Lisbon vote October 2nd - How do you intend to vote?

oscarBravo

bayviewclose wrote: »

Lie #1: "Voting No Caused Our Economic Problems"

I've never heard anybody say this. If you have a source for someone saying it, I'd like to see it.

Lie #2: "We Owe Them!"

Quick question: if you believe all that stuff about how much our fishing rights are worth, then it's a no-brainer that we'd be better off outside the EU.

Do you honestly believe that we'd be several orders of magnitude better off outside of the EU?

I haven't heard anyone say that we should vote for Lisbon in payment of some sort of debt. I have heard (and accept) the argument that EU membership has been good for Ireland, and that continued membership in good standing will continue to be good for us.

Lie #3: "They'll Throw Us Out If We Vote No Again!"

I've never heard anyone say this.

Yet again, it seems some in the "no" campaign feel the need to invent stuff to be outraged about, since they can't seem to find anything in the treaty itself.

Dinner

bayviewclose wrote: »

other E.U. nations have benefited from Irish fishing resources to the tune of nearly €200 billion.

Since the E.U. Commission claims Ireland has received over €61 billion since accession, this means that for every €1 we got from the E.U., we gave it €3.28 in return![/U]
And we're the ungrateful bastards?

You'd think that for a site that claims to be debunking 'lies' that they'd at least try to tell the truth. Maybe, they did try. But realised that the truth is far less senationalist than bull****, so they make up figures like 200 billion.


EDIT: Jesus that site is worse then I first thought. Down the end in the PS section...

On 13-July, one of the largest political parties in Sweden, the Liberal People's Party, which is part of the current coalition government in Sweden, announced that it will use the Lisbon Treaty to attempt to force the introduction of abortion in Ireland.

EDIT2: AND! it claims that Lisbon will help the EU eliminate our low Corporation tax. Funny, I thought that was a lie made up by the Yes camp.

Spiritoftheseventies

http://openeuropeblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/germans-say-nein-to-ireland-bailout.html
http://www.europesworld.org/NewEnglish/Home/CommunityPosts/tabid/809/PostID/617/AnEUbailoutforIrelandNothankssaytheEUsbiggestcontributors.aspx

More food for thought here.

turgon

If one were to keep the metaphor of food going, I would describe those links as gone off bananas that have begun to rot: I didn't need to even click the links to know what kind of gooey rubbish I would find; I smelt the waft from far off.


And they didnt disappoint. A link to the Daily Mail. Decay begets decay I suppose.

Spiritoftheseventies

turgon wrote: »

Forgive us for wanting to discuss the contents of an EU Treaty on the EU forum. I wasnt aware that was looked down upon.

The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter. ..If one were to keep the metaphor of food going, I would describe those links as gone off bananas that have begun to rot: I didn't need to even click the links to know what kind of gooey rubbish I would find; I smelt the waft from far off. And they didnt disappoint. A link to the Daily Mail. Decay begets decay I suppose... is that really discussion.. any chance you will contribute to forum if thats what you say it is.

Scofflaw

Lie #2: "We Owe Them!"
Another argument by those in favour of the Lisbon Treaty amounts to little more than "You ungrateful bastards. You've done well out of the E.U., so approve this treaty!"

Apart from the downright insulting nature of this line of argument, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans: Ireland has 23% of the E.U.'s fishery waters, which produces 40% of all EU fish. But our quota (the amount Brussels will allow us to catch) is: 4%. This is because, when Ireland joined the E.E.C. in the 1970s, it had to hand over it's fishing rights in perpetuity and allow other E.U. nations to fish in Irish waters. In return, Irish farming was to be saved by Brussels.

Now, both our farming and fishing industries have been decimated by E.U. policies: Incredibly, Irish fisherman are forced to throw millions of euro of dead fish back into the water, or face arrest; and we import fish caught in Irish waters, processed on the continent, and sold back to Ireland! To date, other E.U. nations have benefited from Irish fishing resources to the tune of nearly €200 billion.

Since the E.U. Commission claims Ireland has received over €61 billion since accession, this means that for every €1 we got from the E.U., we gave it €3.28 in return!
And we're the ungrateful bastards?

