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

lawred2

Touchee wrote: »

I’m from Eastern Europe, living in Ireland for 10 years now and I find that the quality of beef, lamb, butter, milk is very difficult to find in other European countries. I think the food served in restaurants and available to purchase in supermarkets is not very exotic, but as far as quality is concerned, it’s top notch.

It’s a beautiful country, with funny and witty people for the most part, I like the way everyone smiles and says “hello, how are you?”.

If I had the money, I would retire to a sunnier country, but Ireland is a great place to live (except for cost of housing and cost of childcare, relative to taxation)

Relative to income I presume..

It's right up there relative to taxation

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All I know is when I’m abroad (other than in the U.K.) I suddenly get a terrible longing for home made Indian food.

I think exotic depends on what you define as exotic and where you draw your limits on what is Irish cuisine. We really don’t have any sort of defined cuisine beyond a small handful of traditional dishes, which are hardly staples.

Mad_maxx

the guy is a billionaire , is he likely to be doing a test sample of the population in terms of friendliness ?

doubt he ventured beyond the Shelbourne hotel while he was here ?

Mad_maxx

Sky King wrote: »

We need to get over our obsessive need for validation, to be seen as being 'sound' ... to agonise over how we're perceived elsewhere.

Go on a tourists YouTube video guide OF Ireland, or a video guide which explains irish accents and sayings to outsiders and it's all Irish eejits in the comments.

And don't get me started on the 'sound irish football fans' changing peoples tyres and cutting people's lawns. Fkin CRINGE.

We're not that sound. Its a total veneer of fakeness which is a combination of the aforementioned need for validation mixed with an inferiority complex, blended with our total indirectness as a culture.

Speak to an immigrant in this country. Irish people are unbelievably cliquey and difficult to make good friends with after you crack past the first hour or so.

well now in fairness , you could not make friends with someone who,s grandaddy may not have played corner back for the parish

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Mad_maxx wrote: »

the guy is a billionaire , is he likely to be doing a test sample of the population in terms of friendliness ?

doubt he ventured beyond the Shelbourne hotel while he was here ?

I’d add he went to Trinity College in Connecticut, not Trinity College Dublin, which has led to some confusion about people thinking he lived here.

Church on Tuesday

irishguitarlad wrote: »

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

Great player in his time too.

tayto lover

The only thing he can legitimately complain about is the weather.
The food here is great and the welcome is excellent.
He’s just being silly about both.

What kind of food is he used to or putting above ours?

Dyr

Elite Genetics wrote: »

Quoting crap weather and unfriendliness.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/youre-not-welcoming-and-no-one-wants-to-live-there-us-billionaire-blasts-ireland-39820146.html

I think he has some valid points. It is dull and depressing, not sure I agree on friendliness though.

I think what he means by no one wants to live here is that the Irish themselves run away to Australia and Canada.

I'd say he spent some time in Cork, it happens

Thelonious Monk

tayto lover wrote: »

The only thing he can legitimately complain about is the weather.
The food here is great and the welcome is excellent.
He’s just being silly about both.

What kind of food is he used to or putting above ours?

The taco trucks of Palo Alto

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The weather is what you make of it though. While it can do grey skies, most of the time it’s just highly changeable and creates these very spectacular skies and windy, fresh weather that’s actually ideal for hiking as and outdoors stuff, as long as you’re aware that it could rain.

If you’re expecting an island in the North Atlantic to have the same weather as Southern California, you’re basialy deluded and I think both ourselves and the Brits spend far too much time moaning about the weather to the point that the reputation far exceeds the reality.

Do you hear people moaning about western Icelandic weather or western Norwegian weather? Nope! That’s because they have expectations when they arrive, or they have an expectation of extreme cold and actually get something more like the west of Ireland in reality and go off and enjoy the scenery.

Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England spend their lives bemoaning the weather.

For example, I had someone in the USA tell me that London was grey, wet and never stops raining. They’d never been there and it’s not true, but they had picked that up from the British moaning endlessly about their own weather.

It’s not going to be the same as Malaga, the Canaries or southern Italy, but as climates go, it’s about as temperate oceanic as it gets - you can either enjoy it or endlessly wonder why it’s not 38°C.

