Ireland Referendum Update

Further to David’s post, this from Guido Fawkes :

When the result came in yesterday Mark Mardell looked shocked and sounded exasperated. The BBC has continually been running this line in its reporting of Ireland’s historic vote on the Lisbon Treaty:

Just over three million Irish voters are registered – in a European Union of 490 million people.”

The implication is clear. Those beastly Paddies are depriving everyone else in Europe of the benefits of the Lisbon Treaty. They want to convey the image of a minority running rough shod over every one else. The BBC fails to mention that Ireland is not depriving Europeans of their say. It is the only member state which gave its people a say on the matter. It is the other member states who are depriving their people of a say lest they give the wrong answer.

There’s more – read the whole thing.

UPDATE – from a Guido commenter :

BBC reporting yesterday was a disgrace. They continued to say that turnout was 45% even after the official result was declared (the actual turnout was 53.13%, “a significant improvement on past referendums” – LT). Either wilful distortion or BBC hack too thick to look up the official referendum website.

UPDATE2 – On Any Answers Eddie Mair read out a letter arguing that the low turnour of only 40% compromised the authority of the vote. Mair, out of bias or (more likely IMHO) ignorance, failed to point out the correct turnout. These people just aren’t up to the job.

Bookmark the permalink.

99 Responses to Ireland Referendum Update

  1. Millie Tant says:

    I haven’t read the link but I bet Mrk Mardell and the rest of the BBC haven’t bothered to mention that the Republic of Ireland’s constitutional system requires the government to hold a referendum on things like this – and on major domestic issues as well.

       0 likes

  2. Martin says:

    Well if Johnny Dymond was doing the reporting, he was probably out of it.

       0 likes

  3. Dick Wright says:

    I was watching News24 (as I still call it) as the news broke. There was Jane Hill – a newsreader I normally like – telling us all about the Irish results as if she were at a funeral. Her brows were furrowed, her tone was sombre, and concern for the future of the world’s unborn children dripped from every syllable. She couldn’t have made her own feeling plainer if she had put a placard on her head saying “Stupid Paddies Ruin It For Eveyone”. It was a disgraceful example of reporting the facts while pushing an opinion. Having read this blog for a while now, I was anticipating something like this from the BBC, but even so I was staggered. I hope the Tories will conduct a root and branch overhaul of the BBC when they get in, and that heads (even pretty ones like Jane’s) will roll – a long way.

       0 likes

  4. Joel says:

    “The implication is clear. Those beastly Paddies are depriving everyone else in Europe of the benefits of the Lisbon Treaty.”

    Thats not the clear implication to me, that’s your unique perception.

    “The BBC fails to mention that Ireland is not depriving Europeans of their say. It is the only member state which gave its people a say on the matter.”

    Actually, no that has been reported.
    Pay attention.

    The trunout is reported in the article you link to.

       0 likes

  5. Martin says:

    joel: The way she reported the McCann story was a disgrace (letting per personal emotions get involved) and she failed again yesterday.

    It was quite clear in her reporting (when for example she talked about the Irish letting down good people like Turkey) that she was gutted by the vote as all beeboids were.

    The BBC gets money from the EU. Or are you denying that as well? So I think the BBC needs to be investigated with regards to the bias in it’s reporting of the EU.

    Why does the BBC need EU funding? Does it not get enough out of the criminals and perverts it employs to enforce the TV tax?

       0 likes

  6. Minoan says:

    I was also shocked by the reporting on BBC24 yesterday. Heaven knows what they were saying on BBC World – on which they are far more biased because they are reaching a non UK audience.

    The BBC view was: The Irish no vote was a confused mob made up of disparate single-issue radicals. The BBC kept reminding the viewers that Ireland may *pay* for their transgression. How Ireland had so benefited from the EU etc etc etc…

    In the first few hours of their coverage they had almost no comment from the No side, either in ireland or the UK.

    They are farking EVIL

       0 likes

  7. Minoan says:

    I saw yesterday as a modern-day, non-violent Thermopylae. The Irish no vote were as the 300 Spartans standing against a huge un-stoppable invasion. They alone have managed to at least slow down the ratification process. I still think the EU is going to try to bludgeon the treaty through.

    If David Davis wanted to do something really useful right now he could turn his contituency vote into one focused on a British referendum. He would win hadnsomely, and it would be a another demonstration of a popular vote against British ratification.

