Did Lisbon invalidate the democratic process?

zenno

Dinner wrote: »

Funny you say that since fear was what defeated it the first time round. And it was fear that the no side attempted to use to try have it defeated second time round.

comon man. the government put the frightners up everyone before the second Lisbon referendum saying that ireland will be left behind and the bloody country will be doomed. I mean people were genuinely afraid of what would happen if we voted no again. the majority of people in this country were frightned into voting yes like little puppy dogs. frighten people enough and they will do anything even clean your shoes for you. sad sorry state of affairs.

zenno

anyway I would like to say happy christmas to all of you and have a great one this year regards of what happened this year. like I always said before it's great that a country can have a referendum regardless of the outcome. slainte.

Dinner

zenno wrote: »

comon man. the government put the frightners up everyone before the second Lisbon referendum saying that ireland will be left behind and the bloody country will be doomed. I mean people were genuinely afraid of what would happen if we voted no again. the majority of people in this country were frightned into voting yes like little puppy dogs. frighten people enough and they will do anything even clean your shoes for you. sad sorry state of affairs.

All of this apparent fear was more than balanced out by such gems as "Trust EU assurances - not on their lives!" (accompanied with a picture of an old woman and a foetus) and of course the very nice Sinn Fein one with a picture of a tank on it, and another with a foot crushing a tractor. And who can forget the UKIP booklet with pictures of an EU bulldozer and a picture of a Turkey. Then there's the minimum wage poster. And the one about Irish Democracy 1916 (!) - 2009. You see where I'm going with this?

The yes side had stupid posters with vague statements about jobs and the economy which were at least half since you had business leaders coming out and saying that it was good for the economy. (But of course many No supporters dismissed these arguments because it suited them to and labelled the them as nonsense).

The yes side had, at worst, half truths. The no side, at best, had misleading statements. And more to the point, the No side had a vast array of colourful posters each with a different lie. If the referendum was fought on fear alone, the no side would have won by a country mile. But it wasn't, so they didn't. The truth, as reflected by the post Lisbon 2 surveys, was that people were more aware of the actual contents of the treaty and less people formed their opinions from lampposts.

Dinner

aurelius79 wrote: »

Dinner, first I'd ask that you refrain from using language more suited to the schoolyard than to a mature forum. I assume we are all adults here, let's try to behave as such.

How did I miss this little gem?!

If you have a problem with my hideously offensive words such as 'bollox', 'stupid' and 'the' then feel free to report my post and a mod will look at it. Once you have done this I ask that you address the content of my post rather than dismissing it because a string of letters offended your eyes.

zenno

QUOTE: If the referendum was fought on fear alone, the no side would have won by a country mile.

sorry there you have it the wrong way around.

Eliot Rosewater

aurelius79 wrote: »

Speaking of guarantees, what has the EU offered as a penalty if they have to break these guarantees. I'm sure we've all heard the phrase "guaranteed or your money back" at some point. What do we get if these guarantees are broken?

Erm, well firstly are they going to break them? Any attempt to do so will involve a vote at the Council of Ministers which will be partaken by the Irish representative.

And even if they did manage to, I imagine a case would be brought to the EU courts fighting such an infringement, and the legislation would be struck down.

The EU runs a lot better and more exactly than many No people would (like to) believe asfaik. The day before the vote I was wasting the time of talking to a Libertas women who was trying to get me to believe this mad conspiracy theory about "competency creep," whereby the EU would eventually take more and more competencies without being given them by the treaties. Ignoring for the moment that the member states wouldn't allow that (or else they would have gifted those competencies in the treaties), it fails to appreciate the binding effects the treaties have and the legal avenues available to citizens and member states should the treaties be infringed upon.

PeakOutput

zenno wrote: »

through fear it always works and always will unfortunatly.

show me the facts or make it clear this is your opinion

zenno

PeakOutput wrote: »

show me the facts or make it clear this is your opinion

this is just my opinion. but alot of people i have spoken to after the yes vote said they were afraid of what will happen if we voted no again. so fear got to them. in their opinion as well as mine.

hatrickpatrick

The problem I have with the "you voted for a government which supports Lisbon, if you didn't like it you shouldn't have voted for them" fallacy is very obvious. Lisbon is one issue. You unfortunately have to vote for some policies you hate in our political system unless you happen to agree with 100% of a manifesto (which is extremely unlikely).

