It's called 'thinking for ourselves'. People are allowed to do that in a democracy.
Fair enough, I was pointing out that Germany continues to show good economic growth with a substantial growth in exports (despite low consumer confidence). They are also in the Euro and subject to the same international factors that we are.Eh .. perhaps you can rephrase your question ? I never said it was 100% due to external factors. In fact I never speculated upon this. What I did infer was that Lisbon is probably the least of possible suspects for why things are going wrong now. The markets probably assume we'll end up signing up to it in the end anyway which may be true or false. So please explain how voting yes to Lisbon would have made us as efficient as the Germans ? Or would have taken the gombeenism and clientelism out of our politicians or eradicated the mismanagement of the economy over the last 10 years , the property bubble or inflation ? How would it have made us any more competitive.
Voting 'yes' to Lisbon wasnt going to stop the crap we are in now. How was it going to eliminate the decline in the construction industry, the risk of bad debts in our banks due to 100% mortgages etc. The state of our economy is of our own making.
Not again, it's not gone away you know - the fishermen and fish finger making alternate-economy fallacy.I've never been an uncritical European and always knew that we paid and repaid dearly for all those structural funds by giving away the waters around our island - worth billions - in perpetuity.
But I don't get how is any of that relevant to the Lisbon treaty thread or to what Harchibald said (and later retracted) ?
Our economy is still very close to the UK. They are our biggest trading partner and that generates its own pull.Ugh. In which way will we move back into the Uk's orbit ? The number of exports or what ? What exactly does being in the Uk's orbit mean ? I'd appreciate having that clarified because I have heard it said before. Won't we continue to be caught between Europe (of which the UK is a part) and the USA and arent' we opening up new markets in China etc ?
I think that is a bit of a misrep of what I said. I was referring to our recent dismal stock exchange performance which is due to international investors attaching leper status to the wounded celtic tiger. Lisbon is only a small part of this sentiment but it certainly didn't help.uiop said:I was replying to Harchibalds comment attributing all our economic woes to Lisbon which could not in the interests of truth be allowed to stay unchallenged.
Why do you think departing from the euro would be a disaster ?
2. The others will finish ratifying the treaty and Ireland will be pushed to the sidelines and somehow we will have to figure out a way of interfacing with the rest.
I think it's naive to believe that a country the size of Ireland alone will be the downfall of the Lisbon treaty.
If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle.53% of the french said they would vote NO if they had a vote ..... the UK would reject if given a vote.
2. This is not possible.
It's not just the irish that don't agree with the treaty - 75% of europeans would like to be given the opportunity to vote and 53% of the french said they would vote NO if they had a vote (not forgetting that this treaty has already been rejected by Ireland, France and The Netherlands under it's guise as Nice. There can hardly be any doubt either that the UK would reject if given a vote.
My guess is that if this was put to referenda it would be rejected in 27 countries. I also guess that if the annual Finance Bill was put to referendum it would never get passed. Why oh why were we so naive to hold a referendum?
So now we know what's going to happen,it's Nice all over again with an other vote, until the goverment gets the result they want.
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