Lucky Friday The 13th?
Jun 13th, 2008 by Eats Wombats
As I expected, it’s been an interesting week politically.
First, Gordon Browne bought his government’s victory in the debate about how long people can be locked up for without trial. A “humiliating victory” it’s been called.
BBC journalist Martha Kearney reports on her blog finding the following in the Oxford English Dictionary
W. MCNALLY Evils & Abuses in Naval & Merchant Service xvii. 162 “The sailors in the navy are allowed salt beef… From this provision, when cooked..nearly all the fat boils off; this is carefully skimmed and put into empty beef or pork barrels, and sold, and the money so received is called the slush fund”.
So that’s where the term comes from!
Various members of her profession are harrumphing about the Conservative shadow Home Secretary David Davis forcing a bye-election at a cost of £80,000 or so to the taxpayer, but have said little about the cost of buying the votes of 9 Ulster Unionists, plus of course a few Labour MPs. The unionists alone are estimated to have cost £200m.
And then, lo and behold, the Irish threw out the Lisbon Treaty on what some in the UK are now calling Lucky Friday the 13th. I followed the debate, even watching recorded TV debates via the web. I was surprised how inept the YES campaign was, and how irrelevant to the treaty some of the opposition was. Yet, there was a thread running through all this.
The Irish actually held the vote early to avoid expected accidents resulting from Sarkozy frightening the horses with talk of an EU army. But they still had to put up with threats from the foreign minister Kouchner. Well, well, the Irish were not at all willing to tug a forelock and vote as instructed because they’d had some cash from the EU… quelle surprise! And who can doubt that many other nations would have voted the same way, perhaps for different reasons, if given a chance?
There was quite a good comment in The Times; a welcome bit of balance after some absurd efforts to co-opt what was in reality a multifaceted decision. Those facets were reflected in these comments on BBC journalist Mark Mardell’s blog which usefully summarised the likelihood of Ireland negotiating a better deal far more effectively than any official advocate I heard.
It seems an awful lot of Irish people, as well as every crank in the country, voted NO on the precautionary principle. Not signing up for something you don’t understand is surely a good idea.
The dishonesty afterwards was astonishing, not only in Ireland, and further proof if any were needed of politicians not just not listening, but hearing only what they want to hear.
I will not be surprised to see Declan Ganly, the maverick leader of the NO campaign, have a siginificant impact on Irish politics. He’s had a rather triumphant political baptism and looks a lot more credible politically now than most of Ireland’s current political leaders.
I’ve seen suggestions that the Irish can raise a glass to the far-sighted individual who protected the Irish constitution by requiring that amendments to it be approved by referendum. No other democracy in Europe is as secure from parliamentary whims (which can take nations into poorly justified wars, as in the case of Britiain’s war in Iraq, or treaties the populace don’t support).
Often credited is Éamon de Valera, the controversial Irish patriot and rebel, and later President of the Republic, spared by an accident of fate from execution by the British after the 1916 rebellion; shooting a man with an American passport might have affected the chances of getting America to join the war. In reality, DeValera imposed his own will on the Irish constitution and erected barriers to changing it.
He tried to get the Irish to abandon proportional representation but the requisite constitutional amendment was defeated. Hoist on his own petard? Perhaps not. The constitution was drafted by civil servants overseen by him.
Europe faces an interesting choice of futures now. One in which it goes back to the drawing board and addresses the democractic deficit, and one in which it tries to carry on as before, thereby vindicating the anti-Lisbon Treaty campaign, fueling the arguments of opponents and, very likely, ending up with a fractured union.
In Googling for some information on the Irish constitution I found some interesting tributes to its greatest scholar, John Kelly, a distinguished constitutional lawyer and historian and, apparently, the finest speaker ever to grace the Irish parliament and a devastating wit. Perusal of some of his interventions in debates (it’s all online) indeed revealed a very funny man as well as a brilliant one. The leader of his party, John Bruton, said on his untimely death
His work on the Irish Constitution made that fundamental document — upon which all our freedoms are based — accessible to thousands of people who might not otherwise have fully understood it. Laws that are not properly understood are not laws that protect us. (emphasis added)
Europe can hardly wonder at Irish predilections.
