Thank you thank you thank you a thousand times!
Apparently thishere is funny or scary, depending on your mood (I can’t watch it, being outside the UK):go to about 12′ 20″ in. In which an Eurocrat fails to answer the question “”Your boss, Jose Manuel Barroso, says the treaty’s not dead, it’s still alive. Can you explain to voters what they would have to do to kill it?”.
Laodicea 
June 14, 2008 at 5:18 pm
i find this really scary! i mean, they’ve said that they’ll push ahead with it now anyway. the level of contempt that some of the eu leaders holds for us is incredible. if any nation votes against the wishes of the eu then the eu just finds away around the ‘problem’.
i used to be a big supporter of the eu and, in fact, was the only one in my seminar at uni who was supportive of the eu. not now.
laws can be forced through the parliament by the commission (the legislators) and the commission isn’t even directly accountable to the electorate of the nation states.
if the eu were a nation it wouldn’t be allowed into the eu as it doesn’t fulfil the basic requirement of being democratic.
good job ireland but unfortunately they’ll get us anyway. is the eu the new authoritarian kid on the block? look at its plans for education and you’ll probably decide yes…and rightly so.
go, ireland!
June 14, 2008 at 5:19 pm
btw you can watch newsnight through its website. just don’t load it through the iplayer.
June 14, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Tee hee, she actually takes about 3 whole seconds to even start to answer the question.
– Can you explain to voters what they would have to do, to kill it?
– [3 sec] I think first of all if we are serious about democracy I think we have to understand why the irish people voted no. That must be sort of the first stage, and this is what the irish and what we will contribute to do until the heads of state and governments meet.
– Presumably they voted no because they don’t like the treaty, but your boss is saying it will go on.
– Well you don’t know that
– I’m just I’m just asking you what would they have to do, not to have it?
– I think you just have to find out, and i think the Irish government will make the analysis and we will through the europe parliament try to find out more
– But is there anything
– after the french and the dutch votes as well and the answers were very different actually if you compare what the voters in france and in the netherlands said
– Well they said no. [Talking across each other a lot]
– But is there *anything* voters can do? In a democracy.
– In a democracy then you listen to the concerns and you see is there anything we can do do meet these concerns …
June 14, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Danke sehr both of you!
June 14, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Oh man. Is she a parody? Patronising bisom!
“We have to listen to their concerns” – ARGH! Drop dead! No! Just do what we tell you!
June 14, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Unbe-fregean-lievable. The arrogance and stark bloody-mindedness of the Commission is gasp-making.
Bª
June 14, 2008 at 9:37 pm
P.S. I think this marvellous locution: “ARGH! Drop dead! No! Just do what we tell you!” would make an excellent letterhead for the CDF (a.k.a., the Holy Office).
June 15, 2008 at 1:36 am
On behalf of the 862,415 of us who voted no (I had a mad dash to get to the polling station on time) you’re very welcome! I’m only sorry that British voters (and all the others too) didn’t get to cast their own votes in their own referendums!
June 15, 2008 at 10:22 am
Would it have made any difference if we had though, Eamonn?
Maybe that’s their plan: to get us all so completely to despair of our votes making any difference that even countries that do schedule referendums will have tiny “unrepresentative” turn-outs. Well done Ireland for bucking that!
June 15, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Fantastic… At times I want to hit the irish, but at times like these I want to go and drink pochene with them!