    The threat we face from an EU super-state is far greater than 42 day detention.

       0 likes

  8. Joel says:

    The Trust has conducted a review of EU coverage. You can read it.

    The idea that the EU funds the BBC is incorrect, I will explain again if necessary, but I think you know that is a baseless slur.

    I will go watch the coverage on News 24, and report back.

       0 likes

  9. firefoxx says:

    Joel – the EU has loaned them over 200 Million at a preferable rate of interest. That counts as funding in my book.

       0 likes

  10. GrimlySqueamish says:

    The BBC “reporting” of this issue is an utter, total, disgrace and if the corporation had any pride at all there would be mass sackings.

    It’s plain to see from the slant of BBC reporting that this no vote is regarded by the europhiles within the Beeb as a disaster.

    The sooner the BBC is turned into a proper, commercial organisation the better. The non-jobs need weeding out, as do those who allow their personal political and idiological views to colour the way the organisation reports issues of national importance.

    Never forget, we are having to pay to watch this rubbish, and to feather bed the gold plated pensions of the dolts who trot out this leftie garbage night after night.

       0 likes

  11. Emil says:

    Radio 4 carried an interview with Corbett Labour MEP (trotting out the 26 countries line without interruption) and Hannon Conservative MEP. At one stage it sounded like the Beeboid was about to explode in anger and was shouting down Hannon as he correctly pointed out that Ireland, Holland and France had rejected this integration.

    Surprised they didn’t suspend all regular programming last night and play sombre music instead.

       0 likes

  12. Jack Bauer says:

    I am currently playing Burning Down The House, by Talking Heads.

    Seems rather apt.

       0 likes

  13. Jack Bauer says:

    “Just over three million Irish voters are registered – in a European Union of 490 million people.”

    And all these 490 million are “registered” to vote? Even the babies? Wow.

    In fact… NONE of them were registered to vote on THIS were they, you dumb cluck Mardel? Only the Irish.

    So you could say, of those only 3 million registered to vote on the quasi-constitEUtion, the majority said NO.

    Or did I miss my chance to cast my registered vote on the “constitution” in England?

       0 likes

  14. Martin says:

    joel: Again I ask why does the BBC need money from the EU? Isn’t 3.5 billion extracted under threats enough?

       0 likes

  15. Martin says:

    jack bauer: The NO vote is even more impressive when you consider the forces that were on the side of YES.

       0 likes

  16. Chuffer says:

    Another gel-haired, wideknotted-tie not-quite-out-of-his-teens ‘reporter’ on News24 at luchtime, making it quite clear that
    1. Only the ‘No’side has used threats, and the ‘yes’ camp had been nothing but honest.
    2. The ‘No’ vote was purely down to the ‘yes’ camp not getting the message across.
    3. The ‘no’ vote was all about anti-establishment feelings.

    The fact that these are contradictory seemed to pass him by.

       0 likes

  17. backwoodsman says:

    You have to admire the beeboid consistency in sticking to the ‘house’ line.
    Please take the time to write to your MP (e-mail address at theyworkforyou.com ) and demand an incomming goverment reform the bbc as a matter of urgency.

       0 likes

  18. gaping maw says:

    Any Answers just trotted out the “40 per cent turnout” lie yet again, in the past few minutes.

       0 likes

  19. John Bull says:

    They also played the percentage game. It was pointed out that the Irish make up only 1% the population of member states. However, that cannot be relevant given that the populations of the other countries have not been given a vote. The treaty does not have a mandate from the other 99%.

       0 likes

  20. GrimlySqueamish says:

    Any Answers contributors still trotting out the line that paddy is too thick to understand the treaty.

    Try standing outside a branch of McDonalds in any English high street and asking people about the minutia of even local parish council policy and they won’t have a clue.

    Difference is though, people do know when they are being shafted, conned and robbed blind.

    The Irish have voted the way millions would like to – if given a chance.

    The BBC won’t ever accept that.

       0 likes

  21. Lee Moore says:

    Yes, I enjoyed Jane Hill’s performance too. Funereal about covers it (but decorative with it, I concede.) She also provided THE classic illustration of “not getting it.” She was interviewing Gisela Stuart (who seemed very sensible as Labour MPs go) trying to get to the bottom of why the Irish had voted “No.” She (JH) wittered on about the fact that the treaty was supposed to be to make the EU more “efficient”, that the Irish were pro-EU, and that the Noes seemed to have an incoherent rag bag of complaints, before asking Ms Stuart what the EU needed to do “to improve its image.”

