Tag Archives: fiscal treaty

“Shouldn’t you be diving in there and saying hello. Bertie Ahern would have been right in there. You’re missing all these opportunities to persuade them.”

Reporter Michael Crick on the campaign trail in Dublin this morning.

Quite literally toe-curling.

Michael Crick’s blog here.

Thanks Oireachtas Retort

Earlier: Múinteoir V Hoodie: When No Means No

“Austerity without debt forgiveness can’t work. School kids could figure this out. It also explains why what is good for the individual is not necessarily good for the collective and explains why everyone saving at the same time is good for no one. This is why the fiscal treaty is Kamikaze economics for most of Europe, it is designed to suit the Germans’ short-term political interests and has nothing to do with macroeconomics as we know it.”

David McWilliams. Economist.

“I will vote No in solidarity with peoples throughout Europe who are and have been denied any say in this treaty or any say on the other European treaties, treaties that, in the main, favour rich and powerful elites throughout the union at the expense of the mass of people.”

Vincent Browne. Journalist.

“The Government has rushed us into voting ‘Yes’ in a vacuum. I cannot, and will not, do that. If we defeat it, little will be lost. During the summer the clouds will clear over Europe. We will be able to vote again, this time on the full package in the Autumn. Richard Bruton told us so.”

Shane Ross. Independent TD.

“I’ve thought about it, it’s hard. I would say vote No. At this point the Germans need to face the reality that this cannot work and that the Irish, who’ve been such good soldiers in this crisis, if even the Irish say no then that would actually send a helpful message.”

Paul Krugman. Nobel Prize-winning economist.

YOU literally decide.

Alternatively: How bad Could It Get? Implications Of An Irish No Vote In the EU Fiscal Compact Treaty (Greg Bowler, TheBowlerfiles)

‘No’ voter Karl Murdiff refuses to budge under intense and sustained múinteoiring from Enda outside Pearse Street Station, Dublin, this morning.

Dude was just trying to go to work.

(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)

 UPDATE: Meanwhile, from C4’s Michael Crick (he’s the guy in the middle of the pix above):

 

Thanks Paul Reynolds

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJqVL1Z5DVs&feature=plcp

If you have a spare seven minutes and 37 seconds.

Liam O’Neill & Lydia Flynn write:

We were discussing the upcoming Fiscal Treaty recently and were worried about the number of people saying they didn’t understand the Treaty or what it was about. It worried us most that although we had read the Referendum Guide, we didn’t fully understand it ourselves. So after a bit of research, we put together this video that we hopee xplains what the Treaty is about.

Neither of us are Economics students, so it’s free of any technical jargon. The video is intended to be objective, neither supporting a yes or no vote. We used the Referendum Commission’s handbook as a guide line as our metric for this and it was completed in two days. The purpose of this video is to help inform people.

“The problem is that although recent polls suggest Ireland is leaning towards a Yes vote (see chart above and supposed market-happiness, the polls vary widely and might tend to exaggerate any Yes position due to the large chunk of undecideds still out there who have a tendency to eventually head into the No camp”

Ireland LOVES A Good Referendum (David Keohane, FT Alphaville)

Or words to that effect.

Declan Ganley and Robert Emmett in The Shelbourne Hotel (in the room where the draft constitution of the Irish Free State was cobbled together in 1922) literally earlier.

Ganley: Yes Camp Selling ‘Titanic Ticket’ (irish Examiner)

Meanwhile, in Buswell’s Hotel:

From left: Paul Murphy MEP, Richard Boyd Barrett and Joan Collins at the United left Alliance’s last press conference before the treaty vote.

Government ‘Lying Over Treaty: Boyd Barrett (Irish Times)

(Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland)

“We are all looking forward to a summer brimming with sports events from the European Championships to the London Olympics. Our hopes are high with anticipation and expectation and it is no wonder, given the talented, primed and professional athletes we are fortunate enough to have representing us.

We can learn some lessons from them. They have achieved excellence in the sporting field, not by virtue of luck or by accident, but because they are thorough in their planning, methodical in their preparations and they leave nothing to chance.

…Similarly, there is no shortcut to getting Ireland back on track. I hope that we in Government have tried to be frank and honest about that. There are plenty of opponents of the fiscal treaty who will claim that we can magic our problems away, but we cannot. We must continue in the quiet, determined way in which we have tackled this financial crisis since it began. We must work steadily and with determination towards Ireland’s recovery, and voting Yes to the treaty is an essential element of that.”

Lucinda Creighton: No Easy Solution To Ireland’s Woes But Yes Vote is Only Way To Go (Irish Times)

“In football, there is the following expression: he reads the game well. All good players read the game well. The same goes for rugby. Today, you will hear commentators say about Brian O’Driscoll that he reads the game.
This means that Drico can see where the game is going, where the next play is and how to either deal with it or seize the opportunity. In soccer, the player who reads the game knows where the ball is going next. They used to say this of Roy Keane. It is the same for all major sports.

Many years ago, I spent a summer working in Canada, where the national hero at the time was Wayne Gretzky, the brilliant ice hockey player. Gretzky was so good that, when he retired, his number – 99 – was retired from all North American professional hockey teams.

His most famous quote followed a simple question from a commentator about why he was so successful. Gretzky didn’t even think, he just responded as if it were the most simple thing in the world: “I skate to where the puck is going, not where it’s been.”

Our politicians and those who negotiate for us, whoever they are, would do well to listen to the sportsmen. Head to where the ball is going, not where it’s been.”

David McWilliams: The Game Is Only Beginning (DavidMcWilliams.ie)

Cartoon by Blower (Daily Telegraph)

Thanks Andrew Murphy