Lisbon and other "do it again" referenda

molloyjh

bill_ashmount wrote: »

The lisbon treaty is dead, perhaps you should go back and read it and see how it can never come into play now. No matter how much certain people residing in Europe want to force it through...

And if you bothered to read my post and put the quote into context (nasty word eh?) then you'd realise I was talking about making Libon a Treaty among particular member state within the EU and therefore, by definition, not an EU Treaty. We get what we want, i.e. we won't have Lisbon, while the rest of the EU get what they want, i.e. a ratified Treaty.

Now the point has been made again and again re the ignorance of voters in the referendum. It is true that people on both sides were ignorant, sometimes in the extreme. And so my point has always been, and always will be, why on earth should we respect a decision reached out of ignorance? Surely we'd be better making sure the people understood the Treaty and then ran the referendum again? If it comes back No after that I'd be more than happy to accept that as our position, but I don't see anything anti-democratic about making sure we're voting on something we actually understand.

bill_ashmount wrote: »

But 70% of NO voters didn't think that. Have you gone out and asked all the NO voters? No you haven't. Such bulls*it made up statistics prove nothing.

Made up? 2,000 people were asking how and why they voted and the results presented to us telling us what context the poll was run in and how many people were asked. There is nothing "made up" about this. You're ranting smacks of childish "la, la, la, I can't hear you. It's not true, it's not true" type denial.

bill_ashmount wrote: »

Democracy won, you can try and obscure that all you want by saying you had the better argument or other people don't understand. It won't change anything, the treaty is dead, tough.



Just a pity that the average citizen hasn't got your intelligence

By and large it has nothing to do with intelligence, so stop trying to make this something that it isn't. A lot of people didn't bother doing any bit of research for themselves and instead just bought (blindly) what they were told. Be that by the political parties or the likes of Libertas. If you can't handle the fact that this survey shows a very strong possibility that ignorance played a huge role in the result of this referendum then thats up to you. However I don't think there would be anything undemocratic about another referendum. I would just rather that it be run after the people were educated, i.e. handheld through explanations as so many people seem to need, before voting.

molloyjh

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Not sure if this has been mentioned already, but there is an interesting article in the Irish Times charting the "class" inclinations of voters:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0710/breaking44.htm

Key points:

Working class No voters
Middle class Yes voters.

The article then puts this in another way:

Uneducated voted No, Educated voted yes.

A reflection of a democratic society? reflecting on a fair vote?, or, an insult to everyone who voted no, who did so on the knowledge they read and listened to?

I think it is pretty obvious that there will be another referendom, and the propaganda is starting. Anyone who voted no were misimformed or unsure, while those who voted yes are fully informed and educated.

What a load of ****.

Ah now come on, the article mentions one line on educated versus non-educated. That is just a way of grouping people similar to the half dozen other ways they did in the rest of the article. To understand the results a certain amount of profiling has to be done. You might as well jump to the conclusion that the article is saying that FF voters are smarter than FG voters because a higher proportion voted Yes. There has been no judgement made on intelligence levels or anything like that here. I'm sure we all know people who are "educated" but not that bright and people who are "uneducated" that are.

However you are complaining about the idea that No voters were uninformed, but all the article said was that the biggest reason given by people who voted No was ignorance (at 22% according to this). The people themselves said this, it was not made up. You're leaping to conclusions and I'm afraid, to me at least, it is your point that is, as you so eloquently put it, ****.

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Talk about rhetorc, simply becasue the "opinion" polls are in accordance with your own point of view, (or is it really yours? )



I just posted a link about how the class breakdown of voting was analysed, and gave my own point of view on it. When I want your advice I will ask for it. Perhaps you would like to give your opinion on the actual article rather than telling me how to discuss it?

What was that word again, oh yeah, ****. You quoted one of the opinion polls Black Briar is talking about! None of his posts were as meaningless as your two "lol" posts so maybe you should take heed.......

oscarBravo

Moderator note: the Lisbon treaty has been discussed at great length on the EU forum, and doesn't need to be rehashed here. This thread is about the general topic of re-running referenda on the same subject; let's keep it on-topic.

bill_ashmount

molloyjh wrote: »

Made up? 2,000 people were asking how and why they voted and the results presented to us telling us what context the poll was run in and how many people were asked. There is nothing "made up" about this. You're ranting smacks of childish "la, la, la, I can't hear you. It's not true, it's not true" type denial.