    With commendable restraint, though you could see she was a bit taken aback by the astonishing arrogance the question, Ms Stuart simply said that the problem wasn’t one of image, but one of substance.

    But in case Jane Hill is a secret Biased BBC reader I’ll tip her the wink on the image thing.

    How can an organisation like the EU, whose enthusiasts (like Jane Hill) think that the public doesn’t really understand what’s going on, have reached the wrong answer, shouldn’t have been asked anyway, and have inconsiderately put the whole EU to the trouble of finding some new way of getting to the solution that the public have just rejected, improve its image with that selfsame public ?

    Answer – try to avoid letting the public know what you think of them.

       0 likes

  22. Martin says:

    Lee Moore: AS I pointed out, if the view is that you should only be able to vote on things you have read then lets do away with party manifesto’s. After all I doubt many people (even some MP’s) read them.

    If something was stuck under my nose and I was told to sign, if I had’nt read it I wouldn’t sign it.

    This seems ot escape the beeboids, who lets face it in most cases have only ever worked for a bloated failed organisation.

       0 likes

  23. Trifecta says:

    The constant references on 5Lite to the “fact” that the Irish people did not understand what they were voting for got right up my shnozz. How dare the BBC slander an entire nation?

    Just remembered, in my last sentence please add the words “apart from Israel”

       0 likes

  24. Martin says:

    If the Irish had voted yes, the BBC would have been crowing about how wonderful the Irish people are.

       0 likes

  25. Garden Trash says:

    “The idea that the EU funds the BBC is incorrect, I will explain again if necessary, but I think you know that is a baseless slur.”

    You borrow money from the mob,you’re their bitch

       0 likes

  26. Anonymous says:

    The idea that the EU funds the BBC is incorrect, I will explain again if necessary, but I think you know that is a baseless slur.

    I will go watch the coverage on News 24, and report back.
    Joel | Homepage | 14.06.08 – 12:51 pm | #

    While you’re on the case please explain these:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jul/11/broadcasting.bbc1

    http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/07/bbcs-impartiality-is-utterly.html

    http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2004/06/that-wonderful-impartial-bbc.html

       0 likes

  27. NotaSheep says:

    Guido Fawkes has a great post about the real electorate deciding the future of the EU. “In total there are a mere 9,225 people deciding the European future for 490 million people outside of Ireland.”

       0 likes

  28. Bryan says:

    “In total there are a mere 9,225 people deciding the European future for 490 million people outside of Ireland.”

    And how many of those are typists, cleaners, drivers, guards and doormen?

       0 likes

  29. gus says:

    I know I’m a broken record….but….
    It’s Marxism folks. Call if Socialism if it makes you feel better,….the KGBBC doesn’t have to earn it’s money…..it’s staff is completely and utterly liberal.
    Noxious combo. Making your living off the public, and having power.
    Why wouldn’t you favor SOCIALISM/MARXISM, when it pays for your groceries and grunderwear.

       0 likes

  30. David Preiser (USA) says:

    It’s really very amusing watching the defenders of the indefensible tell us we’re completely wrong and willfully biased about the BBC’s coverage of the Irish vote.

    Just from one video report (which I mentioned a couple of days ago), and the one Johnny Dymond exchange with Mayo, I heard the whole range of excuses…sorry…”reasons” why the Irish got it “wrong”. It seems that a good number of commenters here have come up with the same list of “reasons”, having learned them from a wide variety of BBC reports.

    The only conclusion I can draw is that there is a groupthink attitude about the vote spread throughout various BBC fiefdoms. Reporters and presenters from the World Service as well as the mother ship repeat the same laundry list, as do people on 5Live and BBC World News, and they sum it all up on the website. It sure seems like nearly every Beeboid on air in the last two days has trotted out some variation on these “reasons”. That’s not one report from which we might wrongly infer bias, nor is this a complaint about a stock villain, easily dismissed as “you just don’t like him/her, so you think everything he/she says is bias.”

    This particular phenomenon is too wide ranging, occurring in too many places in too many manifestations. Accusations that we’re all collectively making up such a list of phony “reasons” just don’t hold up.