In my proposed system of "departmental democracy" - whereby you would vote specifically for people to work in each department - would solve this problem.

IE, you like the Green policy on Health but you detest their foreign policy, and you like Labour's FP but hate their health policy.
In my system you could vote for a Green department of Health and a Labour department of foreign affairs. That way you would not have this stupid problem of having to either throw the baby out with the bathwater or let a wolf in with the sheep.

View

zenno wrote: »

this is just my opinion. but alot of people i have spoken to after the yes vote said they were afraid of what will happen if we voted no again. so fear got to them. in their opinion as well as mine.

We wouldn't have had a second referendum if it weren't for the "fear factor" used by the No side in Lisbon I.

Also, your claim isn't backed up by the post-referenda analysis - it shows most "swing voters" (i.e. those who switched from No to Yes) did so months before the referendum campaign started.

ei.sdraob

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

The problem I have with the "you voted for a government which supports Lisbon, if you didn't like it you shouldn't have voted for them" fallacy is very obvious. Lisbon is one issue. You unfortunately have to vote for some policies you hate in our political system unless you happen to agree with 100% of a manifesto (which is extremely unlikely).

In my proposed system of "departmental democracy" - whereby you would vote specifically for people to work in each department - would solve this problem.

IE, you like the Green policy on Health but you detest their foreign policy, and you like Labour's FP but hate their health policy.
In my system you could vote for a Green department of Health and a Labour department of foreign affairs. That way you would not have this stupid problem of having to either throw the baby out with the bathwater or let a wolf in with the sheep.

you know that actually sounds like quite a cool system

View

ei.sdraob wrote: »

you know that actually sounds like quite a cool system

It isn't.

The critical issue in politics is always the budget. If the money isn't there to pay for a policy, it isn't going anywhere. Hence, the critical issue would be who controls the budget?

If it is a central Minister for Finance then, whoever controls that department would get to "trump" the policies of all the other Ministers (Sorry folks, there is no money to pay for your election policies!). Alternatively, you'd need to give each Minister the power to raise taxes individually - in which case, I'd say it'd be a rare Minister who ever holds steady, much less reduces, the taxes to fund their department.

Essentially, you'd end up with a series of Presidential style elections for each Ministry. Based on our voting results to date, you'd have been almost guarenteed that we'd have rarely, if ever, had a Green or a Labour Minister running a department. That, of course, would defeat much of the initial attractiveness of the idea.

In addition, it also wouldn't solve hattrickpatrick's problem wrt to Lisbon as the odds there'd ever have been an anti-Lisbon/EU Minister is almost zero. If he wants change in this area, he either: a) needs to vote for a party which is closest to his position, or, b) if not happy with the parties on offer, set up a new one and go out an campaign for what he believes in. If people agree with what he suggests, he'll do well - if not, he'll have his answer from the electorate.

ei.sdraob

good point there

yeh sounds like a similar problem faced by a direct democracy system, of how will the budgets be decided

anyways were going offtopic here

to answer the OP no Lisbon didnt invalidate the democratic process, if anything it followed our constitution which sets out that the people have to be asked about important issues, and as we have seen there was a huge change of opinion once people realized they got duped by a bunch of crazy extremists

hatrickpatrick

View wrote: »

It isn't.

The critical issue in politics is always the budget. If the money isn't there to pay for a policy, it isn't going anywhere. Hence, the critical issue would be who controls the budget?

If it is a central Minister for Finance then, whoever controls that department would get to "trump" the policies of all the other Ministers (Sorry folks, there is no money to pay for your election policies!). Alternatively, you'd need to give each Minister the power to raise taxes individually - in which case, I'd say it'd be a rare Minister who ever holds steady, much less reduces, the taxes to fund their department.

I thought about this one myself and actually the idea I had was that each department would independently decide the tax rates, and if they raised taxes too high they'd simply be voted out. So you would almost have the parties being in financial competition with eachother which would ensure that there was as little extravagance and government waste as possible.

Essentially, you'd end up with a series of Presidential style elections for each Ministry. Based on our voting results to date, you'd have been almost guarenteed that we'd have rarely, if ever, had a Green or a Labour Minister running a department. That, of course, would defeat much of the initial attractiveness of the idea.

I was actually proposing the entire Dail be split up so that you would elect a certain number of TDs to each department and they would vote exclusively on issues relating to that department.

