Why I will be voting NO to Lisbon again!

extragon

Our biggest problem re. the EU is the low level of knowledge most people have about the internal politics and aspirations of even our closest neighbours ( the UK excepted ) allowing ridiculous scare stories to take root.

In the popular media, if it's not about America, or Britain, nobody is interested. As a result, a surprising number of people appear to live vicariously in one of those countries, with a world view, and anti-European emotions, that are of no help in dealing with our political and economic reality.

The most useful thing supporters of the EU could strive for would be popular Europe wide newspapers, or watchable newschannels ( in English as well as other languages ) and some of the reality of our continent might trickle down the feeding chain.

johndaman66

VoidStarNull wrote: »

Well we could refuse to pay them the dole or any other benefits. But then we'd presumably have to refund their PRSI payments, and I doubt we can afford that.

Well with all due respect you are overlooking the point I am making here. Presently the situation is what it is and if the people from Eastern Europe are out of work here and remain here they will have to be paid dole. It is their entitlement no doubt. But the point I am making is that they should not have being allowed enter the country in the numbers they did in the first place and tighter controls should have being put in place

VoidStarNull wrote: »

An easy way to check if a statement is racist is to reword it using your own nationality and see if it sounds gratuitously insulting. For example:

"With regard the Irish they have done very little for the economy in general. Very little of the money they make is spent here and for the most part spent on foreign holidays/Spanish property/shopping trips to New York. Many of them raped the country for what they could get."
Hmmm... not racist at all. Has a ring of truth in fact.

An easy way to check if somebody is really a do gooder or not is when they have being directly and personally by the foreign nationals and the society problems which they have created. If their children find it impossible to get Summer work to put themselves through college. They find themselves on the dole as a result of not enough jobs to go around or find it impossible to buy a house as a result of the excessive demand. Or their cousin is stabbed by one of them in Dublin and left fighting for his life. If all these things happened to somebody and they can still fell affectionate and welcoming to the Eastern Europeans then I guess they have passed the test....

I am not a racist person and will grant anybody the time of day but with all these wrong doings going on in society I will be weary to say the least.

evercloserunion

Judgement Day wrote: »

I voted NO to Lisbon last time and I will vote NO again at the next referendum and I am not a Sinn Feiner, member of Libertas or, indeed, a Euro Sceptic. The media and political parties seem hell bent on ignoring the basic fact that there are a multitude of reasons why people are pissed off with the EU. I don't want Ireland to leave the EU but I want a reversion to the orginal entity that Ireland signed up to - the European Economic Community - not a Super State controlled by the French and Germans.

Then you are a Eurosceptic. The EU is a political entity and organization, take it or leave it. Even in the original days of the ECSC and then the EEC, the whole project was based on goals and intentions that were political in nature, as pointed out by a leading academic at a recent lecture in TCD (JHH Weiler). The common market was not just an end in itself. It was also a means to an end, namely the political ends of peace and unity amongst European states and peoples.

The EU and its prdecessors are, and always have been, inherently and fundamentally progressive organizations, forever moving forward and bringing parties closer. Though this was always the case, it was explicitly stated in Article A of the Maastricht Treaty which made reference to the ever closer union among the peoples of Europe. That was about 20 years ago, to say that you are opposed to the direction in which the EU has been undeniably going in those 20 years (about half the length of Ireland's membership so far, the more successful half at that) but still pro-EU is unfeasible. There are many groups out there who oppose the EU for whatever reason, but will never say so out loud because they are aware of how unpopular the idea is (even some on the anti-immigrant far right who seem to have no gripe with unpopularity). I think this is another example of that phenomenon.

VoidStarNull

An easy way to check if somebody is really a do gooder or not is when they have being directly and personally by the foreign nationals and the society problems which they have created. If their children find it impossible to get Summer work to put themselves through college. They find themselves on the dole as a result of not enough jobs to go around or find it impossible to buy a house as a result of the excessive demand. Or their cousin is stabbed by one of them in Dublin and left fighting for his life. If all these things happened to somebody and they can still fell affectionate and welcoming to the Eastern Europeans then I guess they have passed the test....

I am not a racist person and will grant anybody the time of day but with all these wrong doings going on in society I will be weary to say the least.

Well that may be your experience but I think the following needs to be said. I have worked alongside Polish people in my company. Those I have met are hard-working, honest people who have made an important contribution bringing technical skills for which we were not able to find Irish candidates (just not enough Irish kids want to study science and engineering). They have helped us build products that are now making money for Ireland in export markets around the world.

On the whole I say congratulations to Poland for the quality of people she produces. You may disagree - but this is my experience.

amcalester

To those who say they dont want to see the major European powers like France and Germany given more power are you the same people who moan about the current inadequate out of touch government and non-existant opposition?