This one again. The real figures are that Ireland has about 4% of EU waters, and provides about 11% of the EU catch. The total value of the catch since we joined the EU in 1973 is $11.9bn, of which we've had $3.5bn and the rest of the EU countries have had $6.75bn. The figures are available here - you're welcome to check them for yourself.

The €200bn figure is made up. If you feel that Ireland should have had 100% of the fish from its waters, fine, but you should at least base your views on reality.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Spiritoftheseventies

Scofflaw wrote: »

This one again. The real figures are that Ireland has about 4% of EU waters, and provides about 11% of the EU catch. The total value of the catch since we joined the EU in 1973 is $11.9bn, of which we've had $3.5bn and the rest of the EU countries have had $6.75bn. The figures are available here - you're welcome to check them for yourself.

The €200bn figure is made up. If you feel that Ireland should have had 100% of the fish from its waters, fine, but you should at least base your views on reality.

cordially,
Scofflaw

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0716/1224250761236.html

Another viewpoint from the IFO.

K-9

bayviewclose wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0716/1224250761236.html

Another viewpoint from the IFO.

It's the IFO and obviously they are looking at it purely from their point of view? Yes?

CFP is up for review so I think it is fair to say they are flexing their muscles (excuse the pun!) and engaging in a little hyperbole!

Scofflaw

bayviewclose wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0716/1224250761236.html

Another viewpoint from the IFO.

No, it's the same viewpoint again. Amazingly enough, these figures simply get bandied about without anyone checking them. The €200m figure is from an article by Tom Prenderville which cited "official EU figures" as the source - except that there are no such figures. Prenderville has never shown the data he used, but his figure has been taken up in much the same way as the false "80% of EU legislation" figure. In fact, the figure he has used is €75 bn for the catch - based on the traditional claim of "€2 billion a year taken from Irish waters" that's been used in Dáil debates for 20 years. Funnily enough, that figure was 2 billion punts back before the euro, and seamlessly became 2 billion euro after. It's a nice round number, nothing more, and there's no actual information behind it. Prenderville multiplied it by the value of an equally fictitious fish processing industry based on the fictional fish catch, and produced €200bn as the total value of the whole industry. The IFO is now using it as the value of the catch, again without any effort to verify it.

I know of only one set of verified, scientific figures for the Irish EEZ catch, and those are the ones I linked to. If you can find others - actual catch figures, rather than a number in a newspaper article - do let me know.

I appreciate it's nice to have dramatic evidence of villainy when you're opposing something, but it's also completely false. Use the real figures, and see whether your case still stands - if not, it's based on false premises.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Spiritoftheseventies

btw spoilt ballot paper option in the poll. why not undecided as a third option. Can we assume this is final result by the way. that poll result has been like that for the last few days.

Sam Vimes

bayviewclose wrote: »

for example this post. Why did you vote no. That to me seems to be bumping a thread. Question was how do you intend to vote. Yes or No.

I posted two minutes after the other guy and was in response to him saying he'd vote no. Hardly bumping

Spiritoftheseventies

it changes the dynamic of the thread if you ask someone why they voted no. Thread was called how will you vote even if the option of spoilt ballot paper in poll was a bit strange. Think there are still a lot of floating voters still. So undecided would have made a better third option.

RandomName2

bayviewclose wrote: »

it changes the dynamic of the thread if you ask someone why they voted no. Thread was called how will you vote even if the option of spoilt ballot paper in poll was a bit strange. Think there are still a lot of floating voters still. So undecided would have made a better third option.

There were an unusual number of spoiled ballots in the last referendum; presumably by people who would have otherwise either voted 'no' or not at all. Again, for the second ref I expect far more would-be 'no' voters to spoil their ballots than would-be 'yes' voters.

Can't really imagine a spoilled ballot with the message 'I love EU' or 'You were right Mr. Cowen' written on it.

Spiritoftheseventies

RandomName2 wrote: »

There were an unusual number of spoiled ballots in the last referendum; presumably by people who would have otherwise either voted 'no' or not at all. Again, for the second ref I expect far more would-be 'no' voters to spoil their ballots than would-be 'yes' voters.

