Further to David’s post, this from Guido Fawkes :
When the result came in yesterday Mark Mardell looked shocked and sounded exasperated. The BBC has continually been running this line in its reporting of Ireland’s historic vote on the Lisbon Treaty:
“Just over three million Irish voters are registered – in a European Union of 490 million people.”
The implication is clear. Those beastly Paddies are depriving everyone else in Europe of the benefits of the Lisbon Treaty. They want to convey the image of a minority running rough shod over every one else. The BBC fails to mention that Ireland is not depriving Europeans of their say. It is the only member state which gave its people a say on the matter. It is the other member states who are depriving their people of a say lest they give the wrong answer.
There’s more – read the whole thing.
UPDATE – from a Guido commenter :
BBC reporting yesterday was a disgrace. They continued to say that turnout was 45% even after the official result was declared (the actual turnout was 53.13%, “a significant improvement on past referendums” – LT). Either wilful distortion or BBC hack too thick to look up the official referendum website.
UPDATE2 – On Any Answers Eddie Mair read out a letter arguing that the low turnour of only 40% compromised the authority of the vote. Mair, out of bias or (more likely IMHO) ignorance, failed to point out the correct turnout. These people just aren’t up to the job.
The arrogant beaurocrats from Brussels
Thought they would flex their big muscles
But the Irish said “no”
When it came to the polls
“We’re small but we’re tough in a tussle.”
Or:
The Irish are known to be tough
And not to be messed with too much
So when Brussels took over
And grabbed too much power
They told them to go and get stuffed.
But I’ve got to say, what makes you think that the Irish did understand what they were voting for? What % of the voters do you think read the treaty and fully understood its ramifications?
MisterMinit | 14.06.08 – 10:32 pm |
What makes you think the “No” side understood any less than the “Yes” side? What % of voters do you think read manifestos?
“What makes you think the “No” side understood any less than the “Yes” side?”
Nothing.
Actually, I take that back. The more ignorant someone is of signing up to a new treaty, the more likely they are to say no.
What’s the catchprase, something like “if you don’t know, vote no.”
I can’t imagine any sane person voting yes for something they don’t understand.
“But I’ve got to say, what makes you think that the Irish did understand what they were voting for? What % of the voters do you think read the treaty and fully understood its ramifications?”
Nobody understands the ramifications of the Treaty of Lisbon,no even those who wrote it.There have been no European Court rulings on any of the myriad details of the wretched document,it will be decades before many of the ramifications thereof manifest themselves.
All that need to be known is that the Treaty of Lisbon is self amending,no further treaties being necessary.
“The Irish are known to be tough
And not to be messed with too much
So when Brussels took over
And grabbed too much power
They told them to go and get stuffed.”
Roses are red.
Voilets are blue.
Some rhymes rhyme.
That one doesn’t.
David Vance: I think you’re right that there are fewer Tories that are really pro EU than say 97 for one very good reason. There are fewer Tory MP’s.
Labour hsve splits as well, but the BBC just don’t point that out. For example, how many Labour MP’s have been interviewed who voted against the 42 day detention vote?
How many MP’s were interviewed by the BBC who voted against their party over having a referendum on Lisbon?
Did you all read what MisterMoron posted?
If you vote no you are more likely ignorant.
Isn’t that convenient for liberals.
If you vote against what liberals believe you aren’t educated.
Sorry jerk-off, but the Irish knew exactly what they were doing.
That’s what pisses you libs off.
MisterMinit:
I can’t imagine any sane person voting yes for something they don’t understand.
Based on what exactly? Your imagination? Get real. Think of the logical implications of what you are saying. You’re saying that whenever someone says “yes” to something, they understand what they’re saying yes to…and whenever someone says “no”, they don’t understand.
Your mentality terrifies me! It’s creepy and it’s sinister and it stinks of the worst kind of psychological manipulation. It’s basically the automatic derision and ridiculing of anyone who says “no”. First things first MisterMinit: you stay the hell away from my daughter!
How many people say “yes” to socialism or communism, without having given one thought to the philosophical, economical, historical or moral consequences behind such ideologies? Tons! They haven’t yet had a chance to vote for it, but if they had, and they voted “yes”, then does that somehow mean they’re more clued up than people who voted no?
Or think of it like this. Let’s switch around the words “yes” and “no” and say that the Irish voted “yes” for “no treaty”. Does your imagination still have trouble imagining that people who voted “yes” didn’t understand what they were voting for?
