Friday, 13 June 2008

I had expected to be in Ipswich for a Trustees Together meeting. But so many people had other urgent business that Jonathan Moore and I agreed to cancel the meeting. Instead I spent the morning at home finalising a draft of the QA framework for Watford’s voluntary sector. Very productive.

In the afternoon I took the opportunity to visit Ian Richardson and see the new offices of the Broxbourne and East Herts CVS in Ware. Ware is a beautiful town and the CVS offices are just about perfect - clean and tidy, welcoming and with no wasted space. Ian and I talked about the future of HIC, Basis 2, Links, and so on.

After, I heard the news that Ireland had voted against adopting the Lisbon Treaty. My experience of “the European Project” has been that it is fundamentally elitist, unaccountable and anti-democratic - seasoned with a fair amount of arrogance and a hint of totalitarianism. The whole thing strikes me as a Rum Deal so I am pleased that the Irish have voted to cold shoulder the Treaty. But I am sure our political masters will find some way to by-pass democratic processes - in Ireland as elsewhere - because at heart they have no interest in democracy.