Can't really imagine a spoilled ballot with the message 'I love EU' or 'You were right Mr. Cowen' written on it.

Again there are still a lot of floating voters. How many people are actually going to take the effort to go to station and spoil their votes.

Hitman Actual

bayviewclose wrote: »

Can we assume this is final result by the way. that poll result has been like that for the last few days.

I don't see any reason not to let the poll run. Perhaps an interesting thing to do would be to start a second one a week or 10 days from the referendum, when people will be more certain on what they're doing.

ButcherBoiz

It's a very good idea to have a pole here... remember the 'official poles' appearing before the vote (first time/last year) predicting a yes vote? I wonder what that was based on, but they got it very wrong. A boards.ie vote is not as scientific... but it might just be more accurate that what has been officially put forward before.

Sam Vimes

bayviewclose wrote: »

it changes the dynamic of the thread if you ask someone why they voted no. Thread was called how will you vote even if the option of spoilt ballot paper in poll was a bit strange. Think there are still a lot of floating voters still. So undecided would have made a better third option.

Oh noooes, not changing the dynamic of the thread :eek:

You keep telling us why you're voting no, which also changes the dynamic from "how will you vote"

Spiritoftheseventies

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Oh noooes, not changing the dynamic of the thread :eek:

You keep telling us why you're voting no, which also changes the dynamic from "how will you vote"

Havent actually decided yet. But from early on in this thread it shifted from "how you are voting" to "why are you voting this way". As such there should be two sides to the argument. At time of posting there is a "vote yes to Lisbon" banner link at top of thread.

turgon

bayviewclose wrote: »

At time of posting there is a "vote yes to Lisbon" banner link at top of thread.

If you were joined Boards last time you would realize about half of the ads in the Politics forum seemed to be "Vote No" from Libertas.

Spiritoftheseventies

Scofflaw wrote: »

No, it's the same viewpoint again. Amazingly enough, these figures simply get bandied about without anyone checking them. The €200m figure is from an article by Tom Prenderville which cited "official EU figures" as the source - except that there are no such figures. Prenderville has never shown the data he used, but his figure has been taken up in much the same way as the false "80% of EU legislation" figure. In fact, the figure he has used is €75 bn for the catch - based on the traditional claim of "€2 billion a year taken from Irish waters" that's been used in Dáil debates for 20 years. Funnily enough, that figure was 2 billion punts back before the euro, and seamlessly became 2 billion euro after. It's a nice round number, nothing more, and there's no actual information behind it. Prenderville multiplied it by the value of an equally fictitious fish processing industry based on the fictional fish catch, and produced €200bn as the total value of the whole industry. The IFO is now using it as the value of the catch, again without any effort to verify it.

I know of only one set of verified, scientific figures for the Irish EEZ catch, and those are the ones I linked to. If you can find others - actual catch figures, rather than a number in a newspaper article - do let me know.

I appreciate it's nice to have dramatic evidence of villainy when you're opposing something, but it's also completely false. Use the real figures, and see whether your case still stands - if not, it's based on false premises.

cordially,
Scofflaw

And what if the 200billion figure is out. Are you using it to discount everything else. Fishermen on coastal areas clearly feel their livelihoods are being threatened here.

P. Breathnach

bayviewclose wrote: »

And what if the 200billion figure is out. Are you using it to discount everything else.

You were using it as a trump card.

Fishermen on coastal areas clearly feel their livelihoods are being threatened here.

There is little doubt that we traded (ceded, if you prefer) fishing rights when negotiating accession. We did not sell out on our fishing industry as it was at the time, because what we then had was a seriously underdeveloped fleet and infrastructure; what we did sell was some of our potential for future expansion of the industry. And yes, people involved in fishing made their objections known at the time, but our negotiators clearly believed that what we stood to gain overall was worth the price.

ButcherBoiz

bayviewclose wrote: »

Havent actually decided yet. But from early on in this thread it shifted from "how you are voting" to "why are you voting this way". As such there should be two sides to the argument. At time of posting there is a "vote yes to Lisbon" banner link at top of thread.

