US billionaire calls out Ireland as "no one wants to live here"

ShatterAlan

conan_XR wrote: »

Let's compare like with like. An Irish equivalent of that breakfast would be some manky sausage roll "deal" and a bottle of lucozade from an unfriendly garage.

It wouldn't. If you want to compare like with like then compare and American breakfast that you would get in a diner with and Irish breakfast that you would get in a cafe.


Compare a punnet of Irish strawberries with American ones. Compare a glass of Irish milk with a glass of American milk.

Gruffalux

Gruffalux wrote: »

Haha He is not wrong about the food and weather. It is often shyte but with moments of heart stopping revelation.
I love this country and the people but the whole blather about the wonderful "Irish" is a bit condescending.
I am not all that sad about him thinking we are unfriendly. A bit of honest Eastern European style grumpiness would do us no harm. The top o the morning milking the brim of the hat shyte has long worn thin.
A few years ago I was having a month in Bulgaria and the locals were delightfully unimpressed and misanthropic. None of this licking your arse spiel. They could not give a toss where you were from, had barely the patience or interest to take your order, much less converse. I loved their honest humanity. I found the same in Hungary. Nobody putting on a show. Other countries too. I enjoy it. Plamas is unnerving. Let us be honest and unfriendly and grouchy and say fcuk you Mr Billionaire, like it or lump it, we are done pretending to be nice and oozy all the time like some creepy paedophile uncle. No more sycophancy.

You should go to Finland, you would love it there!

I did

ShatterAlan

Aongus Von Bismarck wrote: »

I’ve been accused of being a harsh critic on the land of my birth, but the quality of food in Ireland is quite high. Lots of gross breakfast rolls, chicken fillet rolls, and carveries of course, but there’s some fine restaurants, a new food culture, and a high standard of reasonably priced produce in supermarkets.

"produce"?

cgcsb

bubblypop wrote: »

You should go to Finland, you would love it there!

I did

I've actually never met such a needlessly hostile race of people before or since. At least Russians generally acknowledge your right to exist, not the Finns.

saabsaab

There are some places in Ireland that aren't really friendly but others that are. I wonder where he stayed?

Mind you if he's rich they must have been high end.

L1011

jackboy wrote: »

I don’t get why Paddy is so disliked in Ireland. The only people he has a go at are corrupt politicians and other wealthy dodgy characters.

Paddy Cosgrave expected the Taoiseach to help him getting better wifi. That's not having a go at corrupt politicians, that's demanding they be your PA

The wifi is just as problematic as his Portuguese conference centre, but they give him much better kickbacks "support" to have the conference there.

andekwarhola

Multinationals are hardly here for the food, weather and affability of the populace are they.

Fr_Dougal

Recent employee feedback about Cloudflare on aggregation sites such as Glassdoor show negative remarks posted about international senior management, describing it as a “toxic” place to work.

Enough said.

SmokyMo

I think he meant from the point of attracting top talent in tech industry. It well established that if you want to earn proper money in Tech you have to leave Ireland. Salaries here are a fraction of what you can get in USA. Never mind other factors like weather, food, accommodation prices... Once again, from a point of view of non-irish person, these are BIG factors. Especially weather!

Nobody would want to move to Ireland unless they coming from less well off countries. From non-irish perspective, once you get here, especially if you work for a multi national that has offices in USA, your aim would be to get there as quick as possible. Ireland is used as stepping stone. It is a lot easier to get a job in US and to go there from Ireland than lets say Eastern Europe or India directly.

cgcsb

cgcsb wrote: »

I've actually never met such a needlessly hostile race of people before or since. At least Russians generally acknowledge your right to exist, not the Finns.

The Finns are fabulously direct. Love it. No interrogations, No bull****, take it or leave it, they don't mean any offence and if you do take offence, then that's your own problem!

Once you're friends with them you see the friendly funny side.

cgcsb

SmokyMo wrote: »

Nobody would want to move to Ireland unless they coming from less well off countries.

Most migrants in Ireland are from the UK, which has a similar level of wealth. Most of the rest are from mainland Europe, same or similar level of wealth.

I hate the damp weather here too. Rains so much in the West
I can understand others not liking it, it gets in your bones.
Give me hotter in summer & colder in winter, lovely.

IAMAMORON

If we could just get rid of all the soccer fans we would be laughing.

Been saying it for years in fairness, it's such a shight sport, cricket is better .. or darts.

SmokyMo

cgcsb wrote: »

Most migrants in Ireland are from the UK, which has a similar level of wealth. Most of the rest are from mainland Europe, same or similar level of wealth.

I am talking purely from perspective of Tech industry and Tech opportunities in their home country.

Not general Irish migrant population.

Your Face

He is talking like a fella that walked into a local pub acting flash and got put back in his box.

jackboy

L1011 wrote: »

Paddy Cosgrave expected the Taoiseach to help him getting better wifi. That's not having a go at corrupt politicians, that's demanding they be your PA

The wifi is just as problematic as his Portuguese conference centre, but they give him much better kickbacks "support" to have the conference there.