No, I use the facts, the post stated that 70% of people didn't understand the treaty. I said this was made up, which was true. You backed up your point by pointing out one survey of 2,000 people who said what you are arguing about.

Nothing childish about that, a lot more than 2,000 people voted but don't let that get in the way of your point.

bill_ashmount

bill_ashmount wrote: »

Democracy won, you can try and obscure that all you want by saying you had the better argument or other people don't understand. It won't change anything, the treaty is dead, tough.

Just a pity that the average citizen hasn't got your intelligence :rolleyes:

Oh you are wrong there.
Something will change.
I have no doubt about that and it won't be the contents or the implimentation of the contents of the Lisbon treaty.Theres noting to change in that and nothing conclusively shown by the no side during the campaign that needed changing.
Thats why they had to rely on the goobel's style lie repetitions.

These "the treaty is dead" comments carry as little weight I'm afraid as the morality of those who are anti the European project [like SF,Cóir and Libertas] trying to claim those that "didn't know" or expected a "better deal" to be with them in their anti European project crusade.

I'm actually non-plussed about the outcome of the Vote but thats because I am a positive person with a positive outlook.
I've no doubt that a solution will be found that will satisfy most but not the likes of liars like Cóir and Libertas.Declan Ganley was over at Westminister a day or two after the Vote meeting Tory Eurosceptics.
When we as a country start getting into bed with them ,it will be a poor outlook I think as they will drop us or abuse us like they've always done in my humble opinion.

As my Da used say,the real stupid person is the one that gets the second kick from the áss.

molloyjh

bill_ashmount wrote: »

No, I use the facts, the post stated that 70% of people didn't understand the treaty. I said this was made up, which was true. You backed up your point by pointing out one survey of 2,000 people who said what you are arguing about.

Nothing childish about that, a lot more than 2,000 people voted but don't let that get in the way of your point.

Scofflaw actually said "If 70%.....then....". That word if is very important in that sentence. Additionally I never said 70% thought it could be renegotiated either. I just said the figure wasn't "made up". It was the result of a survey, which statistically speaking will have a certain confidence interval. You tried to say it was a "made up statistic", but thats blatantly not the case. It was also provided in the right context with the right provisos, i.e. the number of people it surveyed, so is a perfectly acceptable statistic. And its certainly far better than anything else we've seen, let alone anything you've provided.

You said 70% didn't think it could be renegotiated, as though it were fact, was it? What makes your point more valid than Scofflaws, given that he has a source and you don't? At the end of the day IF ignorance played a part in the referendum then I think another run is not just perfectly acceptable, it is the only course of action (assuming that an attempt to educate people properly is made in the mean-time). I don't think there is any threat to democracy in this instance either, given that it will allow people not only to vote with the relevant information to hand, but it also gives them just as much right as before to vote No if they so choose.

Sadly as Oscar pointed out this is becoming more of a European Union forum discussion, but given that it was prompted by Lisbon and the possibility/likelihood of a second referendum this was probably always going to happen at some point. Should you want to discuss the Treaty and peoples reasons for voting the way they did then I can always engage in debate on the EU forum otherwise lets try and tie these points back into the original debate if possible, and if not drop them.

Just read Scofflaw proceeding post and had nasty memories of Stats in college and all the 5% confidence interval lark....aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh! I hated it then, and it still makes me feel dizzy now!

Scofflaw

bill_ashmount wrote: »

No, I use the facts, the post stated that 70% of people didn't understand the treaty. I said this was made up, which was true. You backed up your point by pointing out one survey of 2,000 people who said what you are arguing about.

Nothing childish about that, a lot more than 2,000 people voted but don't let that get in the way of your point.

Hmm. I would suggest you familiarise yourself with what an opinion poll does, and how they work. The sample sizes are calculated to give a reasonable cross-section of the population, so that what is found to be the case in that sample can be said, with a certain measure of confidence, to be true of the population as a whole.

When I say "a certain measure of confidence", that measure of confidence is quantifiable. In this case, given a population of 3m voters, and a sample size of 2000, we can say with 99% confidence that 76% of the sample saying something means 73.5% to 78.5% of the population would say it too - if we asked them all. However, statistical science has been developed specifically so we can find out what 100% of the people think by asking only 0.1% of them. There's a handy calculator for sample sizes and confidence here.

Nor are these results normative - that is to say, they don't tell you anything about you - or causative - that is, they don't tell you anything about the causal links between the correlations. If people who left education earlier are more likely to have voted No, that does not tell us that those who voted No are less educated, nor does it tell us that the less educated were more likely to vote No because they were less educated. Correlation is not causality.

