Irish Noes Are Smiling

The result of the Irish referendum on whether or not to ratify the EU Lisbon treaty was
a resounding "no" to more big government and "yes" to more national democracy.

Forming an association geared to trading makes sense for European countries.
Mediterranean oranges for example could be appreciated in the UK as
London financial services might be in Spain. However why should the Spanish
be involved with any decision making about how many hours a week a UK worker
should be permitted to work or for that matter why should the UK be involved
with any debate about Spanish employment rights?

Forming a Common Market made logical sense but the EU defies logic. Huge conglomerate
type nations such as the former USSR or even Russia today, the USA, and China do not
inspire smaller nations with their regard for what might be termed the higher or
altruistic aspects of humankind's nature. The larger a country, the larger invariably
its army and weaponary becomes and the more the temptation for that power to
be used for national self interest if not the selfish interests of those in charge.
Alas some smaller countries too are badly if not malevolently run, but the larger the nation
the greater number of people that may be affected. The UKs previous
status was akin to that of a large nation by virtue of its colonies.

The over-sized country government aftermath from the UK past, is taking
as long to shake off as
some of the the colonies themselves. This results in decisions like Tony Blair's to
send the country to war in Iraq, on the same pretext as the USA the huge nation that
took over some of the mantle of the UK's too much government past.

Once the nations of Europe have agreed their common market they should
leave the running of the countries to the individual governments. The
down sizing of the USSR to Russia and a collection of individual nations, seems to
have been a step for the good. The needs of commerce and trade still warrant
those now independent individual nations negotiating their own common market-type
arrangements with each other but the subdivision of the old USSR so far is
beneficial as regards national governments and their peoples.

Maybe more benefits will be accrue if Russia itself subdivides more;
maybe the USA is now too large for its boots and needs to downsize into
smaller countries. China certainly does as some of its constituent
country components are only held together by force.

One trend that Europe needs to avoid is sizing up like the USA or China or Russia
we need to keep nationhood smaller and more user friendly in my view.
So yes to the Common Market and No to the EU.