Up the Irish

Three cheers and a hoisted pint for the Irish!

The Irish today voted to reject the Lisbon Treaty, AKA the new European constitution. You may remember it as the one that runs 260-odd single-spaced pages and covers pretty much everything. When it was originally put forward for referendum across Europe, it was frequently rejected by the voters, much to the annoyance of the largely unelected bureaucracy who would be the biggest beneficiaries.

This time around, the thing was packaged as a treaty, which sometimes required only the signature of a nations PM to make it binding on the whole country. In Ireland, they put the treaty to a vote.

Bad idea.

Anyone who hands you a constitution that won't fit into 3 pages of single-spaced 12 point is trying to sell you something you don't really want to buy.