Also in non pandemic times, it’s a hop skip and a jump for very little money to a vast array of hotter climates and interesting destinations on the continent, which is more than can be said for some farther flung locations like Australia. You can go to Australia, or Australia unless you want to sink a few grand.

monseiur

ShatterAlan wrote: »

Who gets free accommodation?

Up to 7,000 illegal migrants for a start, some for 4 years and more.....but they call themselves asylum seekers, it suits the narrative better !
With a bit of luck those welfare tourists who have our little island on their radar will read the Yanks article and decide to stay put - that would be one positive outcome !

Thelonious Monk

If you like sunny warm weather, and a half decent summer, we don't often get them in Ireland, that's my main beef. The weather is fine the rest of the year for me but when it's constant wind and rain and low cloud for weeks on end in June and July I find it very depressing. The summer just gone was awful, but at least we got a beautiful spring.
It could have been that this billionaire has come to Ireland and every time there was sideways driving rain pelting him every time he left his hotel.

Mad_maxx

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.

never been to Finland but Hungarians are the rudest and most unfriendly people ive ever encountered , plus everyone is nakedly out to rip you off

Blondini

Blondini wrote: »

Best country in the world to live in. If you don't like it, fcuck off somewhere else to live.

I think that's what he is doing to be fair.

Mad_maxx

Mimon wrote: »

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.

cosgrove had a terribly sore back earlier in the year from all that water he carried for the chineese communist party

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This Prince guy seems to be loving his time in Portugal. You can tell by the angry tweets to António Costa, the Portuguese PM.

https:// twitter.com /eastdakota/status/ 1323947883201142786?s=21

Remove the spaces. I can’t post urls yet.

I love how people get kind of outraged at stories like this, then admit the person kind of has a point.

Remember the German politician who poked fun at our crass materialism and penchant for BMWs and Mercs during the Celtic Tiger!

People simultaneously raged and then agreed with him.

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I’d say one thing though, Ireland is very loud and accessible on social media because we speak English.
You see all the flaws and internal politics of countries whose languages you can read and interact with and those you can’t often seem more picture postcard perfect than they actually are.

A very quick google will give you Irish, British, Aussie, Canadian and New Zealand’s unpleasant sides, weird crimes, self critical articles about racism and so on, yet you won’t find those for Finland, Iceland, Norway or Poland etc unless you go digging with a translation tool.

I’ve seen that a few times where Americans in particular can end I up diving into a self flagellation article, very much aimed at a domestic audience or a thread of “only in Ireland” where we go on about how it’s a third world country or that we are the worst racists on the planet (which we definitely aren’t) when it blatantly couldn’t be more unlike one if it tried, but that’s all open to the world in a way that it isn’t for many smaller language places.

Imagine if we primarily communicated in Irish? The external impression of Ireland would be much more closed off beyond tourist snapshots and stereotypes.

Ireland tends to be hugely self critical and has very little bluster in its internal discourse.

If you compare us to the US, the politicians could be embezzling billions and turning towards fascism (which they are) yet they’ll still be very much all about projecting that image of “we’re number one”.

Ireland has a tendency to go into “woe is me” mode a lot.

It’s not a bad thing that we are self critical. It tends to genuinely bring about change and self analysis but there are times we can really go off the deepend, especially online. We can quite frequently lose the run of ourselves.

I mean even looking at politics here. We aren’t unwelcoming or xenophobic when you consider we’ve a highly open democracy, with extremely low bars to entry, no party lists or anything like that - get a few pages of signatures & a small deposit and you can run for office, yet we haven’t elected any far right or xenophobic parties at all, making us a definite outlier in Europe or North America by any standards. Other than a few loud trolls online, there is zero prospect of an Irish Trump, UKIP, Le Pen or anything like that on the horizon at all.

Around 20% of our population is abroad and mostly very well integrated. Our founding fathers include a the son of a Cuban / Spanish New Yorker (Dev), we’ve had openly gay, married Americans in cabinet and our recent, somewhat conservative prime minister is an openly gay man who’s father is Indian and we had a continuous 21 years with female presidents.

Most of that is yet to happen in the USA, yet apparently were the unwelcoming ones and closed to “outsiders”

(btw I’m not saying that women are outsiders or that we don’t have a long way to go on political representation, but 21 years with an elected female head of state is still, remarkably and sadly usual in this strange world we live in that thinks it’s open minded).

