars in other parts of the world: the equivalent of Robocop, in the grip of mid-life angst, getting drunk and picking random, meaningless, and yet alarmingly decisive fights with strangers.

And here goes. It makes me despise it all. My political sympathies, when they are called for, are expressible neither in the inchoate concepts of "left" nor "right." I don't care much for the any socialism that could foster itself in such relative comfort as we have... we're not entitled to any sense of moral stature that way. Equally, the gritty realism of liberal and libertarian strands of political thought are unpalatable, since they start from premises I consider already misguided. I am not partial to the gestural commitment to international aid, since any effort that might be sanctioned in our climate is no more than an appeasement of our scant public conscience. Democracy, as practiced, isn't worth the paper its elections soon enough won't be conducted upon. I'm not partial to decision making in the interests of the state, because the state comes from the now forgotten procedural unity of the people, and the people behave as a spoiled child, incapable in their complacent ignorance of even understanding their political surroundings enough to collectively prolong their fiscal good fortune, the enjoyment of which has afforded them the luxury to become so lazy and ignorant in the first place.

Seems to me like the NO in the last referendum was a consequence of the "fortune" that Ireland has found itself with over the last few years, (not that the YES campaign, by and large, was any less ignorant, or fought any more substantially with reference to the actual treaty) and it seems like if we're collectively ignorant enough to vote ourselves out of what most people regard to be a good thing, then we don't deserve that good thing. Why would I take a side in a sideshow such as the last referendum? While its issue was, indeed, political, the national experience of it was mostly nothing to do with real world politics. Involving myself in it would have made me either a party to the partisan hysteria on either side, or (because I did actually read it) a civilly responsible drop in civilly irresponsible waters. So I abstained, while still being pretty well informed about the treaty, and having a good idea of how I would have voted if the hope of a rational decision on it through public referendum wasn't a lost cause. This seemed to me more politically significant, more decisive, more responsible, than listening to Declan Ganley, or Charlie McCreevy, getting belligerent in the pub, and then voting on blind principles or intuition. So, I don't find there is an outlet within the political sphere for my political sympathies. Whenever I enter the political sphere, my foremost sentiment is alienation.

No... I think I hate the whole damn thing. In full consideration, over a life of trying to get some perspective on all of this, some inside wisdom, the most consistent and rational political sentiment I can muster to expression is antipathy to the whole project. Over the past decade, I have lived in this society, all the while despairing in the belief that nothing would ever, could ever, challenge its inertia. And lately I've realised I was wrong, and that the biggest challenge to the current world order is itself, is its own lamentable lack of foresight, scruples and rational direction.

So I'm watching the world order undergo a momentary falter, and I'm cheering it on, and I'm hoping it's more than everyone else hopes it is, and secretly relishing the prospect that the whole contemptible mess would, quivering and rupturing from its centre out, shake itself to bits. Maybe then, we'd have to do some sober thinking about where all of this is headed, and why our present world order is unsustainable, untenable. I think that's important. It seems to me that there's a much bigger sleeping beast, this time named "long term reality," representing a maxed-out world population in 2060, rising sea-levels from melting polar regions causing mass migration from populous coastal urban centres , and a collapsing ecosystem, energy shortages, food scarcity, and the information feudalism that follows from the intellectual enclosure movement that currently enjoys support in the world courts, etc etc etc.

So, and while I may have already expressed myself colourfully, I hope to express this as cordially as possible, and in a fashion as contributory to dialogue likewise, when I hear arguments to the effect that being a signatory to the Lisbon Treaty is "necessary" to perpetuate "progress," to prolong a status quo, or to prevent things from deteriorating, while I tend to think that to the extent that one might want these things this is true, I can't but feel that these vaunted goals are of equivocal merit. I'm really not sure I want "progress," the maintenance of the status quo, or to protect things from going to hell, the current order, in which the Irish electorate participated so arbitrarily in the Lisbon Treaty Referendum, being of so little pleasantness to me. I'm not for a moment suggesting that this is the reasoning behind the NO verdict last year. More is the pity. (Then we'd have a rare thing: an electorate worthy of democracy.) And I tend, in my assessment of the treaty to agree with the more informed posters here who have tended towards a YES. But I'm just not sure that, politically speaking, I want the same things, and the urgency of the present situation, in which we are presented, in that UCD document, with four supposedly undesirable possibilities, just doesn't seem to me particularly intoxicating.

yours in dialogue,
Fionn.

Dear Lord that was a superb post Fionn. Its rare a post that long can hold its own from start to finish so fair play.

I do agree with most of it too. But I couldn't help but have one question rattle around in my head while reading it.....

If, as you say and as I believe to be true, the electorate are incapable of playing their role in democracy in the way that they should and are wholly incapable of asking themselves the important questions, and/or taking the time to give them the thought they deserve, why is it that some of us are? What is it about society as a whole that is so much more different to you or I (or many others here on boards) who bother to think these things through? Where do we get our sense of curiousity, justice, civic duty or whatever you want to call it from? And do you feel that sometimes it would nearly be nicer to be like the rest of them.

I'm a problem solver, it's what I do, both professionally and socially. Yet I don't see a fix to this problem. I've come to the conclusion (maybe its the same as yours) that it is going to take a truly catastrophic eventuality to wake people up. But even at that how long before they drift off again? I used to say that utopia is an ideal we will never reach, but that doesn't mean we should ever stop trying. I'm beginning to wonder about that nowadays.

If you look at the sort of people many of us would aspire to be like, the Martin Luther Kings or Nelson Mandellas of the world, these people succeeded in bringing about lasting change, but only in a time where those who stood up were affected by sustained, long-term and stifling adversity. By comparison these economic issues are merely social inconveniences, albeit adversity on an individual level.

The same is true for anything political in the Western World. There is no real adversity at all. And without that any improvements we make will be minor and fleeting. And ultimately it all comes back to the fact, as you pointed out, we're all just too comfortable. So is this the best we can hope for from society? And why is it some of us get it while most don't? Or do we just need the "Obama-factor", i.e. someone with enough charisma to get people interested again? Who knows.