You're right!

It's a google add, and it's still there. Google must make a bomb, they scan pages and then throw up an add that the system has determined will interest you

Spiritoftheseventies

P. Breathnach wrote: »

You were using it as a trump card.



There is little doubt that we traded (ceded, if you prefer) fishing rights when negotiating accession. We did not sell out on our fishing industry as it was at the time, because what we then had was a seriously underdeveloped fleet and infrastructure; what we did sell was some of our potential for future expansion of the industry. And yes, people involved in fishing made their objections known at the time, but our negotiators clearly believed that what we stood to gain overall was worth the price.

Quoted the full article. suggest you browse over this. http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=AGJ20090326.xml&Ex=All&Page=2 and you can take whatever you want. from it. But from what i can see their right to a living is being curtailed by restrictions.

Scofflaw

bayviewclose wrote: »

And what if the 200billion figure is out. Are you using it to discount everything else.

No, I'm making the point that if you base your argument on that figure, then you have no real basis for your argument.

bayviewclose wrote: »

Fishermen on coastal areas clearly feel their livelihoods are being threatened here.

Fishermen's livelihoods are threatened by over-fishing. Realistically, that's the long and the short of it. The whole CFP area has been drastically over-fished, and so fishing quotas need to be cut. The same is true of most fishing areas worldwide. What alternative is there to reduced catches?

bayviewclose wrote:

But from what i can see their right to a living is being curtailed by restrictions.

You can't make a living fishing non-existent fish. Quotas should have been cut a lot further a long time ago - the scientific advice has been for quotas a half or three-quarters the existing size for nearly twenty years.

cordially,
Scofflaw

P. Breathnach

bayviewclose wrote: »

Quoted the full article. suggest you browse over this. http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=AGJ20090326.xml&Ex=All&Page=2 and you can take whatever you want. from it. But from what i can see their right to a living is being curtailed by restrictions.

There is something a bit off about your posting this while quoting my post, implying that it is relevant to what I said.

What are you trying to prove? That the EU owes us because many of our fish stocks have fallen to very low levels? Or that Irish fishermen should have the right to fish as much as they like while foreign boats be excluded form Irish waters?

Nobody in this discussion denies that Irish fishermen are having a hard time. Scofflaw is disputing a value put on the rights granted to non-Irish boats, and I have pointed out that the granting of those rights was intentional, and did not greatly impact on our fishing industry as it them was.

Spiritoftheseventies

Re. You can't make a living fishing non-existent fish. Quotas should have been cut a lot further a long time ago - the scientific advice has been for quotas a half or three-quarters the existing size for nearly twenty years.

This from chairman of IFO from minutes of JOINT COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Mr. Joe Maddock: Special areas of conservation, Natura 2000 and marine protected areas all pose a threat to fishermen in coastal communities. I refer to the closure of fisheries under the habitats and birds directives, drift-netting for salmon and the cockle fisheries. Cockle vessels have been tied up for one and a half years without income. This is a disgrace and must be resolved quickly to enable these fishermen to resume fishing. Progress is being made but we need the committee’s help to expedite the solution to this problem. A political push is required.

The banning of drift-netting for salmon was a body-blow for island and coastal communities. This fishery is so valuable to areas and communities with few alternatives. The fishermen cannot easily relocate to the Far East, Australia or America, and we need them where they are. They should be given the means to stay by allowing drift-netting for salmon.

With regard to the bass fishery, the main regulation is SI 230 of 2006. This is the beautiful Irish statutory instrument that prohibits Irish vessels from catching bass but allows those of all other nationalities to do so. It is a good statutory instrument and I am sure some politician advocated it should be implemented; hence the difficulty for Irish fishing boats. All the boats in our waters can have bass on board and sell it but the Irish vessels cannot. This must be examined seriously and corrected."

Is this not restriction on trade?

Scofflaw

P. Breathnach wrote: »

There is something a bit off about your posting this while quoting my post, implying that it is relevant to what I said.