In addition, it also wouldn't solve hattrickpatrick's problem wrt to Lisbon as the odds there'd ever have been an anti-Lisbon/EU Minister is almost zero. If he wants change in this area, he either: a) needs to vote for a party which is closest to his position, or, b) if not happy with the parties on offer, set up a new one and go out an campaign for what he believes in. If people agree with what he suggests, he'll do well - if not, he'll have his answer from the electorate.

It would though, because for example you all say "Why don't you vote socialist / sinn fein / whatever" if you want the government to reject Lisbon. Well if we were only electing those parties to deal with the issue of foreign affairs (or even a new department exclusively for European affairs), I would obviously vote for them. The only reason I wouldn't now is because I disagree with their policies on other issues, which wouldn't matter in my system as they would have no power over other issues unless they were directly given those powers at the elections.

To make it clear, candidates would actually RUN "for" a department. You wouldn't just elect a certain number of TDs per area, you might elect a few TDs for the department of Education (and they would only be on the ballot for that department), a few for health, etc. So in other words, if I ran for the department of education, I would have an education manifesto and NOTHING else. That way people could actually vote for each specific policy they wanted rather than having to put up with the mixed bag system we have now.

EDIT: Just to reiterate: I, as a candidate, would have to choose the department I wanted to run for based on which issues mattered to me most.

View

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I thought about this one myself and actually the idea I had was that each department would independently decide the tax rates, and if they raised taxes too high they'd simply be voted out. So you would almost have the parties being in financial competition with eachother which would ensure that there was as little extravagance and government waste as possible.

The idea is reasonably close to the US system (at least at municipality/sub-state level), altough even there each department doesn't get to write their own budget. Also, I suspect you'd find that unless you are prepared to do wholesale US-style changing of the guard of the top decision makers in each department at election time, the permanent civil service would just raise taxes all the time. Remember too, if party A knows they will lose the next election, they have no reason to exercise restraint in ramping up taxes/spending etc at the end of their term, as they would leave their successor party the task of cutting services etc. to reign in spending.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I was actually proposing the entire Dail be split up so that you would elect a certain number of TDs to each department and they would vote exclusively on issues relating to that department.

You might want to look at how the old health boards beheaved. They were single issue boards and no one believed they were an ideal model for government. The main problem with such a divisive system is that - to take the case of the health boards - no one is actually prepared to stand against the idea of we need more money for the department/better services for all. Cutting the health service is not a vote winner.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It would though, because for example you all say "Why don't you vote socialist / sinn fein / whatever" if you want the government to reject Lisbon. Well if we were only electing those parties to deal with the issue of foreign affairs (or even a new department exclusively for European affairs), I would obviously vote for them.

Fair enough but I am not sure it would help you though. Realistically, we'd be highly unlikely to see someone from Labour elected to Foreign Affairs, much less from any smaller party. Also, remember that if anything FG and Labour are even more in favour of the EU than FF so I don't think you'd be happy with the choice made by the electorate.

Also, the EU can't be compartmentalised into just one departmental area. I'd say most, if not all, ministers are in Brussels for Council of Minister meetings on a regular basis. I'd suspect we'd look a little strange were we to elect a Eurosceptic Minister for Foreign Affairs while at the same time electing avid Europhile Ministers for Finance, Energy, Agriculture etc.

lintdrummer

Scofflaw wrote: »

The most obvious demonstration that democracy wasn't "subverted" is in the fact that the referendum result was completely different. Clearly the will of the electorate in June 2008 and October 2009 were different things - and that being so, on what basis should they not have been consulted the second time?

regards,
Scofflaw

With all due respect Scofflaw, that is a load of rubbish. The outcome of the 2nd referendum is irrelevant. We voted once, we got a result and that should have been end of story. Revisiting something due to different global circumstances is unacceptable. If that were the case we should be allowed to re-open debates on every referendum that's ever been taken, re-evaluate our stance based on what has happened since the first referendum and vote again.

What a society that would be, forever changing our minds and decisions being constantly held off because "we just mightn't be sure yet so give us another year to think about it."

I'd like to see Europe allowing us to take another referndum on Lisbon if, in a few years time, it turns out we're not too happy with it.

View

emmettogara wrote: »

With all due respect Scofflaw, that is a load of rubbish. The outcome of the 2nd referendum is irrelevant. We voted once, we got a result and that should have been end of story. Revisiting something due to different global circumstances is unacceptable.

