Not More Goverment.... LESS!

We usually leave the completely pointless and off-topic diatribes to stockula.

my countries vote is said to hang largely in the balance depending on what France does, as it is now the "no's" are in the majority.

the netherlands are allready by far bearing the greatest relative financial strain from the EU and when this constitution passes for some inexplicable reason they want to double our burden in the EU instead of lessening it.

A reference I thought I had put in: Labelling it the constitution as Thatcherite from the Observer or a BBC World correspondant.

I think that is what the French people are saying by that "no" vote....


"We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a European super­state exercising a new dominance from Brussels."
--Margret Thatcher

I'd be interested to know how many European members have any idea what the constitution actually does. I know that I haven't got a clue. I guess that I should care, but, well, meh.

It's kind of tempting to runb for EU parliament, because the turnout must be lousy.

most of us barely know and the government isn't helping, in the Netherlands we're literally being bombarded with a campaign to get us to say yes but never in the entire campaign do they actually say what we're agreeing to, the whole message is literally just "say yes".

popular dutch musicians singing about saying yes, politicians urging us to say yes with lots of threats about how it'll be bad for the economy to vote no and all that.
our own prime minister is using the argument that he'll look like a jackass in front of europe if the netherlands, the most progressive country of all will vote no.
now there's a great argument, one of the worst prime ministers we ever had saying it'll make him look stupid.

on the other hand none of us may fully realise what this european constitution fully means but we've allready heard some of the negative results for our own country.
for example each country in the EU pays a certain amount of money to the EU, takes in a certain amount of refugees etc.
the netherlands are the smallest country in the EU but relative for our country's size we pay a very disproportionally large amount of money and take in a disproportionally large amount of immigrants.
instead of doing something about that the EU governing body in brussels has indicated intentions of nearly doubling the amount of money we pay to the EU instead of reducing the strain on our small country and balancing it out with the bigger ones like germany and france.

things like that really aren't encouraging us to vote yes no matter how many pop idols they have singing and rapping about voting "yes"


on a sidenote the french exit poles just indicated that france voted "no" by a very small margin. (50,5 to 53% approximately nay sayers)

no : 55%
yes : 45%

you know what the nice thing is, my government clearly stated they'd treat the vote as a guideline as to what the people wants but most likely they'd go ahead and sign for the european constitution anyway regardless of the results of our vote.

No good can come from a totally united europe. no good at all.

by the way, the title of this news article and this thread is pure comedy gold

the reason nobody really knows what the constitution actually means is because the Pro treaty side are content to concentrate on mindless rhetorical fluff arguments "vote yes for the children and for peace and prosperity" alongside scare tactics like "If you don't vote yes there will be a nuclear holocaust and the economy will crumble.."

The Yes side tend to include the corporate media and the state who have a kind of monopoly on how information is disseminated to the public.

Basically the Opponents of the Constitution are opponents of the neo-liberal agenda that it represents

Most people don't. The EU constitution is something like 200 pages long, and from what I've read about it, it's profoundly undemocratic. Instead leaving decisions up to elected officials, the EU would have elite self-selected bureaucrats who aren't afraid to regulate every aspect of human activity.

So I can understand why the French wouldn't want any part of that. But that wasn't what the French objected about joining the EU. They were afraid joining the EU might require reforming their socialist, protectionist economy to a more liberal model like the UK and US have. That, of course, is a fate worse than death to a Frenchman.

They had to choose between two shitty options. Either way, it's a bad deal for France.

[Edited on May 29, 2005 by stockula]

57%-43%, according to the Independent.

I just love getting to see Eddie Izzard's characterization of France in action.

"We're all going this way? Well, maybe we'll go that way..."