Is the treaty/constitution anything to get bothered about?

I'm rather puzzled. Some people are telling me the Lisbon constitution treaty means the end of Britain as we know it, whilst others (including the Prime Minister) say it is nothing at all to worry about. It isn't entirely even on partisan lines; a large article in the Mail on Sunday denouncing it as a severe loss of sovereignty was written by a Labour MP and the all party European Scrutiny Committee say it is "substantially equivalent" to the Constitution we were promised a referendum on. Then again, we get Bob Piper laying in to Thunderdragon saying it cedes very little, whilst others say this will be the last treaty because it gives Brussels the power to amend it without ratification.

Some people are being economical with the truth here, but which ones?

If only we could be bothered to actually make the effort to read and understand it, along with all of the previous ones. A few do, but tend to cherry-pick the bits they want to comment on through rose (or steel) coloured specs. The rampantly Europhile (scornfully known as Federasts by Europhobes) appear to think that lack of sovereignty is a reasonable (nay welcome) price to pay and avert their gaze when the difficult issues of waste, corruption, patronage and cronyism repeatedly bob to the surface. Conversely, the rabid Europhobes often seem to hark back to some imaginary golden age when the sun never set on the British Empire.

I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm a Eurosceptic and think that on balance, we would probably be better off out- I was too young to vote in 1975 (just) and see no evidence whatsoever that the EU sees any benefits in small government. We pay lots of money to the behemoth and whilst we get lots of it back, it isn't for things we would necessarily want to fund from general taxation. Have you noticed that it is much easier to spend other people's money (badly) with impunity when there are more than two degrees of separation?

Last week's course of events certainly seemed to follow the course suggested by Civitas, in what they called The Illusionary EU Battle.

One thing is certain: this is...