Lisbon Treaty Vote – Results Today?

According to BreakingNews.ie the exit polls on the Lisbon Treaty vote were “too close to call”, so we’ll have to wait until the counting is done to know what way it went.

I was reading Donncha’s post while sipping my coffee this morning and while I cannot agree with his choice I would have to agree with his comments about the campaigners.

Votes in things like this are one of the few times that my degree comes in useful, since I spent 4 years in UL studying European Studies.

One of the common complaints is that the Treaty is hard to read and understand.

It is.

It’s a really long convoluted document. Reading it might be a good cure for insomnia, but it won’t help you understand it. You’re better off reading around it, but who has time to do so?

The Referendum Commission produced a pretty good pamphlet that explained in quite simple terms what it was all about, but from talking to quite a few people I get the distinct impression that a lot of the don’t really understand what the EU is all about.

I listened to a number of the “debates” and “discussions” on the radio over the last few weeks and I cringed more than once. Most of the time the conversation spiralled into a shouting match so quickly that an understandable reaction would have been simply to not vote at all, since neither side seemed capable of putting forward their views in a calm and measured manner.

I’m not calm and measured at the best of times, but I’m not an elected official!

The world is watching today to see what way we voted and at this stage I would be surprised if the vote actually passed. Not because the “no” side was particularly convincing, but simply because people don’t understand what the EU is doing or how it does it. The end result of that being that a lot of people either won’t have voted or will have been duped by the silly arguments against it put forward by the no camp.

By the way, the image I’ve shoved in there has nothing to do with this post, which is why I chose it!

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