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Opinion & Analysis |
Friday, September 18, 2009 |
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Four reasons for a No, and four more not to vote YesDubious ‘guarantees and assurances’ given regarding the Lisbon Treaty studiously avoid its rotten core LIKE FRANKENSTEIN’s monster, here comes the Lisbon Treaty once more, rising from the undead. Though 66 million French and Dutch voters were simply bypassed to avoid more pesky referendums, Ireland’s Constitution precludes such an elegant solution, forcing a second vote on the same treaty. True, some dubious “guarantees and assurances” have been obtained to address five concerns of the hyper-sensitive Irish that are convenient to discuss. Ireland will keep its commissioner and control its own taxes. No innocent Irish lads will be conscripted as EU cannon fodder, abortion will not be imposed and workers’ rights and public services will be protected. But since they’re not copper-fastened into the treaty itself, they cannot be unchallengeable: they are less guarantees than target-rich “assurances” for future treaty lawyers. Anyway, they only nibble at the treaty’s edges, and studiously avoid the rotten core to which so many people fundamentally object. For me, this leads to four powerful reasons to vote No, and four more not to vote Yes. Firstly, there is the dishonesty of having converted the readable, understandable, if internally contradictory Treaty Establishing A Constitution For Europe into the Lisbon Reform Treaty – an interminable series of unreadable, incomprehensible amendments to two prior EU treaties (Maastricht and Rome) – while otherwise retaining nearly all the content of the rejected constitution. A No vote is the only response to such shamelessness. The second powerful reason is similar but different. Just as no rational person would dare sign a contract that he/she couldn’t understand, so no one should vote for a treaty without understanding it. It still takes me 13 hours to read once, so unless you have a spare week to absorb it in conjunction with Rome and Maastricht, and you don’t like signing blank cheques, No is the only rational vote. Across the EU, 60 to 85 per cent (depending on sources) of legislation already originates in Brussels. Yet Lisbon would transfer more than 100 new competencies from national to EU level. Another 60-plus EU mandated areas would move from unanimity to majority voting, reducing further the influence of individual nations. This would represent the single largest transfer of powers from nations to Brussels in EU history.
But honestly, do citizens really want to surrender ever more sovereignty, resulting in even more EU laws? It’s the third powerful reason to vote No. In Ireland, all the main political parties are united in urging us to vote Yes. Yet nobody today can trust the wisdom of the ruling Coalition and supine Opposition, which have brought the country to the brink of financial ruin with reckless policies and neglect. The current political elite is one group whose judgment on what’s good for Ireland is supremely suspect. If they say Yes, that’s the fourth powerful reason to vote No. The Yes-sirs who would have us approve the referendum are putting out postcards, pamphlets, websites and print, radio and TV blitzes to explain the unintelligible treaty. But these explanations are not the treaty being voted on. Moreover, how can we know they’re not simply biased attempts to highlight the good stuff while obfuscating the bad? Such media campaigns are no reason to vote Yes. Many prominent personages in Ireland, Brussels and elsewhere are urging us to vote Yes, but they are heavily invested, personally, in continued enlargement of EU activity, because that’s where their careers lie. With the EU so influential in national law-making, domestic legislators won’t advance their careers by opposing the EUrocracy. And if you’re part of that EUrocracy – or dependants such as lobbies, lawyers, think tanks or service providers – Lisbon’s expanded powers can only mean more work, bigger budgets, massive recruitment and thus juicy promotional opportunities for you. Passionate exhortations by self-interested individuals are no reason to vote Yes. Neither is the Yes-sirs’ frequent if illogical equivalence of a Lisbon No with departure from the EU. The Irish naysayers don’t want to leave the EU; we love the EU and the euro just as they are; they’ve been wonderful for Ireland, so why mess with the formula? But we don’t want to expand the EU’s powers with untold consequences, nor create through a badly written document a treaty lawyer’s paradise. The final red herring is the credit crunch. The Yes-sirs perpetrate the calumny that the EU would meet another Irish No with economic revenge. Of course some angry EUrocrats may try to block goodies from Ireland’s maw. But the EU is not those Brusselarians – it’s the 500 million citizens, and of these we know the French, Dutch, British and Germans would reject Lisbon if given the chance, so a mass plot against Ireland is inconceivable. This empty threat is the fourth non-reason to vote Yes. We should reject Lisbon in our own enlightened self-interest, but also on behalf of the unenfranchised EU half-billion.
© 2009 The Irish Times
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More on this subject in a blog post entitled “Voting NO to Lisbon - Again” |
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Lisbon Treaty Referendum - 23 September 2009 Madam, – Tony Allwright’s view of how “Lisbon empowers the EU to impose its own taxes” (Opinion, September 18th) is wrong in just about every detail. The actual position appears to be as follows: 1. The Treaty of Lisbon amends two existing Treaties, Maastricht (Treaty on European Union) 1992 and Rome (Treaty establishing the European Community) 1957, both of which have themselves each undergone previous amendment. The original version of the Treaty of Rome contained 248 Articles, but has 314 Articles in its current version. Maastricht has 53 Articles. Tony Allwright is thus incorrect in saying that “neither (Maastricht or Rome) runs to 269 Articles”. 2. Lisbon has just seven Articles. Lisbon does not contain any Article 259, as suggested by Mr Allwright. Lisbon Article 1 lists the amendments to be made to Maastricht and contains 61 provisions. Article 2 does the same for the Treaty of Rome and has 295 provisions. It is provision 259 of Lisbon Article 2 that amends Rome Article 269, which deals with financing the EU budget from “own resources” of the Union. 3. Lisbon does not introduce new powers for the EU in respect of “own resources”. Financing of the EU’s budget from “own resources” is a concept going back to the beginning of the EEC in 1957. The current Rome Article 269 has a direct predecessor in Article 201 of the 1957 version of the treaty. Both the unamended present Article 269 and its amended version require unanimity of the Council (of Ministers) and consultation with the European Parliament for matters relating to “own resources”. 4. Article 5 of Lisbon changes the Article numbering of the amended Treaties of Maastricht and Rome. “Tables of equivalences” are set out as an Annex to Lisbon. The renumbered Articles do not constitute a separate “consolidated” treaty. The end result of Lisbon is an amended Treaty on European Union (Maastricht) and an amended Treaty of Rome (renamed “Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union”), in which the amended previous Rome Article 269 becomes renumbered Article 311 (of a total of 358). Amended Maastricht has 55 Articles. Understanding the effects of the Treaty of Lisbon is challenging but not impossible. It is disappointing at this stage of a vital national debate for a misinterpretation of any Article of the Treaties to be published in your newspaper. – Yours, etc,
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Gift Idea |
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Good to report that as at
FREED AT LAST, |
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What I've recently
But it's not
entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs
to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as See detailed review +++++
BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability. Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia. The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history. Note: I wrote
my own reports on Macondo +++++
A horrific account of:
More details on my blog here. +++++
After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939. From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison. Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,
Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book. There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document. +++++
This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP. With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is. +++++
It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:
The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions. And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks. Weird. ++++++
It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as
It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:
The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. +++++
The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India. Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. The book amounts to a very human and exhilarating tale. Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan. +++++ Other books here |
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After
48
crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are,
deservedly,
England get the Silver,
No-one can argue with
Over the competition, |
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