       0 likes

  31. Jason says:

    It may be so that the “no” voters did not understand the finer technical points of the treaty. But so what? Did the “yes” voters understand any better? What about treaty supporters of the general public of Europe in general? Did they understand it fully?

    The insinuation from the BBC is of course that they did, that it was only the “no” voters of Ireland who were ignorant.

    But the reality is – nobody has time to sit and sift through pages and pages of technical and legal mumbo-jumbo written by faceless Eurocrats. People therefore go by general impressions and wider pictures – both the “no” voters and the “yes” voters. In the case of the Irish, upon getting that broad picture, more of them decided “no”. It’s as simple as that.

    If you presented me with a 50 page contract outlining in complicated, technical detail how you were going to enslave me and my family, abrogate our rights and take away our freedoms, then I do not have to pick through the finer details. I do not sign it. Am I ignorant for not having understood the details fully? No, I’m just a rational, level headed human being who can perceive an essence and make an objective judgment of value.

       0 likes

  32. Original Robin says:

    The BBC line;

    People are too thick to vote in referendums about any one issue.
    But they are clever if they vote for the BBC approved parties in a multi issue general election.

       0 likes

  33. Boss Hogg says:

    IF as the BBC claim, the Irish did not understand what they were voting against, what could be more sensible than to vote against it?

    If the treaty is shrouded in so much mystery, then it’s designers must want it way, which would set alarm bells ringing in my book. If it cannot be explained plainly and understood by an intelligent layman then there is something fundamentally wrong with it.

    To paraphrase Warren Buffet, if you don’t understand it then don’t buy it.

       0 likes

  34. Sonny says:

    What really gets up the noses of the pretentious BBC is that large numbers of everyday people not pissing about with lattes in Islington bars think the EU treaty is one big crock of shit and voted as such.

       0 likes

  35. gus says:

    You don’t understand. The KGBBC is much more enlightened and educated than those “Hooligans” in Ireland.
    Liberals love the idea of collectivism. They can’t “get it” on their own. They need unions. Trade Unions, Civil unions, Europeon (sic) Unions. Government has always fed and clothed the liberal ergo Government is good and more government is “gooder”. Massive government, collective government and socialism/Marxism is the liberals “nocturnal emmission”.

       0 likes

  36. TPO says:

    BBC mindset:
    The (Irish) people have spoken — The bastards!

       0 likes

  37. gus says:

    TPO, Marxists don’t believe in any form of Democracy. The KGBBC is the ruling class, and you are welcome to their opinion. Now shut up and pay your taxes so they can spend them.

       0 likes

  38. Atlas shrugged says:

    Answer – try to avoid letting the public know what you think of them.

    Yes.

    Is this because the BBC simply cant get the staff anymore?

    After all lying though ones teeth while successfully appearing to have no particular dishonest agenda stuck firmly up your back passage is very profitable work in the private sector.

    Second hand car salesmen all the way up to heads of major private banking corporations, like for example governors of The Bank of England.

    Or is it that the establishments love child The Bilderburger Broadcasting Corporation, no longer believes it needs to give a damn what the British public think about them anymore, internet or not?

    Which if true, is very bad news indeed. Things to me seem to be moving on at an ever increasing pace.

    Could it be that collectively the British people are to the BBC either already a thing of the past, or conclusively planned to become such, sooner then we might have hoped?

    The BBC clearly seems not give a monkeys what Bias BBC or the general public says or thinks about them.

    Could it be that The BBC is far to valuable, and they know it, to the people that control the BBC, for these people to ever stop forcing the people to finance their own self destructive brainwashing?

    3.5 Billion is a fair slice of cash even by Ruling elite standards. These people are becoming increasingly mean. If they can help it, they do not pay for anything themselves. If they do, they will expect far more back from the investment then the Halifax is currently paying. Or more likely they will relatively cheaply bribe someone else to force by law someone else, to pay the bills.

    Creating wars and investing in future industrialized slave states such as China and India is a highly expensive business. With plenty of up front costs, local politicians to bribe, trades unions to create, factories to build , competition to be under cut in to painful bankruptcy.

    However creating wars is relatively very cheap way of financing the above compared with the cost of actually fighting them. So again the American and British tax payer comes in useful.

    We pay taxes or our government borrows and spends in our name, to pay for guns and bullets from the very people who create wars. So the fighting of wars is not expensive for the establishment. They are indeed often very profitable for them. Sometimes eventually for us, but usually only by the sods law of unintended consequences.