Of course, you're also wrong about what my post said:

I think that's quite an important point. If 70% of No voters thought the Treaty could be renegotiated, and the Treaty cannot be renegotiated, then 70% of No voters voted No under a rather important misapprehension.

But 70% of NO voters didn't think that. Have you gone out and asked all the NO voters? No you haven't. Such bulls*it made up statistics prove nothing.

76% of voters thought the treaty could be renegotiated - not "70% of people didn't understand the treaty".

Under the circumstances, I won't expect a retraction.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

molloyjh wrote: »

Sadly as Oscar pointed out this is becoming more of a European Union forum discussion, but given that it was prompted by Lisbon and the possibility/likelihood of a second referendum this was probably always going to happen at some point. Should you want to discuss the Treaty and peoples reasons for voting the way they did then I can always engage in debate on the EU forum otherwise lets try and tie these points back into the original debate if possible, and if not drop them.

Well, the more general point is that if a majority of one side of the vote voted under a major misapprehension, it seems reasonable to clarify that misapprehension and ask again.

Certainly, if someone asks me whether I would like free money, and I say No under the misapprehension that they're asking me whether I'd like a kick in the face, I would appreciate the matter being clarified and a second go.

Similarly, say the EU proposed to either move or discard the Protocols annexed to the Treaties, and the government put forward a referendum proposing to ratify the moving out of Protocol (No 35) On Article 40.3.3 Of the Constitution Of Ireland - if a majority of No voters voted No in order to protect Irish abortion law from the EU, they would have voted under a misapprehension.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Deep Easterly

molloyjh wrote: »

Ah now come on, the article mentions one line on educated versus non-educated. That is just a way of grouping people similar to the half dozen other ways they did in the rest of the article. To understand the results a certain amount of profiling has to be done. You might as well jump to the conclusion that the article is saying that FF voters are smarter than FG voters because a higher proportion voted Yes. There has been no judgement made on intelligence levels or anything like that here. I'm sure we all know people who are "educated" but not that bright and people who are "uneducated" that are.

However you are complaining about the idea that No voters were uninformed, but all the article said was that the biggest reason given by people who voted No was ignorance (at 22% according to this). The people themselves said this, it was not made up. You're leaping to conclusions and I'm afraid, to me at least, it is your point that is, as you so eloquently put it, ****.






What was that word again, oh yeah, ****. You quoted one of the opinion polls Black Briar is talking about! None of his posts were as meaningless as your two "lol" posts so maybe you should take heed.......

Nothing to take heed of. where exactly are my two "Lol" posts? Leaping to conclusions I am not, but you are by taking me out of context. Why was the word "uneducated" used in this context. It is easy to say that the term uneducated is not a reflection on a person's intelligence, but that means nothing. The word was used and aligned with the working class+women and young people as to why they voted no. My original point is, which has not been once read or replied to, is how for such a democratic society, blame, rather than embracement of the no vote is occuring. Blame the working class, blame women, blame the young. Misinformation, lies on the part of the no campaign, not much effort by the yes campaign blah blah. Why can't we just accept the decision of the people and stop blaming them and their educational and social status?

Deep Easterly

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Why can't we just accept the decision of the people and stop blaming them and their educational and social status?

The decision has been accepted.
What you seem to be resenting is the process of doing something to deal with the fall out.
The fall out is what we do with our relationship with the rest of Europe in the event that they want to proceed.
Dealing with the fall out means a thorough examination of what the vote meant so as whatever way the situation [our future relationship with the rest of the EU] is resolved,that it is done so to the satisfaction of a majority of the population.

The vote meant many things as there were several reasons good bad and indifferent it seems for people voting No-many of them based on lies.
Correcting the latter may be anathema to a Eurosceptic like yourself but looking at the profile[reason for voting no/their lifestyles/occupations etc] of many no voters-I'd imagine very few of them would choose to withdraw from the EU if given a clear choice of In or Out based on a system agreed by all other countries.
A small open economy like ours with a low tax base and still with a huge infrastructure defecit would need to be close to Europe.

molloyjh

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Nothing to take heed of. where exactly are my two "Lol" posts? Leaping to conclusions I am not, but you are by taking me out of context. Why was the word "uneducated" used in this context. It is easy to say that the term uneducated is not a reflection on a person's intelligence, but that means nothing. The word was used and aligned with the working class+women and young people as to why they voted no. My original point is, which has not been once read or replied to, is how for such a democratic society, blame, rather than embracement of the no vote is occuring. Blame the working class, blame women, blame the young. Misinformation, lies on the part of the no campaign, not much effort by the yes campaign blah blah. Why can't we just accept the decision of the people and stop blaming them and their educational and social status?

