EU not vital to success – look at Norway

FATUOUS comment of the month must go to your political correspondent Shaun Connolly (June 13) who wrote, regarding our upcoming compulsory resitting of the Lisbon Treaty referendum (since we gave the wrong answer last time) – “The economic crash has so shaken the nation that any notion of a no protest vote has been terrified out of people by the plight of pathetic, bankrupt no-EU Iceland”.

Terribly sorry, old chap, but we are not quite so ignorant – nor so easily terrified into submission – as all that.

Norway, another non-EU member, not only has always paralleled the economy of EU Sweden (proving the EU was never as important as all that), but last year, the Norwegian economy was the soundest in Europe.

Iceland went bankrupt because it vastly over-extended itself in taking on unpayable loans. It had nothing to do with its “failure” to join the corrupt, burearcrat-ridden EU.

I voted no to Lisbon because I want the EU to be more like its rival, the EFTA, which sticks to the job for which its members signed up – facilitating a trading partnership among its free, independent member states – and is doing it successfully.

The Lisbon Treaty is nothing but an undemocratic power-grab and – sorry, Mr Connolly – too many voters already know it.

Micheál O Fearghail

‘Loreto’

Sallybrook House

Glanmire

Co Cork