27 August 2009

So now we have Michael O’Leary announcing that he will splash out €500,000 of Ryanair’s cash on a Yes campaign. He’ll be joining Intel then, in spending corporate funds in an attempt to overturn the sovereign wishes of the Irish people.

It suits large corporations just fine to blather on about being at the heart of Europe when what they are really looking for is the creation of an EU super-state where profit is king and people are treated like medieval serfs. That’s not to say that it isn’t entirely sensible that companies, large or small, would want to be profitable, just that the self-serving, greedy attitude of large corporations, banks and politicians is what has caused the economic recession now hurting ordinary families.


O’Leary’s comments at his launch yesterday were a rehash of the scaremongering used by Fianna Fáil, the Opposition, Ireland for Europe and every other Yes campaigner to date. O’Leary is not stupid, so it’s unlikely that he is actually confusing the Lisbon Treaty with the creation of the eurozone.

As Brian Hickey pointed out yesterday, the facts are that, without Lisbon, we can still borrow from the European Central Bank, and we will be a full member of the European Union. 
Saying No to Lisbon cannot and will not change that. It will, however, bring further problems for the Irish economy as we will face an attack on our low corporate tax rates, and lose control of immigration.


Not that the ECB has always been our friend. The bank sets its policies and rates to suit the bigger countries such as Germany who wanted low interest rates at a time when it would have suited Ireland better to have rates set to halt the swelling of the bubble. The Germans got their way of course – and now they are pulling out of recession, while we are expected to suffer until at least 2012. Lisbon doubles Germany’s voting power in Europe and halves ours to a miserable 0.8%, so we can expect to be considered pretty irrelevant in the future if we say Yes to Lisbon. 
The Ryanair boss said yesterday that ‘Without Europe and the euro, the Irish economy would be run by our incompetent politicians, our inept civil service and the greedy public sector trade union bosses, who through social partnership have in recent years destroyed Ireland’s competitiveness, created an epidemic of useless quangos and feathered the nests of the public sector at the expense of ordinary consumers in Ireland.’ 


Stirring stuff, except that we’ve been hand-in-hand with Europe and the euro since the beginning and it didn’t prevent the crash. In fact, as the world and its mother - and Micheal O’Leary - knows the EU’s emphasis on light regulation helped to cause the banking crisis. And an Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, has acknowledged that the ECB and the EU Commission are key supporters of NAMA which may cost the Irish taxpayer up to €90 billion, putting us, our children and grandchildren in debt because of the greed and errors of others.
That’s the nub of what’s happening in Ireland right now – the little people must always pay.

It’s the attitude that shaped the Lisbon Treaty – the elite will tell the serfs what to do and if the serfs say No, they have to be bullied into acceptance. And it’s the thinking behind the flagrant and obnoxious disregard to the SIPO rules – those same rules we’ve heard so much about in relation to Declan Ganley and Libertas. 
Cóir are fully SIPO compliant, since our funding comes from ordinary people who want to protect our freedom and our values.

But where are the howls of media protest now when large corporations using their cash to muscle in on the democratic process. Why is the proposed spending by Ryanair and Intel not curtailed by SIPO rules? Furthermore, why are We Belong, Ireland for Europe and all the other lavishly funded Yes campaigns not being held up to scrutiny by the media? 
And why is the government and the EU allowed to spend millions in taxpayers funds (during a recession) to promote the EU during a referendum campaign on an EU treaty? The McKenna and Coughlan judgments are being utterly disregarded and circumvented by self-serving politicians and businessmen fixated by the Lisbon Treaty.


But then again, the rules are only for the little people. On October 2nd we should give those who so contemptuously disrespect the people the answer they deserve.