Pro Lisbon Treaty arguments

Macha

Also, as Scofflaw has said, let's not forget the game of musical chairs that most ministers play every 5 years. The recent Ministers of DCENR have included Dick Roche, Martin Cullen and Noel Dempsey.

They had exactly what academic and professional qualifications in the area of environmental sciences? Zero.

brianthebard

marco_polo wrote: »

It all stems from this post. Perhaps I am cynical but it looks suspiciously like fishing for someone to say that everyone should base their decision on the Governments message and vote yes.

That's purposively misinterpreting my point. I wasn't the one who introduced the distinction between 'the government' and "the government" for the purposes of obfuscation.

Sam Vimes

brianthebard wrote: »

So again, why is the separation needed? It appears as if some Yes voters want to have their cake and eat it, that is distance themselves from FF while still supporting the treaty. That's unnecessary, we already know all the main parties support it. Either the government follows the civil servants as you say or the civil servants follow the government, either way the policy is the same.

In this case I wouldn't ignore the government because they're political, I'd ignore them because their message seems to be not much more than "vote yes because I say so". If they were putting out a good message, I'd be encouraging people to listen to them.

I'm trying to distance myself from FF while still supporting the treaty because the treaty is good and FF is a useless pack of wasters that I want out of office as soon as possible. Pretty much all I'm saying is: don't reject the treaty just because the government are useless

turgon

brianthebard wrote: »

I wasn't the one who introduced the distinction between 'the government' and "the government" for the purposes of obfuscation.

Do you ever listen to anything anyone ever says?

Scofflaw

brianthebard wrote: »

That's purposively misinterpreting my point. I wasn't the one who introduced the distinction between 'the government' and "the government" for the purposes of obfuscation.

Are you saying I did? I introduced it for purposes of clarification - to indicate which bits of the "the government" I felt were worth listening to, and which were not. If you prefer to simply lump the executive, the legislature, the civil service, and presumably the political parties together as "the government", then that's up to you, but personally I feel that's an approach that generates a lot of pointless confusion.

cordially,
Scofflaw

turgon

Your wasting your time Scofflaw.

brianthebard

Scofflaw wrote: »

Are you saying I did? I introduced it for purposes of clarification - to indicate which bits of the "the government" I felt were worth listening to, and which were not. If you prefer to simply lump the executive, the legislature, the civil service, and presumably the political parties together as "the government", then that's up to you, but personally I feel that's an approach that generates a lot of pointless confusion.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Will the legislative branch be canvassing? Will the civil service be canvassing independent of the rest of the government? Your clarification was unnecessary, since it is not an election year, and every party bar SF are campaigning for a yes vote, so the main point that you were arguing on was only introduced by yourself, for whatever reason I don't know. The civil service and the elected officials will be working together on this issue, in case that wasn't obvious, hence I see no reason to distinguish between the two.

Tugron, haven't you anything better to do than snipe at other people's posts?

Scofflaw

brianthebard wrote: »

Will the legislative branch be canvassing? Will the civil service be canvassing independent of the rest of the government? Your clarification was unnecessary, since it is not an election year, and every party bar SF are campaigning for a yes vote, so the main point that you were arguing on was only introduced by yourself, for whatever reason I don't know. The civil service and the elected officials will be working together on this issue, in case that wasn't obvious, hence I see no reason to distinguish between the two.

The civil service won't be campaigning at all, and I've given my reasons for distinguishing between them and the legislature (most of whom will indeed be campaigning, which is yet another reason for distinguishing). If you don't understand the distinction between the political and professional branches of the government, that's fine - we'll have to agree to differ.

cordially,
Scofflaw

brianthebard

Scofflaw wrote: »

The civil service won't be campaigning at all, and I've given my reasons for distinguishing between them and the legislature (most of whom will indeed be campaigning, which is yet another reason for distinguishing). If you don't understand the distinction between the political and professional branches of the government, that's fine - we'll have to agree to differ.

cordially,
Scofflaw

The bit in bold is precisely why your point was not necessary and drifted away from the issue.

P. Breathnach

brianthebard wrote: »

The bit in bold is precisely why your point was not necessary and drifted away from the issue.

Not at all. The point to be taken is that the civil service is neutral (and they are very careful to maintain that neutrality) and so if they say anything about the treaty it can be taken as an informed judgement or interpretation by a body of people who will be careful not to take sides.

Scofflaw

brianthebard wrote: »

The bit in bold is precisely why your point was not necessary and drifted away from the issue.

Sigh. It's precisely why it is a necessary distinction. If the DFA says "the Treaty will do X", that is a professional judgement, not a campaign statement. It is left up to the reader to determine whether X is a good thing or not, but the advantage of it not being a campaign statement is that it is more factually reliable.

Let's go back to the post of yours that caused me to draw the distinction:

This seems like a very contradictory statement, on the one hand posters emphasis the part the Irish Government (1) had in the making of the treaty, the time and money that went into it, etc, and on the other you say that we shouldn't listen to the Government (2)?

You've used "the Government" there for two different things. In the first case (1), the reference is to the whole apparatus of the Irish government - the expert negotiators of the DFA, the teams of civil servants from different departments, the permanent representation of Ireland in Brussels, and, to be fair, Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen, both of whom had personal roles in negotiating the European Constitution and Lisbon. It's entirely valid to point out this investment of time and effort on behalf of Ireland, and the role (outlined in the White Paper) that Irish negotiators had in retaining certain features of the Constitution that were felt to be beneficial to Ireland.

On the other hand, the second time you've used "the Government" (2), it refers to the political campaigns for a Yes vote run by those parties that are in government - the efforts of Brian Cowen, Michael Martin, Dick Roche, Mary Coughlan, etc, whose selling of the package negotiated by the government (1) has been dreadful, and whose personal records of honesty, integrity, competence, etc, are rather less than 100%.

Do you see the distinction?

cordially,
Scofflaw