Chuffer | 15.06.08 – 12:15 am,
You’re kidding me. Not all rhyme has to be like “The fat cat sat on the mat.”
(Though I concede that limericks should follow perfect rhythm and rhyme since they are simple poems.)
There was a young man of Japan
Whose limericks never would scan.
When asked why it was,
He said, “It’s because
I always try to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can.”
Bryan: “You’re kidding me. Not all rhyme has to be like “The fat cat sat on the mat.”
Well, sorry, but yes it does, otherwise it isn’t rhyme, it’s something else.
There’s pararhyme, as loved by Wilfred Owen (escaped/scooped; wild/world). But yours isn’t that.
And then there’s tough/much/stuffed and over/power, which are just words that share a vowel sound in the middle.
Trust me, your poem doesn’t rhyme, and no amount of lefty-liberal 1960s relativist pleading will make it rhyme. Perhaps you could persuade the BBC to run a campaign against the hegemony of traditional rhyme, so that all words, no matter what their origin or phonology, can be made to rhyme, and none feels left out or discriminated against? It’s a worthy cause, and I am sure Jane Hill would love to campaign on your behalf. While pretending to be a factual reporter, natch.
MisterMinit:
But I’ve got to say, what makes you think that the Irish did understand what they were voting for? What % of the voters do you think read the treaty and fully understood its ramifications?
———————————————————
The logical conclusion of that mindset is that people shouldn’t be ALLOWED to vote until they ‘understand’ what they were voting for.
I’ve just come off another website where one guy said that in a parallel British situation, they’d probabaly vote no because (as he said) they were “morons”. And pushed further said that they were like that because they didn’t understand the treaty.
So to be vote yes is to understand it and be in posession of ‘all’ the facts and to vote no is to be a “moron” and uninformed.
What a fascistic mindset.
Dick Wright | 15.06.08 – 9:03 am,
Thanks for the laugh. I assume you were being ironic.
Oh yes! No offence intended – just a bit of light relief after all this depressing crap from the Beeb 🙂
“The implication is clear. Those beastly Paddies are depriving everyone else in Europe of the benefits of the Lisbon Treaty.”
-Thats not the clear implication to me, that’s your unique perception.
Unique to every sane person here, you mean.
“Actually, I take that back. The more ignorant someone is of signing up to a new treaty, the more likely they are to say no”
Well, this creepy, totalitarian, fascist mindset was utterly and brilliantly demolished by Jason.
Stay away from ANY member of my family!
TPO, these people are NOT ‘liberals’. They are fascists.
Please stop abusing a perfectly good word – which also happens to be my lifelong political position.
I thank you.
“I would reject any suggestion the BBC has any opinion on Europe,” he said.
How does one know when Grade is lying?
His lips move 🙂
When the Irish ‘NO’ vote to the Lisbon treaty was announced, I was sitting in the square next to the EU building surrounded by hundreds of EU employees waiting for the France v Netherlands football match, not one of them seemed interested in finding out the result of the vote, they seemed more interested in getting drunk whilst cheering on the French or Dutch.
It would have been interesting if the BBC had bothered to pop around the corner and film all these EU officials getting drunk, rather than interviewing some pompous EU Foreign Minister.
The BBC would also have been interested in how the inhabitants of Brussels split into two distinct tribes, one tribe supporting the Dutch, and one team supporting the French, it must strike even the BBC as being a newsworthy story that the country which hosts the headquarters of the EU is moving so fast towards breaking up into two separate countries.
“You’re saying that whenever someone says “yes” to something, they understand what they’re saying yes to…and whenever someone says “no”, they don’t understand.”
No I’m not at all.
“The logical conclusion of that mindset is that people shouldn’t be ALLOWED to vote until they ‘understand’ what they were voting for.”
If you say so.
i think everyone agrees that the biggest news story this week is definitely the Irish EU vote.
and what do the Politics Show bore us to death with -the David Davis hoo-haa…
look, i like Davis – and i like his principled stand, but jeez, the BBC are really going for it, and ignoring the Irish EU vote…
just listening to irish radio (internet) – david miliband saying that the British would go ahead with ratification has been duely noted by the Irish. and they’re not happy. i mean – even a *small* bit of support for our neighbour would help.
cant blame them really.
expect the Irish to go hell for leather attracting even more British companies over to Dublin…
Me: “Actually, I take that back. The more ignorant someone is of signing up to a new treaty, the more likely they are to say no”
Nearly Oxfordian: “Well, this creepy, totalitarian, fascist mindset was utterly and brilliantly demolished by Jason.
