June 10, 2008
‘Good for him, bad for us’: Ganley’s ‘No’ campaign focuses on France
A dozen campaign volunteers standing around a large white truck, a dozen reporters with microphones and notebooks, and a handful of pedestrians trying to squeeze past on the pavement: this wasn’t exactly the largest crowd at a political event in Dublin’s history.
But if Declan Ganley, the self-made businessman who is one of the loudest voices calling on Irish voters to reject the European Union’s Lisbon treaty in Thursday’s referendum, was disappointed by the low turn-out, he was giving nothing away.
It was a beautiful sunny afternoon in the Irish capital, and Ganley had summoned the media to admire his final campaign poster, about to be plastered in various public places around the city. Next to a picture of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the poster proclaims: “Good for him, bad for us. Vote No to Lisbon.”
France seems to be playing an unusually large role in Ireland’s referendum. It was only on Monday that French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner suggested that the rest of Europe would view the Irish as selfish ingrates if they voted No in spite of having received billions of euros in EU funds over the last 35 years.
For some of the Irish reporters milling near Ganley’s truck, however, the focus of interest wasn’t France or the new poster but how Ganley has been financing his campaign. The questioning was pretty aggressive, but it looked to me as if Ganley held his nerve.
On the other hand, a stunt he tried to pull off on Monday didn’t go quite according to plan. Having said the leaders of Ireland’s three main political parties should all go to Brussels on Friday to renegotiate the EU treaty if it is defeated the day before, Ganley announced he had bought Aer Lingus plane tickets in advance for each of them.
Unfortunately, the ticket purchased for Irish premier Brian Cowen spelled the passenger’s name “Brian Cowan”.
Thanks for the very important issue, many voters and taxpayers are asking these questions: will Labor ,Property,Tax Laws,etc. change from individual countries to the EU ? who will elect the President ? and the Foreign Affairs top banana ? most voters don’t want a few politicians behind closed doors choosing leaders “… a few wise men….” or similar un-democratic nonsense, and it’s not clear that EU voters will have a chance to vote DIRECTLY , without grand-daddy’s telling us what to do, and so far, looks like grandpa’s Sarkozy and Kouchner are already setting up their own little powerful discrete club of bosses, mmmhhhh! smells bad already ….
so a lot of questions…
Transparency is another issue, we need to know if politicians and elected officials get any money from “special interests”,like Oil,Gas and Nuclear,etc., just look at today’s vote in the USA Congress against taxing the huge Oil Industry Profits and helping start-up Alternative Energy Industries, like Solar,Wind and Water Turbines,Geothermal,Hydrogen and Methanol Fuel-Cells, Hybrid Batteries and Electric Motors, etc., it shows that Oil-Gas money well spread among politicians does wonders, while the consumers and taxpayers are left out to fend for themselves…what a shame ! so here, what tools do the Lisbon Treaty offers the European Consumers to avoid a similar abuse ?
these USA Congress Hearings this month made very clear that ” Swaps and Commodity Index Funds ” are at the center of the Oil prices spike, and the biggest holders of Future Contracts in Oil and Gas all the way to 2020 are among others Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley using the “Enron Loophole” and others, so prices will not go down unless Legislation takes action, and today we saw the Power of Oil, what a disaster! so what will the Lisbon Treaty do to save the EU Consumers from this nightmare and others alike in the Future?
per example take car makers and engine makers , with today’s oil prices,they should have a concerted project to start building mixed electric-battery-biofuel-ethanol-synthetic - fuel-cell engines, a plan today ! and instead they got nothing….their Boards are stuffed with Oil Industry Board members, so no action….and the elected officials in Brussels are …what are they actually doing ? where are the new engines ? where are the new materials? where are the leaders? …let’s hope the young kids will get involved and save the EU , we need a burocratic revolution,a totally new way of working and doing things…
what will the Lisbon Treaty do to implement the radical changes that we need in Brussels?
Posted by: blogger | June 10th, 2008 at 9:19 pm | Report this comment