EU plays hardball. complaints lodged

thehighground

marco_polo wrote: »

No that is not true at all.

cordially,
marco_polo

Just wondering why you keep answering posts addressed to him/her.

thehighground

marco_polo wrote: »

No but that would be a matter for the Irish Government to ensure that this does not happen

Hello there - have you not noticed that de people might think our Gov. isn't the brightest at the moment.

That is true, but many key public service areas such as Education and Health are completely insulated from competition law. The Lisbon treaty changes nothing in this regard, if anything it copperfastens the governments right to soley determine the best way provide these services.

Hello there - have you not noticed that de people might think our Gov. isn't the brightest at the moment.

Ideally perhaps they should have provided a composite document like some of the ones that are available from other sources.

Why all the secrecy? Do you have a link a composite document (just for reading purposes).

Perhaps they didn't anticipate that Irish people would suddenly get so concerned about international treaties being complicated legal documents despite the fact that we have having signed dozens of them previously including EU treaties, Human Rights, climate change etc etc.

Well, they were made comprehensible. People could read and understand them obviously.

thehighground

nesf wrote: »

It's a simple fact of life that if you live in a sparsely populated area that you can't expect to have access to the same services as those living in more densely populated areas. Some services, like bus routes, only make sense when there's enough people around to use the service. As more people bought cars, the need for buses died in many areas in the country. If an realistic alternative to oil for private transport doesn't come around in the next decade we could see a reversal of this trend as more and more people can't afford to pay for fuel etc. Arguably the cost of oil is providing a very strong argument for moving people from rural into "urban" settings, i.e. instead of loads of one off houses have them live in a village in the area which you can use to centralise services for these people etc, but that's a very controversial proposal.

I know all the issues about one off housing etc. Just illustrating that for the overall good, there are some things that need to be subsidised for the greater good.

Another example would be a small community living on an island where it wouldn't be practical to have a ferry. Do you just move the people off the island or do you offer a ferry subsidy?

From some of the posts here, I get the impression that most yes people posting here would like a society that doesn't give a 'sh*t'.

thehighground

Seanies32 wrote: »

The vast majority of people did not or don't want to read the whole damn thing!

I've heard arguments ranging from not having enough information, the Referendum Commission booklet being too confusing and contradictory to there being too much information because a 1 sheet document would do.

Doesn't help when some of the No posters are misleading eg. the Commissioner one!

Most people will only want to read one or two sections which effected them personally.

Surely, one person with a PC, could have spent a week or so cutting and pasting and producing a contents & index. Saving a lot of people a lot of time. They had about 3 years to do that.

marco_polo

thehighground wrote: »

Just wondering why you keep answering posts addressed to him/her.

I assumed you might was to debate on a politics forum, I didn't realise there was a queuing system in operation.

thehighground wrote: »

Hello there - have you not noticed that de people might think our Gov. isn't the brightest at the moment.

Yes. But that doesn't give the EU any more or less control over public services, that is a different subject entirely

Why all the secrecy? Do you have a link a composite document (just for reading purposes).

Well not quite one document but just as good. Contains the orignal treaties with the amended lisbon aspects.

http://www.iiea.com/publicationstest.php

Well, they were made comprehensible. People could read and understand them obviously.

Were they really that much less complex?

K-9

The people I'm chatting about had PC access. I posted links to a few sites and still very few bothered!

A Lisbon for Dummies sites is what was needed.

marco_polo

thehighground wrote: »

I know all the issues about one off housing etc. Just illustrating that for the overall good, there are some things that need to be subsidised for the greater good.

Another example would be a small community living on an island where it wouldn't be practical to have a ferry. Do you just move the people off the island or do you offer a ferry subsidy?

From some of the posts here, I get the impression that most yes people posting here would like a society that doesn't give a 'sh*t'.

K-9

thehighground wrote: »

I know all the issues about one off housing etc. Just illustrating that for the overall good, there are some things that need to be subsidised for the greater good.

Another example would be a small community living on an island where it wouldn't be practical to have a ferry. Do you just move the people off the island or do you offer a ferry subsidy?

From some of the posts here, I get the impression that most yes people posting here would like a society that doesn't give a 'sh*t'.

I don't think many would disagree on ferries to Islands.

Tbh, your impression of anything to do with Yes seems o be the same.

I don't think you have recognised the good the EU can do, though I'll be gladly corrected if you have?

nesf

thehighground wrote: »

I know all the issues about one off housing etc. Just illustrating that for the overall good, there are some things that need to be subsidised for the greater good.

Almost everyone would agree with you; however, politics to an extent comes down to making decisions on what should be subsidised and what shouldn't. What you and I probably disagree on is where this line is and how it needs to be drawn rather than anything else. The thing is, that line needs to be drawn within the bounds of practicality. We have a tax rate X which gives us Y income to the Government, this Y is the hard(ish) limit on spending. Every euro spent on a service in this country could have been spent on some other service instead. We have limited resources (ie people have consistently voted against more taxes for more services in the past 15-20 years) and a lot of worthy causes deserving of funds.

The thing is, a bus route for a bunch of villages might add a bunch of beds to a nearby hospital or pay for a bunch of new Gardaí in the area or be given back to the people as a tax credit rewarding certain types of behaviour. Any of these can be painted as "must haves" by different groups but we can't pay for all of them, so how should we choose between them? I'm curious because it's all well and good to talk about increasing services but it's pointless to have that discussion without showing what will be cut to pay for it.

djpbarry

thehighground wrote: »

From some of the posts here, I get the impression that most yes people posting here would like a society that doesn't give a 'sh*t'.

Seeing as we're generalising, I get the impression that most 'No' people posting here want to round up all the immigrants in the country and put them in camps, ban the use of the English language and ban all political parties whose sole aim is not the unification of Ireland.

thehighground wrote: »

Most people will only want to read one or two sections which effected them personally.

Anyone who expects to find something in an international treaty that benefits them directly is a complete idiot and should not be voting in the first place.

thehighground wrote: »

Surely, one person with a PC, could have spent a week or so cutting and pasting and producing a contents & index.

You mean a table of contents like this?

If someone had gone to the trouble of making a pop-up book, illustrating the changes proposed by the Lisbon Treaty, it would not have made any difference. The same people would still be complaining about lack of information, or too much information, or too much complex information, or not enough detailed information, or whatever the hell they can think of. The perceived lack of information on the treaty was not a reason to vote ‘No’; it was an excuse.

molloyjh

djpbarry wrote: »

The perceived lack of information on the treaty was not a reason to vote ‘No’; it was an excuse.

Here, here. Almost every thread on the Lisbon Treaty here had explanations, links and details. Everyone with access to a PC could have very easily found the lisbontreaty2008.ie site as well as the Referendum Commissions site. AND every household got a booklet with the Treaty explained to them in it. Anyone who really wanted to understand the thing for themselves rather than depending on someone with an agenda (be they the likes of Libertas or FF) could have, and did, make the effort. All you need to do is look at the people here on this board and you will see a number of people who did just that. Those who didn't are now grasping at straws trying to find excuses.

That being said had our politicians been in touch with the people a bit more they would have realised this and run a better campaign. Many people didn't feel the need to look up stuff as the No camp was giving reasons to vote No that the Yes camp weren't really combatting. The No camp preyed on the lazy voter element and the Yes camp seemed blissfully unaware of it. That doesn't excuse the laziness, however our esteemed representatives should have recognised its existance.