Unacceptable to you maybe. It was, however, perfectly acceptable to the Supreme Court though (which ruled in favour of a Lisbon II referendum), plus, of course the electorate who approved Bunreacht na hEireann which left the question of second (or more) referenda to the Oireachtas.

emmettogara wrote: »

If that were the case we should be allowed to re-open debates on every referendum that's ever been taken, re-evaluate our stance based on what has happened since the first referendum and vote again.

We have already done that on multiple occassions: Abortion (4 or 5 referenda), Divorce (2 to overturn the original decision to ban divorce), Voting System (2 attempts overturn the decison to opt for PR-STV), Nice (2), Lisbon (2).

If we follow the idea that once we have a referenda on a topic we can't have a second one then most of our referenda couldn't have been held -we'd be stuck with the ban on Divorce, the Special position of the Catholic church, Articles 2 & 3 (as effected by the Belfast agreement). Were you to have such a situation, then it would not be case that "the people are sovereign" as they'd be banned from changing almost all of the constitution.

sceptre

emmettogara wrote: »

With all due respect Scofflaw, that is a load of rubbish. The outcome of the 2nd referendum is irrelevant. We voted once, we got a result and that should have been end of story.

Using your logic, one could successfully argue that all referendums are invalid. We voted on the Constitution as a whole on July 1, 1937, approving it as a whole, and the will of the people is final. Who are we to have referendums to overrule their wishes...?

Oh yes, we're the people and the constitution allows us to have referendums every second Friday if we damned well please on any provision of the constitution. We are allowed to reopen debates on any referendum we've ever passed. Or any referendum we've ever decided not to pass. That's the cool thing about having a democracy. While in the UK no past parliament can ultimately bind or restrict a future one, in Ireland no constitutional provision or referendum can bind or restrict a future one. That's nice as it allows us to change our minds. As people have mentioned, otherwise divorce would still be unavailable here, the Catholic church would still have a special constitutional position, there would be issues with regard to inheritance for children born out of wedlock, there wouldn't be a constitutional ban on the death penalty and voting would be restricted to people over the age of 21. Now, you might want to roll back on some of these but that's possible too for the group of mind-changing scallywags that we are. It's entirely within both the spirit and letter of the rules and it's been done before so there's precedent as well, not that any would be needed as it's entirely within the spirit and letter of the rules.

Not only is the result of the second referendum not irrelevant, it's entirely relevant and part of the current law of this state by being legally and legitimately passed under the laws of this state and if you don't realise that then you really need to start by reading the Bunreacht carefully.

lintdrummer

View wrote: »

If we follow the idea that once we have a referenda on a topic we can't have a second one then most of our referenda couldn't have been held -we'd be stuck with the ban on Divorce, the Special position of the Catholic church, Articles 2 & 3 (as effected by the Belfast agreement). Were you to have such a situation, then it would not be case that "the people are sovereign" as they'd be banned from changing almost all of the constitution.

Forgive me, it's late and I didn't write that post as well as I should have. Of course we should be allowed to ammend the constitution by way of referendum. However in the case of Lisbon we knew pretty much immediately after the first result that we would be voting again.

That would be acceptable if they had agreed to revise some aspects of it to address the concerns of the nation. But they didn't. And the fact that the economy went so pear shaped between the first and second vote only distorted the 2nd vote in my opinion. We were lead to believe that voting no had outcast us from Europe and we would never have any economic prosperity again.

It may not have been said in so many words but we all got the message. Phrases like "We need to be united in Europe" and "We need Europe to get through these tough times" were all that we heard after the first vote and in the run up to the second.
We never left the E.U., we just didn't like their treaty. A clever political campaign, but the public were mislead to make it work.

The second vote, in my opinion, was swayed by economics which had nothing to do with the result of the first vote. But the Government made us feel like it was our fault for voting no. It was scaremongering.

There are instances where referenda need to be revisited. Perhaps laws are outdated or amendments are made to a treaty based on public concerns and brought forward to be voted on again.

But in the case of the Lisbon Treaty referendum no changes were made. The economy went into freefall globally due to the banking crisis in the U.S.A., this was no reason to vote on the same Treaty again so soon after the first vote.

Therefore I still maintain that it was indeed undemocratic to hold the referendum again.

lintdrummer

sceptre wrote: »

Using your logic, one could successfully argue that all referendums are invalid. We voted on the Constitution as a whole on July 1, 1937, approving it as a whole, and the will of the people is final. Who are we to have referendums to overrule their wishes...?

