Full Circle

After spotting this story in the Mail, courtesy of The Talking Clock about supposedly growing support at Westminster for leaving the EU, I was going to do a piece on it. That was until Mrs TBF reminded me our hedge needed cutting this morning (a job I hate). That done I spot that EUReferendum does the necessary business - concluding rightly that the Mail story is 'all over the shop'.

However there's a more thought-provoking piece in today's Irish Independent, headlined revolution time, it rails against the impotency of the Dali:

As the country suffers its worst economic crisis our national parliament has never been more impotent. The old Dail is a bad memory while the new one fills me with little hope.

Truth be told, it's been finished for a long time, made redundant by the actions of our politicians. The day Chopra and Rehn came in was the day power was lost. Right now Finance Minister Michael Noonan is working on a Budget to please our IMF-EU masters. Think about it. Every significant economic decision is being taken thousands of miles away from the Dail.

It's a piece that needs to be read in full and has much resonance with our own country. And as Autonomous Mind highlights, the key part is this:

We are in the worst crisis in our history and our parliament is impotent.

Is there any hope for democracy? Yes. While the Dail may be dead a new parliament is emerging. It is to be found in ordinary people, community and support groups who come together to discuss a way forward. A second wave is already there though social networks.

Ironically the original blueprint for the European Union - the deliberate curbing of European democracy - was devised by an English civil servant; Arthur Salter. His ideas were outlined in his pamphlet titled The United States of Europe published in 1931. And nearly 60 years later the invention of another Englishman will be the destruction of it: