I took the weekend off, as you might have noticed, so 200 Words hasn’t been updated since Friday.
Instead, I enjoyed the fine weather in Donegal.
(Stop laughing at the back, it hardly rained at all…)
This is one of the most anti-European of counties, if one is to judge by one interpretation of the Lisbon referendum results.
But you wouldn’t know it driving around.
Everywhere from hotels to local businesses, flags are flying.
Occasionally a corporate logo, usually the county colours and tricolour, perhaps a town coat of arms, sometimes the Red Hand of Ulster, and everywhere the familiar twelve gold stars in a blue field, the flag of the European Union.
The apparent doublethink was brought home in one anecdote I heard over the weekend.
A local political activist, buoyed by the result of his efforts in advocating a No vote in the plebiscite, was celebrating the result in a local hostelry, rejoicing at the prospect of
unaccountable decision-makers taught a basic lesson in democracy by Irish voters.
‘What are you working at nowadays?’ an onlooker asked him.
‘I’m an environmental consultant helping farmers comply with REPS requirements,’ our friend replied.
‘And who funds that again?’
I note that you refer to it as “apparent double-think”. I hope that you agree that it is not double-think at all. A vote against a proposal for future government of the Union is not a vote against the union, any more than, say, a vote against the insertion of the so-called Abortion Amendment was a vote against the Constitution, or against Ireland.
I note that you refer to it as “apparent double-think”. I hope that you agree that it is not double-think at all.
In this case, I suspect it wasn’t even single-think, simple a loyal hack following the party line.