Oh yes, we're the people and the constitution allows us to have referendums every second Friday if we damned well please on any provision of the constitution. We are allowed to reopen debates on any referendum we've ever passed. Or any referendum we've ever decided not to pass. That's the cool thing about having a democracy. While in the UK no past parliament can ultimately bind or restrict a future one, in Ireland no constitutional provision or referendum can bind or restrict a future one. That's nice as it allows us to change our minds. As people have mentioned, otherwise divorce would still be unavailable here, the Catholic church would still have a special constitutional position, there would be issues with regard to inheritance for children born out of wedlock, there wouldn't be a constitutional ban on the death penalty and voting would be restricted to people over the age of 21. Now, you might want to roll back on some of these but that's possible too for the group of mind-changing scallywags that we are. It's entirely within both the spirit and letter of the rules and it's been done before so there's precedent as well, not that any would be needed as it's entirely within the spirit and letter of the rules.

Not only is the result of the second referendum not irrelevant, it's entirely relevant and part of the current law of this state by being legally and legitimately passed under the laws of this state and if you don't realise that then you really need to start by reading the Bunreacht carefully.

Again, of course we should be allowed to ammend outdated laws in our own constitution and vote again on treatys that have been amended, but to vote again on an unamended treaty whilst being lead to believe that the first result had and was somehow going to continue to affect or economy is a different kettle of fish.

Strictly speaking, of course it's entirely democratic to get us to vote on the same treaty over and over and over again, it's in the constitution.

We should however have a good reason to revisit it. In this case I don't think we had a good enough reason to do that after such a short space of time. Things changed but not in a way that this treaty affected.

I have Bunreacht and have read it on more than a number of occasions so you don't need to inform me of the contents of the constitution, thanks all the same.

Dinner

emmettogara wrote: »

That would be acceptable if they had agreed to revise some aspects of it to address the concerns of the nation. But they didn't.

The post Lisbon surveys indicated that the main concerns that people had were not in the treaty. The biggest factor being a lack of knowledge on the contents of the treaty and the others being issues on taxation and neutrality etc.

The simple fact is that the treaty didn't need to be amended to address the concerns of the nation. If their had been something majorly objectionable to the public then it would have manifested itself in the polls. But there wasn't. Should the treaty be changed just for the sake of it? Why bother introducing another layer of bureaucracy to the EU when they can just clarify the contents without needing a lengthy and costly redrafting procedure?

It's not a case of 'wrong answer, try again' as many people would say. It's a case of discovering the concerns of the nation and solving them. In this case, the treaty did not need to be amended.

View

emmettogara wrote: »

Forgive me, it's late and I didn't write that post as well as I should have. Of course we should be allowed to ammend the constitution by way of referendum. However in the case of Lisbon we knew pretty much immediately after the first result that we would be voting again.

That would be acceptable if they had agreed to revise some aspects of it to address the concerns of the nation. But they didn't.

Under the terms of the constitution, the Government - and the Government alone - is authorised to negotiate international treaties on behalf of the Irish people.

The Government - and the EU - conducted post-referendum opinion polls on why people voted No. These showed a very fractured picture with a lot of disparate reasons slowly adding up to a small No majority (i.e. conscription, abortion, corporate tax etc.). Most of these had no basis in the Treaty whatsoever, rather the only reason they were factors in the referendum result at all was a direct result of the No side engaging in blatant scaremongering.

The Government decided that once they had statements to the effect that Lisbon did not effect any of the above areas that they could secure a Yes majority. They negotiated these statements on our behalf and as the result of the referendum showed the people accepted these.

Sure, this may not have addressed your concerns, but it did indeed address the concerns of a majority of the electorate.

emmettogara wrote: »

And the fact that the economy went so pear shaped between the first and second vote only distorted the 2nd vote in my opinion.

Well, it is one opinion. My own opinion is that many people in Lisbon I started off in the Yes camp but got concerned by the No side's scaremongering and voted No as a result. Hence, once the Government had the statements in hand, Lisbon II was a shoe-in - remember all that was needed was a small swing of just over 3% from No to Yes between the two referenda.

emmettogara wrote: »

We never left the E.U., we just didn't like their treaty.