Stay away from ANY member of my family!”
Look, I really don’t know what the big deal is.
If I were to come up to you in the street and offer to inject you with some unknown substance, what would you say?
I assume that as you have no idea what this substance is, you would say no. You are ignorant of the contents of my syringe, so the safe option is to decline it.
I really cannot comprehend how anyone could describe what I said as totalitarian!
interesting stuff on irish radio, that you probably wont hear on the bbc.
the french are now going for the idea of an inner EU and an outer EU – with the “inner” cabal being a Franco-German political superstate. the irish will relegated to affiliate status.
interesting times.
“MisterMinit | 15.06.08 – 1:46 pm |”
actually you explained it very well – from my reading of it, a lot of the Irish No vote was because they couldnt understand the inpenetrable jargon of the Lisbon Treaty – and why would you sign up to any contract that you dont understand?
been posted before but in case anyone missed it
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4txw4_lipdub-europe-united-par-les-jeunes_musice.uk/
up yours delors, bloody cheese eatin surrender monkeys
just another point – it is notable how RTE are vastly better at providing the European context with regards to the Lisbon treaty – i’ve heard German, French and even Czech viewpoints.
the Sarkozy two-speed Europe has reared its head – and if the Lords ratify Lisbon, that is what Britain will be part of – so , you can say bye bye to democracy in the UK.
and i learned that from an irish radio station that serves a mere 4 million people.
gaping maw: “why would you sign up to any contract that you dont understand?”
Stay away from my family!
sorry – dont get the joke. your family is disfunctional and i need to stay away?
“your family is disfunctional and i need to stay away?”
That’s quite funny actually.
The joke was that I was recreating: “Well, this creepy, totalitarian, fascist mindset was utterly and brilliantly demolished by Jason.
Stay away from ANY member of my family!”
For what it’s worth (and I know that’s not…etc), I have to confess I also haven’t clue what most on the latter section of this thread are on about.
So if it helps one or other of your points, on that basis if I was given the choice and then asked to sign or put my name in agreement to either one, yes or no, I’d be opting no for now. Especially if I sense that a ‘Yes’ means I am signing away any rights to having as much, or indeed any future say or influence on the conduct of affairs, especially if on my behalf.
A bit like having my kids trying to get me to sign over the house deeds to them now so they can handle the estate ‘in the family’s interest’ better in the future…. only with a bottle of hemlock poking out their back pockets.
Sorry, that’s an EUing Power of Attorney too much to trust some with, especially with the track records displayed so far.
I’m British, so I didn’t get the choice, but the actions and words on this from all together too many, but especially the establishment that includes the BBC, has now put my perceived personal freedom threat level into the red zone.
It’s a sorry point when I am feeling so little trust in my leadership and the very media one used to rely upon to keep them on the straight and narrow.
Is the lure of the gravy sprouting from Brussels so irresistible that every moral and ethical bone has been sucked dry in so many?
And how have we come to a point where those who claim to be communicators point at those who they have failed to communicate with as at fault, as opposed to their abilities (or not) to explain or persuade?
peter -> i listened with interest to the irish taoiseach this afternoon.. and boy did he come across as a petulant schoolboy who now needs to explain the No vote to his masters.
spineless doesnt begin to describe it – and i guess that Michael Collins is spinning furiously in his grave.
my only conclusion is that no matter how the pro-EU crowd spin it, it only digs them into a bigger , deeper , grave of political FUBAR.
no wonder they shut up about it , and dont talk about “europe”.
and another note – did you know that the Irish army is currently out in Chad , involved in the civl war out there – and under the command of the EU Army , with a HQ in Brussels
yet another example of EU measures by the back door. the Irish thought they were voting on “neutrality”, when their forces are already involved in an EU army.
Joel: “The Trust has conducted a review of EU coverage. You can read it.”
Yes, but remind me, was that the one in 2005 that found that “senior managers appear insufficiently self-critical about standards of impartiality” and that “Whatever the cause in particular cases, the effect is the same for the outside world and feels like bias”?