What are you trying to prove? That the EU owes us because many of our fish stocks have fallen to very low levels? Or that Irish fishermen should have the right to fish as much as they like while foreign boats be excluded form Irish waters?

Nobody in this discussion denies that Irish fishermen are having a hard time. Scofflaw is disputing a value put on the rights granted to non-Irish boats, and I have pointed out that the granting of those rights was intentional, and did not greatly impact on our fishing industry as it them was.

No, well, back then our fishing industry only pulled about $50m a year out of Irish waters. In 2004 it caught $200m. Both figures are in year 2000 US dollars, so they're comparative. The Irish fishing industry, in terms of catch value, is 4 times the size it was when we joined the EU - unfortunately, a good deal of that was engrossed by a few very large boats. The Atlantic Dawn, the worst example, had 4.98 % of the Irish mackerel quota and 5.59 % of the north-west herring quotas.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

bayviewclose wrote: »

Re. You can't make a living fishing non-existent fish. Quotas should have been cut a lot further a long time ago - the scientific advice has been for quotas a half or three-quarters the existing size for nearly twenty years.

This from chairman of IFO from minutes of JOINT COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Mr. Joe Maddock: Special areas of conservation, Natura 2000 and marine protected areas all pose a threat to fishermen in coastal communities. I refer to the closure of fisheries under the habitats and birds directives, drift-netting for salmon and the cockle fisheries. Cockle vessels have been tied up for one and a half years without income. This is a disgrace and must be resolved quickly to enable these fishermen to resume fishing. Progress is being made but we need the committee’s help to expedite the solution to this problem. A political push is required.

The banning of drift-netting for salmon was a body-blow for island and coastal communities. This fishery is so valuable to areas and communities with few alternatives. The fishermen cannot easily relocate to the Far East, Australia or America, and we need them where they are. They should be given the means to stay by allowing drift-netting for salmon.

With regard to the bass fishery, the main regulation is SI 230 of 2006. This is the beautiful Irish statutory instrument that prohibits Irish vessels from catching bass but allows those of all other nationalities to do so. It is a good statutory instrument and I am sure some politician advocated it should be implemented; hence the difficulty for Irish fishing boats. All the boats in our waters can have bass on board and sell it but the Irish vessels cannot. This must be examined seriously and corrected."

Is this not restriction on trade?

It doesn't change anything, I'm afraid. Fish aren't manufactured, nor do fishermen farm them - they're a finite natural resource.

The plight of the cockle fishermen doesn't wring a tear from me, I'm afraid, and here's why:

Cockle Fishing Industry Ireland.

Main cockle fisheries occur in Dundalk Bay , Carlingford, Waterford and Tramore - all are protected areas. Traditional activity is to harvest low levels by hand with rakes. Modern harvesting methods use hydraulic dredging for cockles, razor clams and surf clams. They have no protection as they are a non-quota species.
‘An altered community structure has resulted from hydraulic dredging, but there is no prognosis for it were dredging to cease. The time-scale and mechanism for restoring the original community are unknown’.

The Dundalk Cockle Fishery

Once its capital potential had been realised the Dundalk cockle resource attracted a rapid increase in fishing effort. As cockle prices rocketed from around €700 per tonne to reach highs of €2,700 per tonne the number of boats fitted out with continuous delivery hydraulic dredging equipment, increased from 3 in 2001 to 21 in 2004.

The appearance of these dredgers resulted in conflict between the traditional rake fisheries and the continuous delivery hydraulic dredgers. Then the Dundalk Cockle fishery crashed and the fishermen agreed to stop cockle fishing. Now the dredging boats have redirected their efforts to other cockle beds such as those in the South East of the country i.e. Waterford.

South East Cockle Fishery

The cockle beds in the South East contain smaller low quality cockles. They do not grow as fast as the Dundalk Cockles.

Preliminary estimates suggest that approximately 200 tonnes of cockles were removed from Waterford Harbour in 2005. This is equivalent to levels harvested from Dundlak - Three years of harvests of this size led to the collapse of the Dundalk Cockle fishery.

