Journalistic elite sneer at instrument that gives a voice to small nations

IN common with a whole lot of other high-profile and influential journalists, your columnist Steven King (December 10) rants and raves about the empire-builders among the European elite or the Eurocrats with bloated tummies bullying Ireland into rerunning the Lisbon Treaty referendum.

The treaty was negotiated by the elected governments of the 27 EU member states. There is nothing elitist, imperial, Eurocratic or bloated about it. Asking ourselves if we really made the right decision last June in rejecting a treaty that gives us a say in a Europe that is so different to the one in which Hitler and Stalin called the shots, and really did bully all and sundry, is a privilege that many small countries did not have 70 years ago.

It is easy for privileged and elite journalists like Steven King to be smug and complacent and sneer at the problems created by our rejection of Lisbon.