What a shame, eh?

ConHome has a rather downbeat posting about the Czech President that quotes the Financial Times. "Vaclav Klaus may not save Britain from Lisbon after all". Well, no. In the first place, it might be a good idea to get the situation right.

The fate of the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty lies with the Czech Constitutional Court, whither it had been returne by a group of Czech Senators. The Court will decide within the next six months on whether the treaty is compatible with the Czech Constitution. If, as expected, they will say yes, President Klaus will find himself in a difficult position: by not signing he will be going against the will of both Houses of the Czech Parliament and the Constitutional Court. No president in a democracy can hold that position for very long. He will most probably sign.

The Boss on EURef has also written about this, referring to the Guardian and the BBC.

We do not know what was in the letter the Conservative Party appears to have sent him but his opinion of the British political process does not seem to be very high. Presumably, it is not terribly high when he thinks about the British Conservative Party.

Vaclav Klaus, the Eurosceptic Czech president who had indicated he would delay ratifying the treaty until after the British general election, indicated he might change his mind. "There will never be another referendum in Europe," he told the BBC after the Irish vote. "The people of Britain should have been doing something much earlier and not just now, too late, saying something and waiting for my decision."

Well, indeed. Above all, why should President Klaus go out of his way to save the Conservative Party's credibility?

Mark Wallace of the Taxpayers' Alliance is running around the Conservative Party Conference getting people to sign a postcard to President Klaus, pleading with him to save Britain, the Conservative Party and David Cameron. Some have signed, others like Boris Johnson, have refused. (Here is a picture of Douglas Carswell signing.)

Too little, too late. We suggested a campaign of this kind almost four months ago but the TPA was too busy telling the world that nobody had thought of the European issue and its problems until they came on the scene. My personal attempt to interest them in the idea of writing to President Klaus were met with charming and dismissive smiles.

Now that President Klaus has made it clear that he is not that interested in saving people who cannot save themselves, at least, not at the expense of a possible impeachment, that delightful looking postcard will do very little beyond getting media time for the TPA.

Another gimmicky idea from the Conservatives

An article in the Guardian tells us that the Conservatives, the government-in-waiting, has come up with another gimmicky idea, unable as they are to tackle any real issue.

Voters will be given the power to rewrite laws under Tory plans to transform the way parliament works by importing a popular scheme championed by Barack Obama in last year's US election.

William Hague will tomorrow announce that the Conservatives will introduce a new stage for parliamentary bills, known as the public reading stage, that will allow voters to reject and rewrite clauses.

Bless the little darlings. They sitll think that evoking the name of Barack Obama somehow produces magic stardust to shower them all. Perhaps they should ask the IOC about that, not to mention the many people in the United States who are turning against the President.

In any case, what Barack Obama promised last year is irrelevant. So far, he has not even kept to another promise that there would be a breathing space with every important Bill before the President signs it. Instead, complex and wide-ranging pieces of legislation has been and are being rushed through, with the President expressing distaste for the fact that Congress insists on taking its time over such matters as the healthcare health insurance reform.

Turning to the idea as it is supposed to work in Britain, Mr Hague will be proposing the following:

The first and main debate – the second reading stage, in which the broad principles of the proposed new laws are debated on the floor of the Commons – would be held in the normal way.

But once MPs have held this debate, the bill would be thrown open to voters before it is considered line by line at the committee stage. A website would allow voters to comment on and rewrite the broad principles of the bill, and individual clauses.

Contributors would rank comments so the most popular suggestions appear at the top. This is similar to mixedink, which allows voters to argue for and against various policies and suggest their own ideas.

Well now, where shall we start?

Let us get the obvious point out of the way. Those parts of EU legislation that happen to require Parliamentary Acts cannot be rejected by anybody in this country - not the House of Commons, not the House of Lords, not the electorate. So, that's out.

