I am SO over the bloody Internet. First of all, if we didn’t have it, I wouldn’t be on the wrong side of the planet, jetlagged and knackered from getting up at 4am for bloody conference calls, dealing with an email inbox full of shitbombs, and helping to ‘coordinate the DNS and unique identifiers’ all bloody day when I’d much rather be in bed reading a dreary French novel about failed relationships (is there any other kind?).
Secondly, I wouldn’t just have gone onto Facebook and found out at least 2 of my siblings are planning to vote against the Lisbon Treaty, and then gone to the Irish Times to certify that, yes, the zeitgeist has turned on Biffo after 4 short weeks, and the No votes are now in the lead. WTF???
{ 23 comments }
Kieran 06.06.08 at 1:42 am
Biffo vs the Zeitgeist. I dunno. He’s pretty big.
Katherine F. 06.06.08 at 1:57 am
I’m going to be furious if the No vote wins — not so much because of a great desire to see the Lisbon treaty ratified (although it would be nice to see the EU get itself out of constitutional deadlock), but more because the No campaign has revolved around hysteria, fearmongering, misinformation and outright lies. I have seen No campaign stickers equating the EU with the Devil. I wish I was exaggerating.
Dave Maier 06.06.08 at 2:49 am
Is there any other kind of what?
shteve 06.06.08 at 2:51 am
The Irish Times IS the daily zeitgeist!
Maria 06.06.08 at 2:52 am
#3 – novel. is there any other kind of French novel.
Matt 06.06.08 at 2:59 am
I too was going to ask if you wanted to know if there was any kind of French novel but dreary ones or any kind of relationship but failed ones. The answer to the second is, thankfully, “yes”. I’m not sure about the former since it seems that all the French novels I own or have read is at least arguably dreary but it’s not a huge sample.
Maria 06.06.08 at 4:20 am
Thanks, Matt. You know what, that’s a really good question that deserves a thread of its own. Hang on a mo and I’ll stick one up.
john m. (not the other guy who has appeared recently) 06.06.08 at 7:28 am
Maria, Katherine,
The Irish government have made a total balls of the Lisbon campaign which, when combined with people finally noticing that they really have not done such a great job over the last 12 years or so, is weighing heavily against them. Cowen is merely the focus of this (in common parlance “The Fall Guy”). The man who was actually in charge is now reduced to using “I won it on the horses” as an explanation of where he got certain income from. Seriously.
It is not so much a case of the No campaign scaremongering and so on as it is a total failure on anyone’s part (including the EU) to explain succinctly & clearly why a Yes vote would be a good thing. Care to have a go?
Arnaud 06.06.08 at 7:54 am
OMG! Tell me you are not reading Beigbeder! Didn’t 99 Francs convince you the guy is a fraude?
stostosto 06.06.08 at 8:55 am
Why would there be any other kind? Dreary French novels about failed relationships is all you need. From Balzac to Dumas to Verne to Flaubert to Sartre to Houellebecq: Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. (As famous French author Jean-Marc Cartney-Lennon put it).
Martin Wisse 06.06.08 at 9:16 am
The No votes are in the lead? That’s excellent news.
It’s time the EU was knocked down a peg or two again, though no doubt once the Irish do say now, a new, new constitution^wtreaty will be imposed without the possibility of another referendum. Just like we saw this timne around, with us Dutch and French being punished for our wrong votes by not getting a new referendum.
Paul M. Watson 06.06.08 at 10:15 am
At least the poll seems to indicate people are informed enough to know they don’t know what the treaty is about and that they aren’t just going to vote the way their party leader says they should vote.
As for the interwebs, move to the West and you’ll be sorted ;)
Pete 06.06.08 at 10:29 am
The EU is the second-most elitist political project in the world; it’s not really suprising that now people are finally being asked for their participation that they’re witholding it?
praisegod barebones 06.06.08 at 10:39 am
One small consolation for the existence of the interwebs is that you can order the oeuvre of Fred Vargas from Amazon.fr.
Not remotely tedious, although there are one or two failed relationships in the background. I’d suggest ‘Un peu plus loin sur la droite as a good place to start.
strewelpeter 06.06.08 at 1:24 pm
WTF indeed?
A coalition of Sinn Fein (Everyones favourite Nationalist Socialist party with its own private army) Youth Defence and the apalling Libertas .
Those and every other crackpot and tin foil hat merchant.
…Informed enough to know that they don’t know …
Oh Dear!
The default position seems to be that if I’m too stupid to understand this then I should vote against it. Nice.
astrongmaybe 06.06.08 at 2:13 pm
Good for your siblings! Rule number 1: don’t sign what you haven’t read. And the Treaty is unreadable – until it is published in a form which allows for democratic debate, NO is the only possible answer.
Tony 06.06.08 at 3:21 pm
Hey, Maria – you’ve forgotten that the last-minute opinion poll showing a late swing towards the Euroskeptics is absolutely essential to get the Yes Vote out. While disgruntled wingnuts are already motivated to vote no, the yea-sayers often need that whiff of danger, and, most importantly for Irish people, MORTIFICATION, to get us off our backsides.
strewelpeter 06.06.08 at 4:19 pm
LOL Mortification, that might do it
Won’t be so funny if No wins and Mary Lou becomes the new head Facist.
paul 06.06.08 at 4:46 pm
I really had good intentions to inform myself before deciding how to vote. I have just downloaded the consolidated text of the Lisbon Treaty from the . It is 479 pages long. Who can honestly say that they’ve read this?
paul 06.06.08 at 4:49 pm
Oops, messed up my markup, sorry. What happened to the preview option? :/
James 06.06.08 at 6:21 pm
Ironically, the greatest merit of the EU Constitution (voted against by the French and Dutch) was that it consolidated the various EU treaties in one relatively (I stress relatively) digestible document. I would have happily voted for it. But Lisbon is virtually the same thing and (as recognised by Bertie) everything different about it is worse.
On the substance of Lisbon itself I would probably support it – modest and sensible changes it seems for the most part. However there is a serious problem with the idea of just ignoring the French and Dutch votes and generally with the idea that European integration (which I am all for on Habermasian “postnational democracy” grounds) can carry on without dealing with the hostility/suspicion of actual Europeans to the process as it exists.
So in a sense I would be tempted to vote no on a sort of politique du pire basis (to integrate the thread’s French theme) – ultimately it may be best to bring on a wide and deep institutional crisis rather than just pushing it further down the pipe. On the other hand I don’t think Ireland voting No would be a big enough deal to provoke any real reconsideration among the Euro-elite who would instead take it as one more data-point against involving the great unwashed in the first place.
John P 06.07.08 at 3:37 pm
I am so over the internet, I’m going to post a message on a weblog. I am so over the high price of gas, I’m going for a drive. I am so over drugs and alcohol, I’m going to get stoned. And so on, and so on, ad infinitum.
Paddy Matthews 06.07.08 at 8:20 pm
the zeitgeist has turned on Biffo after 4 short weeks
According to today’s paper, it doesn’t seem to be the Biffo himself – or even Fianna Fáil – that the zeitgeist has turned on.
I’d think that he’s reaping a considerable advantage from not being his predecessor (especially after this week’s “I won it on the gee-gees” outing).
It may not seem like that on the leafy avenues of south Dublin, but there’s an awful lot more to the country than the leafy avenues of south Dublin.
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