That’s a very poor reason for the level of hate he gets online in Ireland, including on boards. I must be missing something.

Thelonious Monk

There is great food here, but when you hear how people on boards and reddit glorify tayto crisps and chicken fillet rolls and carvery and these kinds of things it doesn't say a lot for our tastes. Jambons ffs.
The weather is crap and I've heard from non Irish people that it's almost impossible to make Irish friends. Neither myself nor anyone I know have any non Irish friends that live here that I can think of.
On the other hand we must be doing something right if so many companies invest here, but it could be purely a tax thing and the fact that we speak English.

KaneToad

cgcsb wrote: »

Typical Irish chippers are vastly superior to the fast food offering in the USA which is 99% dominated by chains.

Touché

Randy Archer

TomTomTim wrote: »

This is why the Irish will never be independent in a pure sense. When you shape your values based on validation, you have no true values, you become whatever you need to become to get validation. It's a big part of the reason the Irish are so proud of how "progressive" we are.

Say what you like but De Valera wasn’t too worried about outside opinion and being bullied and threatened by invasion by supposed friends (Britain and USA) when he insisted on “Neutrality” during WW2 . He was so anal about it he even publicly expressed condolence to his friend at the German Embassy over Hitlers death (people ignore that he did the same and more when the US President died weeks earlier )

No true values ? What ? The boasts (cringe , yes) about progressive this that and the other is often in response to old and current claims from morons who know nothing about the nation about being backwards etc ....

Every now and then , we have to put those clowns back into their box

KaneToad

bubblypop wrote: »

I hate the damp weather here too. Rains so much in the West
I can understand others not liking it, it gets in your bones.
Give me hotter in summer & colder in winter, lovely.

Weather is a preference. I hate hot summers and cold winters. I like Ireland's weather.

Thelonious Monk

He's coming from California where the food and weather is really good too

Church on Tuesday

Ireland is...

L1011

jackboy wrote: »

That’s a very poor reason for the level of hate he gets online in Ireland, including on boards. I must be missing something.

That's just two elements of the overall picture. There's lots more. The ego, the jumpers and so on.

irishguitarlad

Church on Tuesday wrote: »

Ireland is...

This full press conference is hilarious, Gattuso is a legend.

Mimon

jackboy wrote: »

That’s a very poor reason for the level of hate he gets online in Ireland, including on boards. I must be missing something.

He is a vengeful little bollix who has a gripe about the Irish government not bending over and throwing millions at his little tech meet up.

Wasn't he hacking somewhere to get data to have a go at Ireland's Covid response.

Gregor Samsa

An old CEO of my company once told us all that they weren't investing in any more expansion in Europe because the EU had banned employees from checking their emails after 6pm. He had read some random article on something Volkswagen were trying in Germany regarding work/life balance, and totally misinterpreted it. He had to issue an apology the next month, because everyone in 5 offices over here (Ireland, UK, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria) were freaking out that he was going to shut them down over something that just wasn't true.

Fortunately, powerful, opinionated, misinformed and all as tech CEOs often are, the decisions these companies make are actually based mainly on financial grounds, and not on factors such as available cuisine and rainfall.

ElJeffe

ElJeffe wrote: »

The worst thing about being Irish is the constant need for a slap on the back and admiration from others. We aren't great at anything in particular sport wise women's boxing aside. Sure look at rugby ffs. It's a sport played by a handful of nations and have we ever even reached a world cup final?? Okay we have some good musicians but that's about it. Also we aren't a particularly handsome or pretty people are we, good lord it's like a collection of Orks stuck on an island.

I'd say we are as handsome as the next place, unless that area is Lebanon which has stunners. And handsomer than others, like mid America.

We do over-react to this kind of troll, but he isn't of course wrong about the weather. He is wrong about the food. Is he wrong about friendliness? We are less friendly than before I suppose and we are rather cliquish. Offices in Ireland tend to be fairly relaxed. Dublin has busy city syndrome, there's a lot of bad driving etc.

If he had said this about London ( where at least 2 or 3 of the complaints would be valid - unfriendliness and weather) the English would have reacted too.

Anyway I bet he was denied funding or planning permission sometime ago.

Whats also interesting is the self flagellation of a certain group of Irish people.

riclad

In dublin we have the luas and dublin bus. Yes there are country's with lower taxes but would u want to live there. In america taxs are lower but health care is very
expensive you. Ll need to pay for health insurance
Irish weather is similar to most EU country's,
I think Irish people are friendly but honest.
The have a nice day culture is an American thing
Eg service workers want to get a tip.
If u want sunshine everyday move to another country
America relys on air conditioning climate change
is making mega fires and floods more extreme
We have a housing crisis because there have
not been enough houses built to meet demand

KaneToad

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

He's coming from California where the food and weather is really good too

Not sure the droughts (and subsequent wildfires) could be considered really good weather.