Or, are you talking about the more limited study of the Today programme’s reporting on the EU in 2007 over the period when the Treaty the Irish have just rejected was agreed at the Council of Ministers? You know, the one that found that “coverage of the eurosceptic case amounted to only seven interviews (22 minutes and 40 seconds of airtime) over the entire 14 weeks, even though the story was continually developing and there was mounting pressure for a referendum among both Labour and Opposition ranks”?
Stave the BBC. Stop paying the licence.
http://www.tpuc.org/stoppayingtvlicencefees
“Glauca | 15.06.08 – 4:39 pm |”
already done mate. Mrs Gaping Maw has decided that it would be better to shove that money into a mini-gaping maw savings account..
one wonders how my VC backers from the States will react when i am carted off for a prison term.
if that happens, it might be my one way ticket to the U.S.
“You’re saying that whenever someone says “yes” to something, they understand what they’re saying yes to…and whenever someone says “no”, they don’t understand.”
No I’m not at all.
“The logical conclusion of that mindset is that people shouldn’t be ALLOWED to vote until they ‘understand’ what they were voting for.”
If you say so.”
I’d like to argue that that isn’t an argument, but it’s Sunday morning and my name is not Michael Palin.
MisterMinit:
If I were to come up to you in the street and offer to inject you with some unknown substance, what would you say?
I assume that as you have no idea what this substance is, you would say no. You are ignorant of the contents of my syringe, so the safe option is to decline it.
That would be a great analogy if it bore any resemblance whatsoever to the vote on the Lisbon Treaty.
Are you seriously suggesting that the Irish “no” voters were as ignorant of the gist of the treaty as the average person would be about the contents of a random syringe?
To take it further – if someone came up to me with a syringe and said “this stuff will make all of your hair fall out, grow you a third nipple and delegate control of your bowels to the bloke upstairs – shall I inject you?”, I wouldn’t need to know about the atomic weights and molecular bonds of the substances involved to come to my decision.
Another way to look at it is thus: the faceless bureaucrats of the EU could have written the treaty in a way that was clear and understandable to the average person, but instead they chose to word it in such a way that the average person would never understand the technicalities and finer details. What does this say about the EU and their attitude toward ordinary people in the first place? To me that’s as good a reason as any to vote “no”.
That’s even before you take into account the fact that the Irish were the only “ordinary people” allowed to voice their opinion democratically.
If this treaty really was in the best interests of the ordinary individual, then why did they do everything they could to word it in such a way that the ordinary individual would never understand it in full? And why did every government except Ireland deny the ordinary individual their right to vote upon it?
There’s your “no” vote, right there.
The idea that the “yes” voters understood it better is ludicrous. One could equally say that it was the “yes” voters who didn’t understand the treaty fully, because if they did, they wouldn’t have voted for it.
Mister Minit wrote:
What’s the catchprase, something like “if you don’t know, vote no.”
When environmentalists do this, the media calls it the “precautionary principle” and praises it.
When anti-EU voters do it, our worses treat them as troglodytes.
Well Mardell is at it again this morning:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/
He’s now steroetyping the Irish “no” voters as tatooed drunks with a bizarre understanding of the content of the treaty.
Mardell then goes on to claim once again that the issues are far too complex for people to understand. Presumably he feels the same way about democracy in general. It never occurs to him that the issues were hard to understand because that is the way the EU made them. Nothing terribly difficult to understand about the US constitution is there? People could readily vote yes or no to that without fear of having not read it or not understood it. The Lisbon treaty isn’t supposed to be as far-reaching as a full-bown constitution is it? But a document that is the size of an encyclopaedia?
That’s a different story? Why is it so big?
The EU tried a similar trick when they got the Maastricht Treaty signed of course. Remember the issue of “subsidiarity”. Then it was the Tories pushing through Maastricht on the basis that the principle of subsidiarity wuld mean that the UK government would decide whether UK law took precendence over EU law. The Law Lords begged to differ, of course, and pointed out the EU was the dominant partner and it would decide if EU laws took precendence. The anti-Maastricht campaigners were right to fear the treaty would involve handing massive power to the EU. The EU and its supporters simply fudged the issue and forced it through with no regard to the rights and feelings of the British electorate. They are trying to do the same again.
Strangely, in all the main political parties there are those the disagree with the creation of the EU superstate. But not in BBC News. Everyone in BBC News is very much in favour of the EU. They are very special people in BBC News, hand-picked from the regional news-teams to ensure they have the “right” political views.
