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Let's Have A Mature Debate About Europe

Another European referendum will inevitably result in a great deal of heated discussion about topics that have absolutely nothing to do with what we’ll actually be voting on. Isn’t it time we grew up?

The Hot Press Newsdesk, 13 Mar 2012

This rather devalues parliamentary representation and greatly enhances the function of referenda over what was intended in the Constitution – which is that they only be held to ratify or reject constitutional change.

Apart from the representational question, a central issue with this media approach is that in order to maintain the 50/50 fiction, a whole range of oppositional groups are waved into the foreground. As you are about to see, many of these are small and ad-hoc and united by little more than opposition to the referendum.

There will be farmers’ groups who actually oppose most of what the anti-capitalist groups espouse and Trotskyists and Stalinists and populist national socialists, none of whom would normally bid each other the time of day and who have only their opposition to the referendum in common. And so on.

Mostly, when they venture before the people in an election, they don’t get many votes. Quite why it’s deemed “balanced” that they be given a month in the media sunshine just for choosing the less populated side of the argument is a puzzle.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Eurosceptic British or global media conglomerates control so many of the newspapers in circulation in Ireland. You know, where there’s an undertone that if Ireland was still linked to Sterling everything would have been better.

As for radio, between the neo-con econo-libertarians in the privates and Moanin’ Ireland in the public, there will also be free runs to publicity for the usual gang of pro and anti celebrities and bigmouths…

The Hog is not looking forward to this. And that’s the honest truth.



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The Hot Press Newsdesk

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