I’m still not convinced voting Yes to Lisbon is good for Ireland.

I think I am like most Irish people, well most ordinary Irish people, and not those unpatriotic cowboys that are our established politicians who dodge taxes, rape and pillage the country with their numerous pensions for scratching their arses in Dail Eirean, or IBEC who can’t wait for Lisbon to go through so they can employ the cheapest labour from the far ends of Europe, or any of those entities who advocate a Yes vote and who would sell their own mothers for a chance to sup at the trough that is the EU gravy train.

Like most ordinary, decent, working Irish people, I want what’s best for Ireland. If voting Yes to Lisbon was good for Ireland, and I mean the people of Ireland and not those parties in the Yes camp, then I would be first in the queue to vote Yes. And perhaps someone will come on here and say I am a fantacist, I am ignorant, I don’t know what I am talking about, etc. etc. I’m this and I’m that, the treaty will make the EU more efficient and will help us with energy security (which sounds like a pretext for invading the middle-east at some future stage).

But I know enough about this Treaty and the European Union in general to know that those at the head of the EU are at this very moment tearing their hair out that the people of Ireland were allowed a vote on this at all because it was their intention to pass this Treaty without any democratic vote. Kind of ironic but also scary, that this Treaty which virtually no-one in Europe has a vote on, is meant to bring more democracy to Europe!! Does that not actually give people a clue about the future direction of Europe?

I cannot see one single advantage in this Treaty for Ireland. That in itself is not a reason to vote No, I agree because that would be just voting No for the sake of it. However I can see plenty in this Treaty that is bad for Ireland. The solidarity clause worries me. It worries me because we could see a 9/11 and post 9/11 situation develop in Europe at some future stage. What might happen is that an explosion happens in say Paris killing many French citizens and the French and EU may use it as a pretext to attack some oil rich country it accuses of harbouring terrorists. While we may not be involved ourselves in the fighting, because of the solidarity clause, other European nations may form an alliance to invade the other country.

The lack of a commissioner worries me. The voting weights worry me. Yes we will have more weight than the ordinary French citizen for example, but we would still be only the equivalent of a part of France. In effect we will be a speck in Europe, whereas once we were a major player. And, we will face the same situation as faced by Daniel O’Connell during the darkest days of this country, forced to go over to Europe to beg for laws which benefit us and beg them not to take away our low corporate tax and so on.

Yes of course we have been garaunteed vetos and all that, but I still feel our national soverignty will be greatly diminished by voting Yes to Lisbon. I could be wrong about that, but my gut feeling tells me I am right. Already we are seeing with Europeans coming in here and taking jobs Irish people should be doing, that we have no say or control over what Europe tells us to do. I know for certain once Lisbon goes through we will even have less of a say.

I don’t believe also that we should listen to the argument that voting Yes is payback for all the money the EU sent over to us. If anything the EU owes us. We fed the continent with our fish, even though most of the money for that fish went into the pockets of Spanish and other nations fishermen. We also fed the continent with our beef and our dairy products. So in reality we don’t owe Europe anything, not one cent.

So voting No is the safest thing to do and I will be voting No, because I don’t trust our politicians, I don’t trust IBEC, I don’t trust Peter Sutherland, puppet of Bilderberg that he is, I don’t trust Charlie McCreevy, Bertie Ahearn and those who negotiated it and there are many more on the Yes side I don’t trust either and am very very suspicious of their motives because I know Ireland’s interests and their interests are not one and the same.

Well no ********************e Sherlock !- I'd never have guessed that from your previous input on this site- still - you have gone from a strident over my head body to "not convinced" so I suppose there is hope for ya

No actually, I am one of those many people who have being changing their minds from day to day.

Like I said, I want to do what's right for Ireland, if I thought voting Yes was right for Ireland I would vote Yes. But Voting Yes will mean some sort of administrative house-cleaning alright, that's the pro side, but on the con side, there are a lot of things I cannot see any advantage to Ireland from them and some of the parts of the Treaty it is litteraly impossible to foretell how they might impact on Europe and Ireland in the future.

Let's not all beat around the bush here. This is the European Constitution. Do we really want a constitution for Europe, which really supercedes the Irish Constitution? Isn't the agenda of the Eurocrats to create a state with them at the head which is more powerful than all other states in Europe? Isn't it the natural instinct of ALL politicians to gain more power and less accountability? And isn't Lisbon one more stop towards that goal?