But these results were based on the answers that the people themselves provided, they are just being grouped based on those answers. There are no conclusions being drawn from those groupings. And to identify where we go from here we must first identify how we got here and why Lisbon was rejected. There is no notion of blame being raised in this article, just a statement of what people said in response to the questions asked in the survey. If I was asked these questions and answered that I don't have a college degree and am "working class" and that I voted No, I could hardly complain that someone told me that I was a No voter who was working class and "uneducated" (defined in a particular way in the survey results, and in no way a reflection of intelligence). That was the answer I gave and I was reported as being what I said. You're making something out of nothing on this. And I addressed your point in the post you quoted by saying as much.

Apologies for the "lol" thing, I got my response to another poster mixed in with yours when trying to answer a number of posts at once.

Scofflaw

molloyjh wrote:

Just read Scofflaw proceeding post and had nasty memories of Stats in college and all the 5% confidence interval lark....aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh! I hated it then, and it still makes me feel dizzy now!

Funnily enough, it was the bit of maths I found the most tolerable (possibly because it wasn't taught by a maths teacher). I can't integrate or differentiate for the life of me, and am never even sure when I should want to. Nor am I at particularly successful at the transposition of terms in equations, and I have the same difficulty with x and y that some people have with left and right...

innumerately,
Scofflaw

nesf

You said you enjoyed the maths so...

Scofflaw wrote: »

However, statistical science has been developed specifically so we can find out what 100% of the people think by asking only 0.1% of them.

If and only if the underlying distribution is normally distributed, i.e. bell curve shaped. Otherwise you can't trust the results or the error terms depending on the true distribution.

Scofflaw

nesf wrote: »

You said you enjoyed the maths so...

However, statistical science has been developed specifically so we can find out what 100% of the people think by asking only 0.1% of them.

If and only if the underlying distribution is normally distributed, i.e. bell curve shaped. Otherwise you can't trust the results or the error terms depending on the true distribution.

Good point - which is why one would want to use a survey from a professional survey organisation employing statisticians. In the case of the Eurobarometer, that's Gallup.

cordially,
Scofflaw

molloyjh

nesf wrote: »

If and only if the underlying distribution is normally distributed, i.e. bell curve shaped. Otherwise you can't trust the results or the error terms depending on the true distribution.

Ah lads stop, I'm feeling queezy now.

I was polar opposite, I killed differentiation and all that x and y stuff....

How can we know if this surveys sample was normally distributed? I've (deliberately) left all knowledge of this stuff behind me......

LordSutch

Me thinks, Barroso, Sarkosie, Merkel, et al are getting increasingly annoyed with the list of spurious 'reasons' for the Irish NO vote on the Lisbon Treaty!

Its only a matter of time .................................

nesf

molloyjh wrote: »

How can we know if this surveys sample was normally distributed?

You can't know without going out and testing the entire population, rather than the sample but opinion polling is generally fairly accurate, ie polls before an election tend to be fairly close to the actual result, so you can be pretty happy that Gallup et al know what they are doing. No poll is going to be 100% accurate, but even 90% accuracy is very useful.

petermcqueen

oscarBravo wrote: »

That would be fine, were it not for the realpolitik involved. The other 26 member states are unlikely to be content to sit and wait five years for us to indulge in a bout of omphaloskepsis before revisiting the issue. You reckon it's going to take five years to educate the people about the treaty?

Thats the rules. If they are not content they should leave the EU.

As for education, clearly the people are educated in excess, they know a scam when they see one. Think about it, all media, all major political parties, all trade unions and business organisations in favour of the treaty, and yet the people still vote NO.

That is a mircale in itself. No I am not a fool, I know that this will be pushed through anyway. As Michael Martin said in an interview after the treaty, "this has thrown all our times plans out". Now I have emailed him asking him whay plans he was talking about. No response yet.

What was he saying, is the future actually planned??????

oscarBravo

petermcqueen wrote: »

Thats the rules. If they are not content they should leave the EU.

Riight. If 26 members of an organisation don't agree with 1, then the 26 have to leave. Gotcha. Makes perfect sense. "Everyone's out of step except my Johnny."

What was he saying, is the future actually planned??????

