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Libertas - a call for evidence
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Ah, the irony. The number of threads on this forum where posters have claimed to understand the treaty and agree with it's provisions. All of them "Yes" voters by the way.
I would hope they are all Yes voters. After all why would a No voter "agree with its provisions" yet still vote No?
On purpose?
Sorry.
I'll admit, it's only incomprehensible through incompetence.
Out of curiousity, how many international treaties have you read? And how many have had, by their nature, to refer back to multiple other treaties? I'm aghast at how often this point comes up when the people who keep shouting it have probably a) never read an international treaty in their lives and b) never bothered to look at Lisbon itself either. What makes you an authority on this subject dresden? How can you say that this is any more or less copmprehensible than any other treaty?
I'm not saying it was easy to read, or easy to understand. But very few legal documents are. However there were non-biased clear summaries available and a lot of the more contentious elements of the Treaty were actually fairly readable, such as the whole "self-amending Treaty" nonsense. I read the "offending" article and understood it first time around. And lo and behold it did exactly what the Referendum Commission said it did.blackgold>> wrote: »He didn't write the lisbon treaty he wrote the "EU Constitution",same thing buddy.
Here's the kicker blackgold - they weren't the same thing at all. Another common misconception. The reforms that both were introducing were mainly the same, with a few changes to satisfy the French. However the two were fundamentally very different on the whole. The Constitution pulled together all of the aspects of the previous Treaties plus the reforms into one readable document (which is one of the main points to a Constitution, the people must be able to read and understand it). The Lisbon Treaty was just the reforms alone, which had to be applied to all previous treaties, therefore became far more complex - treaties are naturally quite complex anyway and one that has to refer back and apply to multiple other treaties is only going to be more difficult to read and understand. Sadly its the nature of the beast."No" voters are stupid because they don't "understand" the provisions of the treaty.
Very few, if anyone, has said anything like that. The whole point of this thread is due to the fact that Libertas lied about the Treaty and some people based their votes on these lies. On top of that a lot of No voters (22% according to that gallup poll) voted No because they didn't understand it. While I will not say that not understanding it is stupid, I will say that voting No for that reason is a stupid reason to vote No. The info was out there for people who were bothered, and at worst some voters (both Yes and No) were lazy for not putting in the time and effort into informing themselves.0 -
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True, but at the same time you should not view a referendum as a decision with two unknown outcomes. From the very start it is the responsibility of the Yes side to sell the product. They have to outline clearly reasons why the product should be bought, and allay fears of the repercussions of buying it. And putting your picture on a poster with a tiny vote YES in the corner with a view to promoting yourself for 2009 is not being a good salesman.
In the end a lot of people weren't satisfied they had been given enough positive reasons to buy the product. So they did what I would do if I found out a product was not to me standards: they didnt buy it, and voted NO
But the Treaty isn't a product turgon. This isn't some inconsequential thing that the Government will get commission from if they sell it. It is a matter of national concern, and more-so of European concern, and needs to be treated with the approriate level of responsibility. To say that the Irish people should just sit back and be told what to do by others, be they FF or Libertas, FG or SF, abdicates all personal responsibility. I wouldn't trust any of them myself to be honest anyway.
If you are going to vote on a matter like this, something that is genuinely important, then you have a responsibility to ensure you have at least some form of idea of what you're talking about, and to hell with the vested interests. This (as others have pointed out) is not written down anywhere, but is more a matter of ethics and logic. Why should a nation (and in this case a group of 27 nations) be directed by ignorance or lies (if you look at the gallup poll it suggests 22% ignorance and roughly 16-18% lies/un-truths on the No side, even if half true that's approx 20%) just because those who spouted them were more convincing.
Hitler was very convincing. His oration style and his passion led to one of the worst and most shameful periods in humanities history. Surely we should be learning from things like this. Surely we should be learning to see beyond organised groups and their rhetoric because we've seen where blind faith can take us, and sometimes it takes us to places we don't really want to go and seriously regret.
<Melodrama ends here>
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Well, that's two things we agree on. There's hope for us yet!
Ah sure where would we be without a bit of "discussion" anyway!Its an interesting conundrum that we seem to vote in the corrupt and greedy politicians again and again. In our neighbouring country, any politician who has been found out to have taken money illegally or to have even claimed expenses legally but where it can be seen to be wrong, is pressured to resign.
In Ireland, they simply brazen it out and keep claiming, like father Ted, that "the money was only resting in my account" or some such nonsense. We even have two former prime ministers who deny they have done anything wrong, while all the time tens and hundreds of thousands of pounds can't be accounted for in their bank accounts. I wish, like you, that we could grow up and imprison politicians, and others, who steal and defraud and don't pay their taxes. But instead, we vote them in again at the next general election to draw their bloated salaries, and expenses, all of which we have to pay for.
We're a funny lot really.
Very much so! If only we could get the thousands that don't bother voting to get out and vote against the incumbents next time....imagine the message it would send!
Or wait, we could have a wee chat with Mr Ganley and.........
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