DeanAustin

Spore wrote: »

And we're also entitled to ours. This is a public forum dedicated to discourse. What's your point exactly?

I wouldn’t be getting too excited or worried about what anyone thinks of Ireland.

ChikiChiki

SmokyMo wrote: »

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.

There is enormous money in Tech here.

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DeanAustin wrote: »

I wouldn’t be getting too excited or worried about what anyone thinks of Ireland.

No, but to be fair we do get a rather raw deal with hibernophobia and nasty stereotyping from time to time and, despite the friendliness, you can get the odd whack of it from the USA too - I’ve had to put up with a bit of it myself when living over there. Most of its harmless but it really can get a bit annoying. Like people asking me where my lucky charms are...It’s hilarious and nobody has ever thought of that joke before, but you do feel at times that all they see is a cartoon leprechaun because you don’t have an American accent.

I had some weird stuff in the USA like strange jokes about potatoes and an assumption that I’m a right wing Catholic.

American perceptions of Ireland vary but they can be very steeped in stereotypes, particularly for those that have never really spent any time here or encountered Irish people who aren’t irish Americans at a Patrick’s day event.

There’s a constant assumption that Irish (and British) food is awful. Seemingly we eat nothing but potatoes, corned beef and cabbage, while the English exist on a diet of nothing but boiled food, Toad in the ‘ole and various weird Victorian desserts that sound like unfortunate illnesses.

The result of that is its much harder to market Irish foods in the USA than it is in Europe, where there are few preconceptions about Ireland other than “very green place” or sometimes in France the perception can be extremely artsy due to their connection with Irish literature and music that crossed over the language barrier etc and the Breton connections.

kowloon

I'm not sure a billionaire is getting the same experience of a country as the rest of us. Maybe he's just used to being surrounded by overly friendly boot-lickers who just see his money.

ChikiChiki

ChikiChiki wrote: »

There is enormous money in Tech here.

Not compared with the US which the poster was comparing. All the key senior managment executives are in California in the big tech firms.

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[Deleted User] wrote: »

Not compared with the US which the poster was comparing. All the key senior managment executives are in California in the big tech firms.

That’s more about access to venture capital and the Silicon Valley bubble.

In Europe in general it’s just not as easy to access that level of investment as capital markets this side of the Atlantic are far, far more conservative and tend to be driven largely by big institutional investors, with startups far more likely to be dependent on bank financing and even state aid.

We’re changing towards loosening that, but it’s slow and it what will continue to keep the US tech bubble bigger, unless we can attract investment into startups in Ireland and Europe generally.

Until then, money in Europe follows boring investments and property markets with risk averse investors.

SmokyMo

ChikiChiki wrote: »

There is enormous money in Tech here.

True but nothing in comparison to US.

The Tetrarch

kowloon wrote: »

I'm not sure a billionaire is getting the same experience of a country as the rest of us. Maybe he's just used to being surrounded by overly friendly boot-lickers who just see his money.

boot?

chrissb8

How can you give out about something arbitrary like the weather and use that as a stick to beat a country with. Yes, we are an island in the North Atlantic, what are you expecting. It's the same as going to a country in Africa and complaining it's too hot.

IAMAMORON

chrissb8 wrote: »

How can you give out about something arbitrary like the weather and use that as a stick to beat a country with. Yes, we are an island in the North Atlantic, what are you expecting. It's the same as going to a country in Africa and complaining it's too hot.

Exactly, he is basically acting like a soccer fan.

They should all be banned.

Mooping around dressed up like they are from Rochdale or The Whirrel.

Andrewf20

Poor weather is relative. No tsunamis, regular snow blizzards, crippling heat and humidity, hurricanes or tornados is a good thing.

Food here is great. Travel abroad has opened my eyes to how good we have it.

People here are generally friendly but it's the same in most countries.

Stevieluvsye

Can't believe people think we have poor food. Maybe you are being fed KVI Burgers and frozen fish fingers.

We produce the best quality lamb in the world. Our beef is surely in the top 5 producers for quality. Top notch dairy products. Including best dairy made butter in the world in my eyes anyway. Best milk also.

We have an abundance of sea food being sold that comes from our shores.

Jesus, but you people who think the food is ****e, stick to your spice bags and kebab meals.

The weather is poxy all the same