Ah - fair enough. I thought you had misread the word "marked" in the initial para. I haven't read any of their PD pieces, but this is certainly fairly adulatory:

That's 1997, though, so not Madam.

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Never let the best be the enemy of the good.

If it wasn't for Libertas and similar groups Lisbon would have been voted through and Ireland would have gotten a very bad deal losing our permanent commissioner as well as other issues of soverignty which our great mainsteam parties were only too willing to sign away at the prospect of getting their snouts in the EU trough.

Do we not all owe Libertas then a debt of gratitude for saving our permanet commissioner?

Sometimes you get tired of the way our traditional political parties give in to the dictates of the EU without putting up any fight.

Does anyone seriously believe that FF for example represents Irish people well or serves the Irish people? Would we not be better off voting for any alternative than FF.

That would be because they go and negotiate those 'dictates' in the first place. Also..."commishioner"! Have you been drinking?

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Never let the best be the enemy of the good.

Vive la revolution.

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I fixed it now.

They don't negotiate those dictates. Ireland's influence in Europe has about the same impact on the direction of Europe as a flea has on the direction a horse takes. Get Real!

The larger countries, the French, Italians, etc are well used to ignoring EU dictates. In Ireland we accept them all.

I suppose you still think bringing low cost competitors like Poland into the EU was a good idea. Ask the former workers in Dell what they think of that.

It's révolution.

It's amazing. FF have been proven in government to be utterly useless, completely out for their own good, and always with an eye out for the cushy job in Europe or the Aras.

And yet the Irish people are dumb enough to follow FF's lead on Europe and Lisbon. Thankfully there are still a few intelligent people like me and others who see the removal of even one power from Ireland and it's concentration in Europe a bad idea.

One of the reasons we cannot get out of our present recession in Ireland is we have no control over any of the main economic levers. They are all controlled a thousand miles or more away.

We, the people of Ireland, generally accept proposed EU treaties.

Occassionally we reject them.

In both cases, we use our sovereignty to great effect.

In neither case can we be accused of accepting EU dictates.

The Treaties have to jump the hurdle of the Irish electorate, which means that our influence on the treaties tends to be quite large.

As to the day to day running, we've always had a disproportionate influence - and if you're referring to our QMV weighting, would people please, ffs, read up on how the Council actually works? Virtually nothing is voted on - stuff is carried forward only if everyone agrees.

Other way round. We have an appalling track record on things like environmental directives, and plenty of others pass into that strange limbo of laws that nobody really pays attention to. The UK, on the other hand, tends to rigidly follow what has been agreed.

So you reckon we should have tried to hold our own as the EU's low-cost outsourcing destination? You appreciate that would have involved keeping Irish pay rates low for the benefit of foreign corporations?

We won't come out of this recession until Europe comes out of this recession - whereas if we had full control over the levers we'd have to wait until Europe comes out of this recession. Personally, I'm at least a little glad FF at least don't have the power to screw the economy up further with bad macro-economic 'counter-recession' policies.

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Never let the best be the enemy of the good.

1. It was Ganley who launched the attack on Higgins. When Higgins replies, and the media, as they do, cover it, you think covering someone's reply on Ganley are an attempt to "marr" his press conference. (If Ganley doesn't want to get attacked then he should stop attacking people and then feigning surprise when they hit back.

It was Ganley who provoked the attack.

2. Secondly, the editor does not write headlines or commentaries. Surely you know that.

Welcome to the weird world of the Libertas devotees - where every lie told by Libertas is the truth and any effort to point out the many holes in Ganley's bucket are smears. And also where paranoia and fantasy run riot, right down to imagining that when someone replies to a b-itchy attack by Ganley, and it is reported, it is all some plot to undermine Ganley's embarrassingly twee little launch in front of a half empty hall.