Another comment from the Beeb:
‘Andrew Duff, a UK Liberal Democrat member of the European Parliament, said: “People are still stupefied by the decision of the Irish, we need to wait for the clearing of everybody’s brains.” ‘
Why a UK LibDem MEP? Why no balancing comment from a UKIP MEP? Why not challenge his comment? After all, its the third time a similar treaty has been rejected so hardly a surprise it has happened again surely? Once again the BBC permits itself the right to portray the Irish “no” vote as some kind of outlandish decision to derail the honest intentions of EU politicians and prevent Europes citizens from marching hand-in-hand towards some kind of united EUtopia.
I notice, tucked away in the side bar that the BBC hasn’t quite brought itself to comment upon that there will also be another referendum in Holland (the Dutch rejected the constitution last time)and a number of other countries are some way from ratification. That was news to me. I had been given the impression (by the Beeb) that the Irish tatooed drunks were the only people standing in the way of Progress.
Fellow citizens, I think we have to ask ourselves just one thing here. If the Lisbon Treaty was a treaty of no particular importance as the Beeb is suggesting, just dotting a few “i’s” and crossing a few “t’s” to improve the smooth running of the EU organisation, then why is it that the BBC seems so upset that this minor treaty has been derailed? I don’t need to read one single page to understand that what is so very bad for the pro-EU crowd must be very good for me and my children. Thanks BBC, you’ve saved me a lot of trouble.
Ryan:
Well Mardell is at it again this morning:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/there…rs/markmardell/
He’s now steroetyping the Irish “no” voters as tatooed drunks with a bizarre understanding of the content of the treaty.
It’s quite clear that Mardell is misrepresenting the drunken, jovial humor of some young men literally in order to ridicule the Irish “no” voters. Of course the young man didn’t really think that the EU was going to reintroduce the death penalty. He was obviously joking, yet Mardell takes the opportunity to use the comment literally for his own purposes. What a disgraceful example of the low standard of everyday BBC journalism.
Good bit of sophistry from Mardell where he states: “Some voted about specific issues, like abortion and taxation. Some voted against the general drift of the European Union. But many I spoke to didn’t understand the treaty.”
Actually, to be accurate (and honest) that should read: “Many voted about specific issues… but some didn’t understand the treaty” since 70% of those who voted against it did so for a specific reason and only 30% because they said they didn’t understand it.
I would also hazard a guess that the number who voted against it on preposterous grounds (such as a belief that the EU would bring back the death penalty) was statistically insignificant.
Regarding my comment posted at 10:21am, by 10:42 am the Beeb had removed the offending paragraph (source:Revisionista).
Nice to see that the Beeb are paying close attention….
Keep up the good work everyone. It does seem to pay dividends.
Unbelievable. The World Service is going on right now (a Female French analyst) about how the EU autocrats are going about “fixing” the problem of the Irish ‘No’. The entire segment operates under the assumption that the Constitution is inevitable, it will be passed, and it’s just a matter of figuring out how to recover from this Celtic bump in the road.
The BBC continues the same narrative so many people here have pointed out. One angle is that this was just an anti-establishment knee-jerk reaction. The Irish just need space, not bullying; they don’t want to be told what to do. It’s not that they don’t want to be part of Europe, it’s just that we haven’t approached the ornery Celts the right way.
Another key plot point in the Narrative is that most people just didn’t understand it. I keep listening, and….
Now the has the Swedish European Minister on, asking her that as this is now the third ‘No’ vote, have the EU “learned the lesson?” “Obviously we have not,” replies the Swedish woman. “We thought we had fixed” the things people rejected. It’s ironic, she says, that this one was made way more open and transparent than the last the Dutch one, and she couldn’t understand why people said they couldn’t understand it. The exasperation in her voice was clear enough.
Now they’re trying to pump up enthusiasm for another Irish vote, and if not, trying to find a way around the Irish entirely. Maybe leave them out, as the German European Minister suggested, or make them Second Class citizens as compared to those who vote correctly.
They finished up just now by reading two listener emails. The first from a Dutch person who said that they voted no as an anti-authoritarian gesture, dovetailing nicely with the Narrative. The second is from another Continental who says that they should just have an EU with those who voted yes, and sod the rest. They just won’t get all that great funding for things, especially the European World Cup.
I don’t even know what to say about that last one.
Gosh. What to do, BBC? What to do?
“The EU reveals its anti-democratic nature.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/06/17/dl1701.xml
Melanie Phillips:
“Sack the people!”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/780571/sack-the-people.thtml