It wasn't "their treaty" - it was "our treaty". It was negotiated by our diplomats as much as any others. As for the claim, "we" just didn't like the treaty, it is true that some of the electorate didn't want Lisbon if it contained conscription, abortion etc - but once they had guarentees it didn't, the reasons for voting No just disappeared for these people and they defaulted to Yes.

emmettogara wrote: »

Therefore I still maintain that it was indeed undemocratic to hold the referendum again.

The Supreme Court already addressed this point in their ruling. In their opinion, it is not and cannot EVER be undemocratic to refer an issue in a referendum to the people (i.e. the demos of democracy).

Flamed Diving

emmettogara wrote: »

I'd like to see Europe allowing us to take another referndum on Lisbon if, in a few years time, it turns out we're not too happy with it.

Erm, we don't require Europe's permission to hold referenda and if you had been paying even the slightest bit of attention to what was being said about the treaty, you would have noticed that this treaty is the first to contain a mechanism for countries to exit the EU. If we have such a huge problem with Lisbon, we can simply leave.

Daftendirekt

emmettogara wrote: »

Revisiting something due to different global circumstances is unacceptable. If that were the case we should be allowed to re-open debates on every referendum that's ever been taken, re-evaluate our stance based on what has happened since the first referendum and vote again.

You're absolutely right. We should.

People change their minds from time to time and there's absolutely no reason to deny them the ability to change the constitution to reflect this.

rumour

aurelius79 wrote: »

This not a discussion about whether voting yes was the right decision or not. This is about whether having two referendums with two different results on the exact same treaty invalidates the right of the public to vote in a referendum or even an election.

A topical issue, which unfortunately, but unsurprisingly no one will engage with you. Instead what you get is moral justification for what was done, ignoring a referendum result. As I see it now if you don't like the democratic result you can commission an 'independent survey' and ignore the result. Is an independent survey more important than the result of the referendum? Can we apply this to elections?

aurelius79 wrote: »

If the public is so easily swayed by fear or misinformation, then what good is a democratic system?

I think the obvious answer is not much anyway do we truly live in a democracy. It is however a good recent example of the power that fear can bestow on people.

aurelius79 wrote: »

Why allow people with such little knowledge about a particular issue to speak for the entire nation? As I said, this isn't about yes or no as the problem affects both sides.

Who has the knowledge? Is it the government? Is it our political institutions? Is it the economists? For those that advocate this approach any talk of democracy is a ruse, as what they really advocate is an oligarchy. This is fine, until you find yourself on the outside. I think it can even work well for a time even without the support of the majority as you can always resort to fear but in time it is doomed to failure not by the mechanism of governance itself but more by the moral characteristics of those who hold power who continually adopt more and more distasteful techniques to bolster their lack of popularity. I cannot put my finger on why, but there is always a reluctance to cede power and always a desire to have it.

aurelius79 wrote: »

What did the Lisbon referendums say about the EU?

That it is a strong organisation in pursuit of power and no democratic result from a small nation would be allowed stand in the way of their progress. This does not make it defacto bad, but it does demonstrate that the pursuit of power is far more enticing than guarding democratic principles.

aurelius79 wrote: »

We, as a nation, voted no on the Lisbon Treaty. Whether that was right or wrong is debatable but for this discussion it is irrelevant. This vote was completely ignored by the EU and we were forced to vote again. What would have happened if we voted no the second time? Would they have made us vote again and again until we voted "correctly"? Would they have just passed the treaty with only the consent of the Irish government? It was clear that they were unwilling to alter the treaty, so what do you think would have happened?

They would have found a media friendly marketable political solution that advanced their aims. They are an institution that exists only to expand their power base. This does not make it bad per say. As a general example how could you sell the good of the EU if all that came out of it was, we're fine, don't need anything, expanding? Nope, no need for that. Instantly we would be calling it useless. Perhaps this is just human nature. I was watching Gladiator recently. In it there was a question 'what is Rome?', the answer was 'it is an idea'. Romans loved it as it expanded and triumphed, when that stopped in some respects so too did the greatness of Rome.

sceptre

rumour wrote: »

A topical issue, which unfortunately, but unsurprisingly no one will engage with you. Instead what you get is moral justification for what was done, ignoring a referendum result. As I see it now if you don't like the democratic result you can commission an 'independent survey' and ignore the result. Is an independent survey more important than the result of the referendum? Can we apply this to elections?