Secondly, we elect MPs to legislate on our behalf and to read those Bills line by line for the Committee and Report stages, not to put them airily up on some website in the vain hope that somebody will come along and produce some interesting ideas for them to chew over.

The problem we have at the moment is that Bills are badly drafted and rarely debated properly in the House of Commons. It is left to the House of Lords, a revising Chamber whose members do not get salaries merely expenses for the days they spend in the Chamber (not in committee rooms or reading briefs) to go through those Bills and to amend howling errors. On several occasions the situation was so bad that the Government produced scores of its own amendments as late as the Committee or Report stage of the Bill's passage through the Lords. Even so, there are far too many pieces of legislation that are completely stupid, unworkable and destructive. Putting the Bill on a website between the Second Reading and Committee is not going to alter that fact.

When confronted with this MPs have been known to whine complain that they do not have enough time to debate Bills properly. How is an extra stage that will eat into the timing going to alter that?

Thirdly, the people who are likely to respond with their suggestions will be the usual suspects, in particular lobby groups or, as they are known nowadays, stake holders. They would have submitted suggestions at an earlier stage - the Green Paper, the White Paper, the consultation or the draft Bill stages. It is right and proper that individuals and organizations should be consulted on the drafting of legislation but once it has been drafted it is up to our elected representatives and the Second Chamber to read, debate, amend and pass it. That is the purpose for which they are elected. I cannot help feeling that MPs have forgotten this.

This proposal is not so much a copy of Barack Obama's, which was something completely different but an attempt to replicate the EU's ideas of organized civil society. The EU (the supreme legislator for this country) does not believe in parliamentary democracy. It lays out legislation programmes in the form of five or ten year plans and proceeds with them regardless of such details as national or European elections.

To prove its "democratic" credentials, every now and then the EU proposes some form of inter-active legislation when "organized civil society", otherwise known as lobby grops funded by the EU itself, can take discuss or suggest laws and regulations or amendments to existing ones. By proposing a similar system William Hague hammers another nail into the coffin of parliamentary democracy.

You can laugh or you can cry

No, not about Ireland and that wretched treaty. As I said before, this battle has been lost but Napoleon took Moscow and Hitler nearly did. Then they found themselves in trouble. I shall blog about Ireland later today but now let us have a look at our favourite ranter, President Ahmadinejad.

It would appear that the man has been hiding something. According to the Daily Telegraph and a picture of him holding up his ID card (not a good idea, those ID cards) it would appear that the man's family was Jewish before they converted, the original name being Sabourjian.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad's track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.

Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said: "This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's background explains a lot about him.

"Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith.

"By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society."

Mark Steyn, needless to say, finds the story highly amusing. But I think Fausta has it right:

Good; maybe the little rat will wipe himself off the map

One can but hope.

Looks like a heavy defeat

The Boss is live-blogging on EUReferendum. I have worse things to do. There is that patch of paint that simply will not dry if I do not watch it. Later on, there will be thoughts to impart. In the meantime here is a statement by Anthony Coughlan of the National Platform, veteran of the anti-EU fight:

Saturday 3 September 2009

Statement by Anthony Coughlan, Dublin, on Ireland's Lisbon Two referendum result

Not the will of the people, but the fear of the people, has led a majority of Irish voters to approve ratifyng the Lisbon Treaty in yesterday's re-run referendum.

Ireland's voters voted not on the content of Lisbon but on membership of the EU, on fear of political isolation if they did not say Yes to the same Treaty as they said No to last year, and on the promise of jobs and economic recovery which the Yes-side bullied and bamboozled them into believing was they would get if they only voted Yes.

Thus the bankrupt Irish political Establishment, which has ruined its country's economy, has opted through stupidity and fear to clamp an undemocratic Constitution on itself and most of Europe.

This year the Republic of Ireland will suffer a decline of nearly one-tenth in its economic output; it will have a Budget deficit equivalent to 12% of GDP, an unemployment rate of some 14% of its labour force and resumed net emigration from the country.

