Off Topic Thread 4.0

Yeah there are a few things there. Firstly how big is the area covered by the LA Average. Stoneybatter is a relatively short walk to everywhere and a Strones trow from a Luas line that goes to the cities two main stations. LA is huge, and some parts are damn far from anything good.

I often see Dublin compared to NY, LA or SF and mostly it's people comparing outliers to averages. My OH lives in Brooklyn, probably 35 minutes subway from Manhatten. She lives in a 4 bed apartment with one bathroom, a kitchenette with no kitchen table and no living space. Her room has a bed, hanging rail, desk and a single chair - no wardrobe. Some of the rooms in that apartment have windows with a metre of clearance to the wall opposite. Her apartment would be comfortably illegal under irish building regs. She pays similar rent to me. I share a pretty big two bed apartment with one other person in Dublin city centre.

Dublin is a ****show for rent and property right now, but so are those cities. It's all the same structure of property ownership.

awec

Hastings Hotels Belfast. I think they're on to something.

[Deleted User]

Will also add the 'shoe-box' is more expensive than about 90% of properties sold in Dublin in 2018 so not as if that's your only choice.

Stoneybatter is still the only place I've ever seen a dead body on a street in broad daylight, so you'll forgive my absence of enthusiasm that it's a mere skip-and-jump to a Luas station.

Data on global house prices per square foot are here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/730312/most-expensive-property-markets-worldwide-by-average-ppsf/

The Stoneybatter house clocks in at $509 per sq-foot, using today's exchange rate. Keep in mind that average prices per unit-of-space in mega cities will always get skewed upwards because due to the small cluster of well-located $10million+ apartments (basically live-in luxury hotels). I would be quietly confident that Chateau du Roux-au-Pierre might rank farther up that list if median prices were used.

In any event, I'm not morally opposed to expensive property, provided the market is getting good value for money. I'll happily shell out $1000 per sq foot in the Bay Area, if I have access to tech admin jobs paying $300k per year. My grave concern with Dublin is that the house market is utterly unsustainable given the wages on offer in the city, and that prices largely reflect inflated equity (lucky for some), inheritance (lucky for others) and/or highly leveraged speculation (very very risky).

Rigor Mortis

awec wrote: »

Hastings Hotels Belfast. I think they're on to something.

I always take whiskey in my porridge. It's gorgeous. Also allows for experimentation. Peaty whiskey is really nice.
It does get strange looks in the works canteen though.

If you're putting brown sugar, cream and boiled oats into your whiskey, do you really need the whiskey to be a 10-year-old single malt scotch? (tasting notes: the giant globs of congealed cream really amplify the smoky peaty undertones that can only come from ageing in small barrels to increase the wood surface area and the crunchy brown sugar plays well with the smoothness imparted by traditional charcoal distilling)...

thomond2006

Rugby day!

Someone get me a pear and bacon sandwich.

thomond2006

Antonio Brown has had a crazy week. NFL is insane.

thomond2006 wrote: »

Antonio Brown has had a crazy week. NFL is insane.

His timeline this season has been:

1. Arrives at OTAs in a helicopter
2. Throws a fit and storms out of OTAs because of his helmet being banned under the new regulations, tries to paint it to look the same as the legal ones but gets caught and once again goes ballistic.
3. After the summer break, misses the start of training camp due to having frostbite from cryotherapy.
4. Season opener rolls around, but he gets suspended for fighting with the GM and threatening to punch him in the face.
5. Suspension gets rolled back, but Brown then posts a video of Gruden his coach calling him asking to stop the drama and just play football on social media.
6. Brown then posts on Instagram saying "Release me", which the raiders do and he forfeits $30M in guaranteed money.
7. Patriots swoop in and sign him as a free agent.

It's genuinely one of the craziest stories in NFL history, and to think he was on the same team as Richie Incognito and made him look like a sane person in comparison.

thomond2006

It's amazing. I've been laughing for quite a while.

Rigor Mortis

Neil3030 wrote: »

If you're putting brown sugar, cream and boiled oats into your whiskey, do you really need the whiskey to be a 10-year-old single malt scotch? (tasting notes: the giant globs of congealed cream really amplify the smoky peaty undertones that can only come from ageing in small barrels to increase the wood surface area and the crunchy brown sugar plays well with the smoothness imparted by traditional charcoal distilling)...

You're absolutely right. Following this logic the next time i make a carbonara sauce i will be adding calvita instead of parmesan.

[Deleted User]

Anyone watched the Off the Ball roadshow with Roy Keane and Gary Neville? Keane was in great form.

Rigor Mortis wrote: »

You're absolutely right. Following this logic the next time i make a carbonara sauce i will be adding calvita instead of parmesan.

What sort of troglodyte uses parmesan?

I bet you use pancetta too... <shudder>

The Bernard Shaw is closing next month. It'll be sorely missed I reckon, awful shame to see places like that, The Longstone, Howl at the Moon, even Andrew's Lane closing down and being replaced by hotels and Wetherspoons.

Squidgy Black wrote: »

The Bernard Shaw is closing next month. It'll be sorely missed I reckon, awful shame to see places like that, The Longstone, Howl at the Moon, even Andrew's Lane closing down and being replaced by hotels and Wetherspoons.