If a government in situ feels the need to step down and call a general election after a poll says they should then yes, of course you can apply it to elections. This has always been the case.

rumour wrote: »

I was watching Gladiator recently. In it there was a question 'what is Rome?', the answer was 'it is an idea'. Romans loved it as it expanded and triumphed, when that stopped in some respects so too did the greatness of Rome.[/FONT]

I'm sure Ridley Scott is as entitled to his views on what Rome was as anyone else who's directing a multi-million-dollar piece of entertainment, making a statement on bread and circuses while ironically sating me with both as I chomp popcorn. I'd say that Rome was more than an idea, as is the EU, but then I'm not directing a multi-million-dollar piece of entertainment.

rumour

sceptre wrote: »

If a government in situ feels the need to step down and call a general election after a poll says they should then yes, of course you can apply it to elections. This has always been the case..

Yes but is this a good way to govern. If I don't like the election result can I commission an opinion poll and force the government to have an election, pretty much straight after the election?

sceptre wrote: »

I'm sure Ridley Scott is as entitled to his views on what Rome was as anyone else who's directing a multi-million-dollar piece of entertainment, making a statement on bread and circuses while ironically sating me with both as I chomp popcorn. I'd say that Rome was more than an idea, as is the EU, but then I'm not directing a multi-million-dollar piece of entertainment.

Well I don't care to much for Ridley Scott, but I did find those statements worthy of contemplation, I haven't written a thesis but consider for example what motivated everyone to join Napeleons army or indeed for that matter Hitlers. At some point people believed it was all for good or betterment in terms that they could find morally excusable. Surely to achieve that kind of devoted following an idea of sorts must be at the core?
The most recent example is Mr Obama message of 'change' and 'yes we can', which is so simplistic its humourous but it is an idea that garnered support and ultimately got him power.

sceptre

rumour wrote: »

Yes but is this a good way to govern. If I don't like the election result can I commission an opinion poll and force the government to have an election, pretty much straight after the election?

Heavens no. But you can't do that with either an election or a referendum. The government can do it with both. I fail to see the inconsistency. Obviously I'm just not getting your projected destination, can you point me there?

Well I don't care to much for Ridley Scott, but I did find those statements worthy of contemplation, I haven't written a thesis but consider for example what motivated everyone to join Napeleons army or indeed for that matter Hitlers. At some point people believed it was all for good or betterment in terms that they could find morally excusable. Surely to achieve that kind of devoted following an idea of sorts must be at the core?
The most recent example is Mr Obama message of 'change' and 'yes we can', which is so simplistic its humourous but it is an idea that garnered support and ultimately got him power.

It's nice when the people like what their political leaders are doing. Or when the elected leaders listen to the people and vice versa. I'm not the greatest fan of sound bites and catch phrases though, as people will have noticed from my views on the Lisbon posters in general. They can work as a hook and some people don't require more than a hook. I'd say that the "what do you want Europe to become" is rather a larger question than "should Ireland have had a second referendum and if 'no', is democracy somehow destroyed by it" and probably worthy of a thread on its own. I know that rather then a mere catchphrase you're considering what Europe should actually be, starting at the apex of an abstract idea and working down. That's a massive question, massive discussion and certainly deserves its own thread.

Scofflaw

emmettogara wrote: »

Again, of course we should be allowed to ammend outdated laws in our own constitution and vote again on treatys that have been amended, but to vote again on an unamended treaty whilst being lead to believe that the first result had and was somehow going to continue to affect or economy is a different kettle of fish.

Strictly speaking, of course it's entirely democratic to get us to vote on the same treaty over and over and over again, it's in the constitution.

We should however have a good reason to revisit it. In this case I don't think we had a good enough reason to do that after such a short space of time. Things changed but not in a way that this treaty affected.

Which leaves us with the obvious conclusion that EU treaty referendums aren't decided on the issues contained solely in the treaty under consideration. Agreeing that to be the case, it should be obvious that the claim that some 'material' change is required in the treaty before it can be revisited is entirely false.

The only argument that avoids that conclusion is one that claims that the first referendum was decided only on the material issues in the Treaty, while the second one was decided on irrelevant issues - a claim which is frankly ridiculous, not least because the No campaigns made a point (indeed, their strongest point) of how little people knew about the Treaty in the first referendum. Still, if you'd like to defend that, lay on!

cordially,
Scofflaw