Razor Clam Fishery

A larger than could be accommodated number of vessels adapted their gear to participate in the razor clam fishery which commenced in Ireland in the later 1990s. The larger east coast beds of E. siliqua in class A waters had been fished down to point where harvesting became uneconomic. Currently, there are virtually no landings to the west coast.Small razor beds for the species Ensis arcuatus on the western seaboard have been depleted and few E. siliqua are currently harvested there.

Hydraulic Dredging and Protected Areas

A legal precedent was set in relation to dredging for Cockles in protected areas in the E.U. Waddenzee Judgement. This judgement decreed that ‘the competent authorities are to authorise activities ‘only if they have made certain it will not adversely affect the integrity of that site. That is the case where no reasonable scientific doubt remains as to the absence of such effects'.Cockle dredging was stopped due to its significant environmental damage'

The effects of Hydraulic dredging include:

* Deep penetration of substrate (5-25 cm),
* High re-suspension of material,
* Removal and destruction of infauna.
* Damage to juvenile cockles through serial discarding

The activity of the hydraulic dredges is to fluidise the seabed to the depth of the target species, in the case of razor clams this could be > 20cm. Effectively, much of the substrate and its constituents is entirely removed or relocated. Mortality of associated (soft bodied) organisms is very high and the impact is considered high in all instances

This is a high impact operation which disrupts the food chain/web and natural sedimentary processes.

The protections, in other words, have been brought in after the cockle fisheries collapsed from over-fishing. Those cockle boats that are now tied up amid lamentations are the same cockle boats that destroyed the cockle fisheries by over-fishing them - by dredging the fisheries. The only reason there's so many cockle boats is because everybody got in on the game while the getting was good - and destroyed the fisheries. Boat numbers increased 700% in three years - and those are the boats that are now tied up. Boo ****ing hoo. My heart positively bleeds for them.

Mr Maddock's plea is that people who were short-sighted and greedy enough to destroy the natural resource they relied on, and to do it extremely rapidly, should be allowed to repeat the process elsewhere until there are no more cockles.

As for drift-netting! That someone would complain about the bycatch killed as the result of CFP rules (which will hopefully be altered soon), and in the same breath call for a resumption of drift-netting, which is an incredibly destructive fishing method, would beggar belief if one hadn't been previously exposed to the gross hypocrisy of Irish special interests.

That article has no more moral force than one by a banker pleading for less regulation. It's a revolting work of hypocrisy.

regards,
Scofflaw

Spiritoftheseventies

Scofflaw wrote: »

It doesn't change anything, I'm afraid. Fish aren't manufactured, nor do fishermen farm them - they're a finite natural resource.

The plight of the cockle fishermen doesn't wring a tear from me, I'm afraid, and here's why:



The protections, in other words, have been brought in after the cockle fisheries collapsed from over-fishing. Those cockle boats that are now tied up amid lamentations are the same cockle boats that destroyed the cockle fisheries by over-fishing them - by dredging the fisheries. The only reason there's so many cockle boats is because everybody got in on the game while the getting was good - and destroyed the fisheries. Boat numbers increased 700% in three years - and those are the boats that are now tied up. Boo ****ing hoo. My heart positively bleeds for them.

Mr Maddock's plea is that people who were short-sighted and greedy enough to destroy the natural resource they relied on, and to do it extremely rapidly, should be allowed to repeat the process elsewhere until there are no more cockles.

As for drift-netting! That someone would complain about the bycatch killed as the result of CFP rules (which will hopefully be altered soon), and in the same breath call for a resumption of drift-netting, which is an incredibly destructive fishing method, would beggar belief if one hadn't been previously exposed to the gross hypocrisy of Irish special interests.

That article has no more moral force than one by a banker pleading for less regulation. It's a revolting work of hypocrisy.

regards,
Scofflaw

Not an article. he was addressing a committee. full transcript available in previous post.

Scofflaw

bayviewclose wrote: »

Not an article. he was addressing a committee. full transcript available in previous post.

Very well. That address has no more moral force than one by a banker pleading for less regulation. It's a revolting work of hypocrisy.

correctly,
scofflaw