Ireland to the rescue

[Puppy]

Good news on Friday 13th:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7452171.stm
"Early unofficial vote tallies around Ireland are indicating a strong showing for the No vote in a referendum on the European Union's Lisbon Treaty."


Online: http://www.ireland.com/focus/thelisbont ... teractive/

[RealBlackStuff]

We may be a small country, but us Irish have good common sense!
We even ousted our former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern when he received one too many brown envelopes!
Éirinn go Brágh!

[Puppy]

53.4% NO

[RealBlackStuff]

Just in case, I am an Irish citizen with a Green Card, residing in the USA!
But I enjoy what's happening in my country.

[ajkula66]

Guys, time for a

I don't have a single drop of Irish blood in my veins (nobody's perfect, not even me... ) but good for the Irish people...

[BillMorrow]

someone is going to have to tell me what a brown envelope is..

i suppose i could google lisbon treaty..

Edit:
ok, so NOW i know it was a referendum on a EU president and foreign minister..
i can't see most EU states giving up soverignty willingly..
which i suppose is why the UK took a vote in parliment to ratify the is so called "Lisbon Treaty" and did not put it to a vote like ireland had to do..

why am i getting a feeling of deja vu here..?
did not the US go through something sort of similar a short while after we became independent from england.. which became a hot disagreement about whether the individual states were more soverign than a federal government..?

i just can NOT see the queen taking second chair to an EU chief executive..
nor france or germany or spain or italy, et al..
(which i suppose is why there have been so many wars in europe)

now i am not a historian nor is the foregoing a perfect comparison to what we call the war between the states, but the seeds sure seem to be planted..

[RealBlackStuff]

someone is going to have to tell me what a brown envelope is..

Taking a bribe in many shapes or forms (money, a car, a holiday, a lady of the night, etc.).
People used to pass money on in a small brown envelope, which was, and still is, a much-used type of envelope for (supposedly) innocent letters.
The expression just 'stuck' in the vernacular.

[mattbiernat]

indeed it is time for a , im no irish but us poles we do have some in common.

[Puppy]

Who would have guessed ... they will repeat the voting again until they get the "right" result. That's nasty:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opi ... 81206.html

[beGi]

Yes and no...

They will repeat the process until they get result they want, but they also changed few things that really bothered Irish people (don't know for sure, something to do with army, abortion etc)...

[killer]

There are a number of different sides to this; the Irish people (as RBS will probably endorse ... although because of his rebellious nature he might just say a word that rhymes with 'rowlocks' ) have always been proud to be considered rebellious, the EU Treaty is a compromise to avoid having another attempt at an EU Constitution (some might say, "same old sh*t, different label"), the diversity of the EU compared to the US (laws, currencies, religions, and languages), and the fairly recent addition of many new member states.

I understand that Irish law dictates that any change to its constitution requires a referendum. Other EU member countries have different requirements. For example, the UK has no written constitution and has only ever had one referendum (in 1975).

Sovereignity is not up for grabs at present. BTW, there are 7 monarchies who are member states; Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and UK ... so it is not just the Queen Elizabeth who might be affected.

There is a host of information here: http://europa.eu/abc/index_en.htm

[RealBlackStuff]

The proposed second referendum/vote is planned for June 12th, 2009.
Some more info here: The Lisbon Treaty for Dummies
Screw the EU committees, I would vote NO again!