    The tax payers even pay for the medals, medical care, and the coffins. Mothers and families of course, paying the highest price of all.

    No wonder these people think they should be running the planet. Because they can surly spot a good business deal coming when they see a chance to create one. They also have a good reason to believe we down here really are no more intelligent then over shaved monkeys obsessed with soaps, big brother, football and shagging whatever will let us. They did after all invest billions and many years making as many as possible become all but perfectly useless to themselves and their dependents.

    Always remembering that money = information = power.

    These people already have more money then it is possible for even the most powerful computer in the know cosmos to accurately guess at. They own or control all the major news and information gathering services. Control all the major universities. Control the armed forces. Control our banking system and so own or control just about everything else except our moral souls and some of whats left of our ability for independent thought.

    Only supreme governance over the future of humanity and the removal or total domination of our free minds, is IMO possibly the only thing that can give these otherwise impotent psychopaths a proper ‘hard on’.

       0 likes

  39. George R says:

    The BBC coverage of the EU Lisbon Constitution/Treaty debate in Parliament and outside was not impressive.

    It is difficult to think of many more important issues for UK society than that of e.g. whether law-making powers for the UK should reside here or in Brussels.

    So, late in the day, on the back of the revived public interest issues, on the back of the Irish ‘NO’ vote, the BBC has a chance, and a public responsibility to somewhat redeem itself by more solid, not temporary reporting, of such issues from now on.

    At least the Irish ‘NO’ vote seems to have made Cameron somewhat less complacent about the continuing EU assault on national sovereignty; in contrast, Labour is determined to ignore the views of the majority of the British people who oppose the Lisbon Constitution/Treaty.

    “Tories call for vote on EU Treaty”

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7454988.stm

       0 likes

  40. George R says:

    Will the BBC implicitly fall in line with the European Council game plan, indicated here by the pro-EU ‘Guardian’?:

    “The game plan unfolds”

    http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/06/game-plan-unfolds.html

       0 likes

  41. TPO says:

    Now shut up and pay your taxes so they can spend them.
    gus | 14.06.08 – 8:44 pm |

    Thankfully gus I no longer pay them.
    I now live in a time zone 7 hours behind the UK.

       0 likes

  42. Martin says:

    Problem is the Tories are split on the EU and the BBC know it. As soon as the Tories start talking about the EU the BBC simply get idiots like Ken Clarke on every show (like QT and This week, the Toady show) and then the “Cameron can’t hold his party together crap starts”

       0 likes

  43. gus says:

    Can I say something obvious here friends?
    Liberals are not Patriotic. They love their ideology and not England, Scotland, Wales or N.I..
    They are trying to change the U.K. in into the E.U..
    You aren’t enlightened. The KGBBC is.
    You pay for their disrespect of your nation.

       0 likes

  44. gus says:

    TPO, I’m 6 behind.

       0 likes

  45. TPO says:

    Liberals are not Patriotic.
    gus | 14.06.08 – 10:19 pm |

    I saw an F150 driving through Calgary the other day with a sticker that said, ‘Liberals make me puke’

    Couldn’t agree more.

       0 likes

  46. MisterMinit says:

    “The constant references on 5Lite to the “fact” that the Irish people did not understand what they were voting for got right up my shnozz. How dare the BBC slander an entire nation?”

    I’m not going to pass comment on the BBC coverage on this matter.

    But I’ve got to say, what makes you think that the Irish did understand what they were voting for? What % of the voters do you think read the treaty and fully understood its ramifications?

       0 likes

  47. David says:

    Martin, I don’t think that’s quite true. I think the opinions of one or two, like Clarke, are against what the majority think. You only need to look at the referendum vote to see three Conservative rebels out of 196. But I agree with you that whenever Europe comes up as an issue, the BBC seem to ask Clarke, Hesseltine, or Hurd to discuss it, rather than the many hundreds who are united in opinion.

       0 likes

  48. David Vance says:

    Martin,

    You’re right. This is a moment in history when the Tories could CRUSH the Labour slime but only if Cameron was prepared to take a line similar to that espoused by David. The British people have even greater reason to reject the EU than the Irish but the British political elite chase paper tigers on this. You are either IN or OUT of the EUSSR, we need to be OUT.

       0 likes