Planning for the future? Unheard of! Everyone knows you only ever plan for the past...

djpbarry

petermcqueen wrote: »

As for education, clearly the people are educated in excess, they know a scam when they see one.

ME SMELL CASEY.

molloyjh

petermcqueen wrote: »

Thats the rules. If they are not content they should leave the EU.

Eh, what? So you would be happy with an EU consisting of just Ireland? And the point of that would be?

petermcqueen wrote: »

As for education, clearly the people are educated in excess, they know a scam when they see one. Think about it, all media, all major political parties, all trade unions and business organisations in favour of the treaty, and yet the people still vote NO.

Am I the only one who doesn't fully get this point? Educated in excess? Scam? Yet still all major parties (political and social) with varying different interests and often opposing interests were in favour? Sounds an awful lot like a case for Mulder and Scully to me! Bloody conspiracy that and the truth is out there.....

petermcqueen wrote: »

What was he saying, is the future actually planned??????

As Oscar has already pointed out, what else would you plan for only the future? Disingenuous or what! :rolleyes:

LightofDarkness

You know, I'm sure my point will be rubbished by a "no" voter with unapologetic fervor and vim, but I was once taken in by the "no" camp and have since been forced to re-think my position. However, unlike many other people (most all of my friends included), when the referendum actually came to pass I decided NOT to vote. This is because I recognised the very crux of the situation: I, like almost everyone I knew who voted, never read nor UNDERSTOOD the treaty correctly.

I began having doubts about some of the more "elevated" claims billowing out of the "no" camp. So, I did some preliminary research of my own (SHOCK), not taking the word of someone who'd done all the leg-work for me (and lazily I might add), and found no less than 4 instances of outright falsifications, regarding militarization, proliferation of drugs (where they got this from I don't know) and the supersession of all Irish law and court decisions by that of the EU's respective establishments. This meant I clearly did not understand what I was voting for, and instead of towing the usual "I'll just vote no to keep things the way they are, sure" line, I decided that not understanding what was at stake therefore meant that my uninformed opinion should not be considered. I hope this is the stance taken by more people in subsequent elections. If you don't understand, why should you stand in the way of the people who do and recognise progress and change?

To be clear, I still support neither side, as I remain mostly uninformed about the treaty. I've just observed MANY people voting under false pretenses on both sides, mostly due to scare mongering from self-serving political parties.

Liam Byrne

oscarBravo wrote: »

Riight. If 26 members of an organisation don't agree with 1, then the 26 have to leave. Gotcha. Makes perfect sense.

As stated above - those were the rules; we were told it was a "unanimous decision required".

Now, apparently, it's not.

If you went to court under a law that said that a unanimous verdict by the jury was required in order to proceed with the conviction, and then the court changed it's mind because one juror voted against it, which didn't suit the judge, you'd be entitled to be pissed off, wouldn't you ?

And I can be reasonable about this; I can see why the unanimous aspect could be viewed as unfair (given the size of different countries, etc).

But I didn't make that rule. They did. It was presented to us as such and that should be honoured, regardless of whether the outcome suits them or not.

molloyjh

Liam Byrne wrote: »

As stated above - those were the rules; we were told it was a "unanimous decision required".

Now, apparently, it's not.

Now maybe I missed this in the news, but when did the EU proceed with (or declare any intention to proceed with) the Lisbon Treaty despite our vote? After all that is what you are suggesting. Last I heard the EU and our politicians said we needed time to look at the result and se what the next step was. No decisions at all have been made, at least not officially, so are you aware of something (perhaps divinely?) that the rest of us are not?

oscarBravo

Liam Byrne wrote: »

As stated above - those were the rules; we were told it was a "unanimous decision required".

Now, apparently, it's not.

Still is. The only way the Lisbon treaty can be implemented in its current form is if we vote to ratify it.

Assuming we as a nation dig our heels in and refuse to ratify the treaty as it stands: something's got to change. Either the treaty gets re-negotiated to satisfy our demands (whatever they are; there still isn't a coherent negotiating position emerging from the "no" camp) or it gets modified to exclude us as a signatory, and the rest carry on without us.

Don't get me wrong - this hasn't been put to us as an ultimatum. We're playing out possible scenarios here. We're talking about the theoretical "what-ifs" as a counterpoint to those who would have us believe that such a thing isn't possible, and that we can simply tell the other 26 EU member states to feck off indefinitely, with no adverse consequences.