Yeah I live around the corner and I will miss the GBS, I'll actually miss Eatyard even more. It seems that the real killer ended up being the whole area being bought by a developer which is sad. But from a planning perspective I think it was on it's last legs anyway. They had been sort of dicks with regard to blissfully breaking the terms of their planning permission over the last few years. So I find it hard to have much sympathy for the owners themselves.

errlloyd wrote: »

Yeah I live around the corner and I will miss the GBS, I'll actually miss Eatyard even more. It seems that the real killer ended up being the whole area being bought by a developer which is sad. But from a planning perspective I think it was on it's last legs anyway. They had been sort of dicks with regard to blissfully breaking the terms of their planning permission over the last few years. So I find it hard to have much sympathy for the owners themselves.

Ah yeah they were definitely acting the bollox with the beer garden, considering they were told a few years ago what they had to do in terms of noise reduction and didn't bother.

You'd wonder how long it'll be until certain parts of the city are torn up altogether, with the amount of student apartment blocks and hotels being built, as well as all the office spaces. Feck all residential apartment buildings going up.

I must say I like McWilliams's (I think) idea - move Dublin Port to Louth and redevelop Dublin Port as mostly residential property.

[Deleted User]

connemara man wrote: »

No Politics

Bazzo

Is it common practice to increase prices mid contract (as in 6 months into an 18 month contract) in Ireland? Apparently it is here, seems ****ing ludicrous to me, so the contract is basically only beneficial to the company then???

Bazzo wrote: »

Is it common practice to increase prices mid contract (as in 6 months into an 18 month contract) in Ireland? Apparently it is here, seems ****ing ludicrous to me, so the contract is basically only beneficial to the company then???

Is this within a phone contract? Or telecoms contract?

If the price goes up at all you have 30 days to opt out with no penalty. If it's a billpay phone you've just won the jackpot, because when you opt out you will get to keep your handset even though you haven't come close to paying it off.

When Three did it a few years ago loads of people did really well out of it. My mate had just started an iphone 7 contract (I think). He had paid 100e and was on the hook for 60e per month. Immediately got out of it having paid for one month. Brand new iphone 7 cost him 160e!

Bazzo

errlloyd wrote: »

Is this within a phone contract? Or telecoms contract?

If the price goes up at all you have 30 days to opt out with no penalty. If it's a billpay phone you've just won the jackpot, because when you opt out you will get to keep your handset even though you haven't come close to paying it off.

When Three did it a few years ago loads of people did really well out of it. My mate had just started an iphone 7 contract (I think). He had paid 100e and was on the hook for 60e per month. Immediately got out of it having paid for one month. Brand new iphone 7 cost him 160e!

TV & internet. They apparently sent me an email(which I never received) notifying me of the price going up (I've received all their other emails just fine). A bit of googling and apparently it's very common practice here. I noticed it last month and got onto their chat support who of course promised me the world but none of it has materialised in this month's bill. I've screenshotted the conversation so I'll have to ring them and see how I get on with that.

Bazzo wrote: »

TV & internet. They apparently sent me an email(which I never received) notifying me of the price going up (I've received all their other emails just fine). A bit of googling and apparently it's very common practice here. I noticed it last month and got onto their chat support who of course promised me the world but none of it has materialised in this month's bill. I've screenshotted the conversation so I'll have to ring them and see how I get on with that.

Was it a contract that had flagged the price rise in advance? (First 6 months for 50 then rising to 55). That is really common here? Anyway, there is a good chance you'll succeed in getting it cancelled, but maybe not reverted to the old price.

Bazzo wrote: »

TV & internet. They apparently sent me an email(which I never received) notifying me of the price going up (I've received all their other emails just fine). A bit of googling and apparently it's very common practice here. I noticed it last month and got onto their chat support who of course promised me the world but none of it has materialised in this month's bill. I've screenshotted the conversation so I'll have to ring them and see how I get on with that.

Yeah most providers do it all the time, particularly Sky, they usually have annual price hikes.

Bazzo

errlloyd wrote: »

Was it a contract that had flagged the price rise in advance? (First 6 months for 50 then rising to 55). That is really common here? Anyway, there is a good chance you'll succeed in getting it cancelled, but maybe not reverted to the old price.

Nope. 18 months at X was the contract. It's with BT and they've been a disaster to deal with from day 1 so if they offer me cancellation I may just take it

awec

If they change the price then you can end the contract without penalty rather than agreeing to the higher rate.

Dave_The_Sheep

Squidgy Black wrote: »

The Bernard Shaw is closing next month. It'll be sorely missed I reckon, awful shame to see places like that, The Longstone, Howl at the Moon, even Andrew's Lane closing down and being replaced by hotels and Wetherspoons.

Hold on, the long stone is closing down?

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

Hold on, the long stone is closing down?

On Townsend St? It's been gone for months now.

Dave_The_Sheep

errlloyd wrote: »

On Townsend St? It's been gone for months now.

Well, ****.

I mean I'm not in town that often (evidently), but I did like that place.