One accepts the result of the Lisbon re-run as a fact, but it is not a result that democrats need morally or politically to identify with or approve. This result does not have political legitimacy, whatever the voting percentages amount to, because of the fraudulent and undemocratic way in which the referendum was run, making it unique in these respects among the 30 or so referendums that have been held in Ireland since its Constitution was adopted in 1937.

With limitless money provided by the Brussels Commission, the political parties in the European Parliament, the Irish Government and private business firms, Ireland's Yes-side forces easily outspent the Nos by at least ten to one in a referendum campaign which was unique in modern Irish history for its massive unlawfulness and breaches of the country's referendum law.

There were at least six dimensions to this illegality:

1) The intervention of the European Commission, entailing massive expenditure of money to influence Irish opinion towards a Yes, the running of a web-site and the issuing of statements that sought to counter No-side arguments, and the adocacy of a Yes vote by Commission President Barroso and other Commissioners and their staffs during visits to Ireland. This is unlawful under European law, as the Commission has no function in relation to the ratification of new Treaties, something that is exclusively a matter for the Member States under their own constitutional procedures;

2.) The part funding of the posters and press advertising of most of Ireland's Yes-side political parties by their sister parties in the European Parliament, even though it is illegal under Irish law to receive donations from sources outside the country in a referendum and even though, under European law, money provided by the European Parliament to cross-national political parties is supposed to be confined to informational-type material and to avoid partisan advocacy;

3) The Irish Government's unlawful use of public funds in circulating to voters a postcard with details of the so-called "assurances" of the European Council, followed by a brochure some time later containing a tendentious summary of the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty, as well as other material - steps that were in breach of the 1995 Irish Supreme Court judgement in McKenna that it is unconstitutional of the Government to use public funds to seek to obtain a particular result in a referendum;

4) The failure of the country's statutory Referendum Commission to carry out its function under the Referendum Act that established it of explaining to citizens how the proposed constitutional amendment and its text would affect the Irish Constitution. Instead the Commission's Chairman, Judge Frank Clarke, turned the Commission into an arm of Government propaganda, while the judge indulged himself in various "solo-runs" on radio and in the newspapers, giving several erroneous explanations of provisions of the Lisbon Treaty, even though this was quite beyond his powers under the Act;

5) Huge expenditure of money by private companies such as Intel and Ryanair to advocate a Yes vote, without any statutory limit, in possible breach of Irish company and tax law, and undoubtedly constituting a major democratic abuse.

6) Breaches by the Irish broadcast media of their obligation under the Broadcasting Acts to be fair to all interests concerned in their coverage of issues of public controversy and debate. Newstalk 106, owned by Mr Denis O'Brien, a committed supporter of the Yes side, was quite shameless in its partisanship on its current affairs programmes.

Democrats across Europe will now hope that the brave President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, will hold back Czech ratification of the Treaty until the constitutional challenge that has been launched there is completed and there is a change of Government in Britain by next May.

In that way the promise of a referendum made to the British people in the Labour Party's Election Manifesto may yet be fulfilled under the Conservatives - something that would give our fellow countrymen and women in Northern Ireland a chance of voting on this EU Constitution.

In June the German Constitutional Court laid down that the basic principles of democracy required that there should be parliamentary control of how Government Ministers from the EU Member States exercised various implementing powers under the Lisbon Treaty - for example the "simplified revision procedure" of Article 48 TEU whereby policy areas can be shifted from unanimity to majority voting without need of new Treaties or referendums.

Germany instituted such parliamentary controls in September. Ireland has done so in the Constitutional Amendment people voted for yesterday. Similar parliamentary controls should now be sought through Court actions in as many EU countries as possible in the interest of defending what is left of democracy in Europe.

