You don't care to hear differing opinions, is that your point? Fair enough. We both live in free countries. Well, I can't get banged up without charge for 28 days, but you know what I mean.

There is a reason why we don't have second votes on other referendums. In our general elections, the parties that promise them get about 6% of the vote in total. And bear in mind that in Ireland, a government needs close to 50% of the vote to be formed, because we have PR, and not that odd system in the UK that allows Tony Blair/Gordin Brown to ratify treaties with a mere 35% of the vote. But hey, we will respect your soveriegn right to
run your country as you see fit. Unlike the UK, anti-EU voters are represented in our parliament by parties they vote for.

The Irish people are mature enough to know that with choices come responsibilities. We cannot be bullied into accepting Lisbon, but neither can we bully the rest of Europe, including Westminster, into reversing their soveriegn decisions either. In the end, we will have to choose what matters more to us: Remaining at the heart of Europe, or scrapping Lisbon whatever the cost to us. But that choice will be a free one.

It is not a trade agreement it is a coup over the masses.

And my point would be, I don't care! I am happy to see a spoke thrown in the wheel of the European Union bureaucratic juggernaught.

It is also instructive (once again ) to see those European 'democrats' running around telling anyone who will stand still for five minutes why the 'NO' vote really means 'Yes'.

Odd how, when they get the answer they wish for first time, the electorate is never given another chance to vote on, for example the Nice treaty, or the treaty of Amsterdam, or even come to that, the Treaty of Rome. I wonder why that could be?

If the public had ever been given a choice on this that might be ok but they haven't.

Reply: That is a tired and idiotic statistic. It is only trade in goods – it excludes the more long term relaitonships of service sector trade and mutual investment where we do much more with the English speaking world. It implies we would lose it if we dig in over EU matters, when there is every evidence the trade would continue – after all the continent sells more to us than we sell to them so they would be begging to keep it whatever we do.

Both the Labour and Conservative Parties in the UK have members who are in favour of withdrawal from the EU. Of those some want a free trade area and some do not. There is no unified view within the parties here and it is hard to see why there should be in the Republic of Ireland.

Those of no political affiliation who are in favour of the Lisbon treaty might well have thousands of different reasons for supporting it and, likewise, those against might oppose it for all sorts of reasons. No one is in a position to attribute reasons or motives to those who have voted in a particular way.

Nor is anyone in a position to say that those who voted No in Ireland and France will find Mr Redwood's position unattractive. The only way we could know that is by having a very specific referendum asking some such question as "Do you want the EU's powers to be limited to the creation and maintenance of a free trade area among the states of the EU?" But even such a question will not tell us what the voters understand by "free trade area".

All that can ever be done in general elections is to put forward a package of proposed measures in a manifesto. If there are 10 elements to a manifesto it might be than each is supported by only one tenth of those who vote for that party but that they feel so strongly about the individual issue that they are prepared to set-aside their abhorrence of the other 9 measures. We simply never know. Nor do we need to know. It is the vote that counts not the individual reasons behind it.

The manifesto is presented and either approved or rejected. Similarly, a series of measures contained within a proposed Treaty will either be approved en masse (for unidentifiable reasons) or rejected en masse (for unidentifiable reasons).

In the same way that Mr O'Mahony is in no position to attribute opinions to those in Ireland and France who voted No, so European leaders are in no position to look behind the No votes.
I find it deeply worrying that some of the big fish in the EU pond have taken it upon themselves to decide why the majority of Irish voters voted as they did and to pronounce that the reasons for rejection, as thus defined, are illegitimate and can be ignored.

Arnold Toynbee.
"We are at present working discreetly, but with all our might, to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local national states of the world. *And all the time we are denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands*."

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had thrown away the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

Don't we have an army somewhere, oh yes I remember now they are being demoralised and culled in the Middle East in Unwinnable war(s).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM2Ql3wOGcU

Incidentally there is another way of Looking at Waterloo here :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnwLgrSJZKs

Indeed so. But the quest continues by every and any other means. Their intentions remain entirely unchanged despite the passage of time.

We should consider ourselves very fortunate to be geographically separated from these (countries -ed).