This is becoming a discussion of the Lisbon treaty, which - as has been pointed out - has been done to death on the EU forum. Either this reverts to being a discussion of the rights and wrongs of repeat referenda, or it gets locked.

Scofflaw

Hmm. Dragging it back roughly in the direction of the topic, courtesy of LightofDarkness - it's interesting to consider the number of people who didn't vote (47% of the electorate), and who gave as their reasons for not voting that they didn't feel they fully understood the issues (52%), were not informed about the issues at stake (42%), or were not informed about the content of the Lisbon Treaty (37%).

Even assuming these were all the same people, that's a quarter of the electorate, or 740,000 voters, who didn't vote because they didn't feel sufficiently informed. On top of that, we have the 34.7% of those who voted No and gave as a reason that they didn't know enough about the Treaty - another 300,000 voters.

That's a million people who felt they didn't know enough about the Treaty - more than actually voted either Yes or No (and if there's a simple measure of the incompetence of the Yes campaign, that's it there).

Now, personally, I wouldn't have a problem with instituting a law that says that if the people who feel they don't know enough outnumber either of the actual sides' votes, as is the case here, the referendum should be re-run.

cordially,
Scofflaw

LightofDarkness

I would have to agree with your sentiment, Scofflaw. I was unfortunately at the end of my term at university at the time, finishing projects and studying for my final exams to get my honours degree. That left me very little time to take a good close look at the Treaty and familiarise myself with it's provisions. I think however that it would be difficult to present the idea favourably to the Irish people concerning a "do-over", especially considering the amount of feet dragging and filibustering that would likely arise from opposition parties.

Liam Byrne

Deleted User wrote: »

Well I didn't believe it when you said I was going on ignore either Wasn't I right then?

Actually, no .....but there's still a "View post" option on the right and I wouldn't be much of a debater if I didn't opt to read all relevant views, would I ?

Deleted User wrote: »

Actually I'd have thought ,you'd have said the opposite given the tweaking would be to exclude Ireland on the basis of the No vote.

If that was the only tweaking, then you're right; I would be against it, yes. The tweaking shouldn't involve ignoring those who - in good faith - voted a particular way in the knowledge that it was a defined "everyone needs to vote for this or else it's a non-runner".

That's almost worse than redoing it; it's like Fianna Fail refusing to accept or govern Cork because they didn't vote for them.....

All I've said is there is a considerable number that voted no because they simply didn't bother to inform themselves in the face of plenty opportunities and resources.

Quite possibly true; and equally, loads of people voted yes just because the Government said so. They didn't bother informing themselves either (and you said so yourself:

I have already proffered good reason why a proportion of yes voters were satisfied to accept the considered view of over 80% of the elected representatives of this country.

So that's OK, then ? That they didn't read it or consider it or understand it ? Since most of the "yes" campaigners seem to dismiss or belittle "uninformed" :rolleyes: no-ers as stupid, can we dismiss and belittle equally "uninformed" yessers as stupid for following like sheep and accepting the word of a Government that a lot of us don't trust ?

Lisbon Slogan : "This is good for Ireland"
General Election Slogan : "We'll stop wasting money and keep the economy in safe hands"

How can we trust the first soundbyte if we've already been hoodwinked on the second ?

You want a referendum in this country ,you have to get a significant political lobby elected to support you.

Fair enough; but those political lobbies are meant to represent the people, not dictate to them or take them for granted, or act like a teacher who isn't happy with a perfectly good essay and says "do it again".

Now, to be fair (and if today's paper isn't just playing politics and making reconcilatory gestures) it does look like some serious thought is going to go into looking at why we voted no and what the best route is, rather than just re-presenting it to vote again....

Ironic that the new FF slogan might just be "the economy's going down the swannee......we need Europe more than ever now!!!! Is it far away enough from the General Election for them to take a chance on that slogan ?

Mind you, given the crap that "our own" have made of the Celtic Tiger, maybe we'd be better off being governed from Europe....can't see us being much worse off, anyway.....

djpbarry

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Now, to be fair (and if today's paper isn't just playing politics and making reconcilatory gestures) it does look like some serious thought is going to go into looking at why we voted no and what the best route is, rather than just re-presenting it to vote again....

Were you really expecting anything less?

Liam Byrne

djpbarry wrote: »

Were you really expecting anything less?

Actually, yes....hence the thread.

But let's be clear......unless LOTS of things are clarified and/or there are some changes made or renegotiated, I still think it'd be wrong to redo it, and it would probably fail even more spectacularly because of it.