If Lisbon however should go through and come into force for all 27 States, giving the post-Lisbon EU the constitutional form of a Federation and turning 500 million people into real EU citizens for the first time without their being asked, that is bound to make the question of national independence and democracy the main issue of European politics for years and possibly decades to come - not least in Ireland, whose modern political history has been largely a struggle against the drawbacks of its people being made citizens of another country.

The Lisbon Two referendum has exposed the moral and political bankruptcy of Ireland's main political parties. There is a vacuum in Irish politics, as there is in many other EU countries, when all the "Establishment" political parties line up on one side and so many of the country's citizens are on the other.

Across Europe huge numbers of citizens are not being properly represented by those who have been elected to represent them. The coming period in history will see many ttempts to fill this political vacuum, in Ireland and elsewhere.

Not a great day for the Irish but only a Pyrrhic victory for the other side, no matter how much they might preen themselves now.

Everyone needs cheering up

The world out there is pretty gloomy and everyone needs cheering up. So here is a delightful short film - Judy Garland's first appearance with MGM in 1936, together with Deanna Durbin. Every Sunday shows up their different talents. MGM decided to keep Garland and Durbin went to RKO.



Enjoy.

Out there

In Ireland they are counting with results expected around 5.30. At the moment the word that the voting was heavy on the yes side. This may be true but if so, I am a little surprised. Just what did the Irish hope to achieve? Maybe they just thought that if they vote yes, they will be left alone and not have to go through another referendum. I can sympathize with that. If, on the other hand, they believed those legally non-binding promises then they will be disappointed. If, in their disappointment they start complaining, I shall laugh.

In the meantime, let us look at the other big story: Chicago being kicked out of the first round of deliberations for the 2016 Olympics and Rio de Janeiro getting it. Getting the Olympics is a disaster for any city, as we in London know all too well. This is not hindsight - I was against it from the beginning and wrote a great deal at the time about that.

Brazil will not be able to organize or even finance it and somebody, maybe the UN, will have to weigh in to help, as the EU had to prop up the Games in Athens. That means American money and ours. So, one way or another the Americans will be funding it but, at least, there will be no trouble about it in Chicago and those empty structures will make Rio look like a large slum.

The really unnerving part of the whole procedure was the appearance of President Obama and the First Lady to plead Chicago's cause, only to be rejected almost immediately. This is seriously humiliating and one cannot understand what the POTUS and his advisers were thinking of when they put the prestige of the presidency on line without making sure that there was the slightest chance of Chicago winning.

One can only surmise that Obama still believes he has the magic touch and his appearance alone will guarantee success, despite extensive evidence to the contrary.

While I rejoice for the people of Chicago (except those who were going to cream off the contracts and make large amounts of money) I cannot help agreeing with various American friends that this is not a good sign. We have reached the stage when even the IOC a pathetic, corrupt tranzi snaps its fingers in the face of the President of the United States.

One can be fairly certain that President Bush, whatever one may think of some of his policies, would not have risked presidency's and America's prestige in this stupid fashion.

There is an interesting discussion on Chicagoboyz.

PS There was one positive aspect to the Obamas go to Copenhagen movie: General McChrystal went over from London and actually had a chance to discuss Afghanistan with the Commander in Chief. Perhaps there will now be some kind of a decision on what will be done next.

Up in the air

The Irish polls closed some hours ago but counting will start tomorrow at 9. Results expected in the afternoon. I shall try to do some semi-live blogging as Saturdays tend to be quite busy but the Boss will be on the job from about 10 o'clock.

In the meantime, the BBC is being cautious, pointing out that there were no exit polls during the day and turn-out is variable but on the low side. The yes side is cautiously suggesting that they might have won.

RTE is also cautious though they think the turn-out in many parts may have been better than last time. It might be even better next time if the Irish are forced into a third referendum. In the end, it will be around 90 per cent.

They mention a Fine Gael exit poll that shows the yes side ahead by 60 per cent to 40 per cent but remain strangely reluctant to endorse it.