Lisbon - Round II

Image by stephen.spillane via FlickrSo the stage is being set for us to vote on the EXACT same treaty again. Granted the only difference is that the member states will agree not to limit the number of EU Commissioners. The other changes will be copper fastening what we already have. A protocol on Abortion (Attached to Maastricht!), Military (Attached to Nice after Nice I) and Tax Sovereignty which is in all the treaties! Really come on like! How stupid do the government think we are? While I love Europe and the EU and all the good it does it, I am not voting for this treaty unless our Government and specifically our Taoiseach shows some leadership!

Martina Devlin has an excellent column in todays Indo on Brian Cowen's lack of leadership especially in comparison to Gordon Brown who "transformed himself into a phoenix among politicians, emerging gloriously from the ashes of his career after bold steps to tackle the banking meltdown". Which is true and opinion polls have shown that with a marked decline in the lead the Tories have over Labour.

The same cannot be said for Brian Cowen and Fianna Fail here. When ever there is an announcement all that follows is confusion and blame games. No one in this country will take the blame. When it was obvious to the dogs on the street that the Lisbon Referendum was going to fail, Brian Cowen decided to blame Fine Gael and Labour for not pulling their weight when it was obvious Fianna Fail TD's and suppporters where not canvassing (I didn't get canvassed by any 'Yes' group).

Though I am suppportive of the European Project, I am more supportive of Democracy and think unless there is substansive change to the treaty I shall be voting no.

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Would Libertas please make up its mind!

I'm fed up with news stories like this one from RTÉ.ie this morning, 'Libertas may run candidates for Europe'. This story gets trotted out every now and then but nothing ever happens with it. There is no talk of registering as a political party or anything like that, as of yet.

The Euro's are only eight months away and any political party (new or old) would basically want to be picking there candidates this month or next so that after Christmas there is a straight run from the new Year to the election.

The next election might also see the first elections for trans-European political parties operating under there own banner, including Newropeans and Europe – Democracy – Esperanto, neither of which seam to be running candidates in Ireland.

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Newropeans, A new pan European Political Party