Norweigian Infrastucture Compared to Irish

ncounties · 02-02-2020 12:13pm

cgcsb wrote: »

Funny you should say that because every Spanish city of any scale has excellent public transport, waste collection and water services. What suffered as a result of building good infrastructure?

Their economy?

Turbohymac · 02-02-2020 1:07pm

Doesn't matter which European or uk city you compare with any irish city..the government and engineers here are just plain lazy and everything costs top dollar..even the children's hospital..wrong location to even start with if they were genuinely going to accommodate children from the 26 countries.. now another ball of money being wasted in a luas overground system in cork similar to the luas in Dublin..but nothing underground away from pedestrians and vehicles..even go to Berlin that was badly bombed in ww2 and now their u bahnn.s bahnn is happily coping with a city population of over 3.7 million people.. not far off the entire population of this defunct island and all we can provide or be happy with is the luas in Dublin..the cork Dublin train that hasn't enough carriages and is overpriced..and public buses that regularly get delayed due to traffic grid locks around our main cities..
Pointless talking there just isn't the will to correct this waste..

gjim · 02-02-2020 3:06pm

Turbohymac wrote: »

Doesn't matter which European or uk city you compare with any irish city..the government and engineers here are just plain lazy and everything costs top dollar..even the children's hospital..wrong location to even start with if they were genuinely going to accommodate children from the 26 countries.. now another ball of money being wasted in a luas overground system in cork similar to the luas in Dublin..but nothing underground away from pedestrians and vehicles..even go to Berlin that was badly bombed in ww2 and now their u bahnn.s bahnn is happily coping with a city population of over 3.7 million people.. not far off the entire population of this defunct island and all we can provide or be happy with is the luas in Dublin..the cork Dublin train that hasn't enough carriages and is overpriced..and public buses that regularly get delayed due to traffic grid locks around our main cities..
Pointless talking there just isn't the will to correct this waste..

There's a significant difference between having the "will" to correct infrastructure deficiencies and rants about cronyism, how terrible Ireland is, etc. that lack any sort of real perspective. The popularity of purple-faced indignation in Ireland over cold analysis and methodically dealing with complexity is a fundamental problem. Because the ranters always implicitly promise that there is a single obvious, simple and correct course action when the reality is far more complex. Ranting is the easy lazy option.

I'm not defending the NCH decision but I do know it involved reconciling a large number of conflicting objectives and special interests - that no solutions would satisfy everyone. That there are people unhappy with the final decision doesn't necessarily mean the decision was wrong.

But the appreciation of the complexities of decision making will never be as popular or entertaining as hearing someone rant and rave with full confidence that the rest of the world are idiots and only their perspective has validity.

Couple of points about your rant: taking the train between Cork and Dublin is not particularly expensive by any international comparison and is actually cheap in comparison with the prices charged in the UK for intercity tickets. You're admiration of Berlin fails to acknowledge their huge failures of public procurement - google Berlin Brandenburg Airport if you want to read about a debacle on a scale that couldn't even be dreamt of in Ireland - over 6 or 7 billion Euro spent, 10 years late already (for a 4 year project) and still years off opening and now it's unlikely to even replace/centralize existing Berlin airports - which was its initial justification.

If you spent much time living in other countries, you'd realize that Ireland is actually quite unexceptional by European standards - a bit better at some things, a bit worse at others (public transport).

02-02-2020 3:31pm

Vic_08 wrote: »

And they are centuries ahead of us in therms of being a wealthy independent country, we are only a few generations on from being an asset stripped, genocide ravaged colony. Compared to most of the former British Empire we are well ahead of the curve.

Can we do better than currently; absolutely, is it realistic to be anywhere near the standard of the most advanced nation on the planet; no.

Norway only gained independence in 1905. It's economy performed terribly in the late 1800s and into the early 1900s as it was predominantly agriculture/fishing+timer+maritime shipping.

Norway has fantastic natural resources, but aside from hydro they only really came into play post ww2.

Ireland was never asset stripped, wasn't a colony, and wasn't 'ravaged' by any genocide.

Keep your ahistorical nonsense to me_ira on Reddit, and maybe try stick to actual facts on here?

Ireland's economy was very strong in the period up until Independence - it was the economical policies & protectionism of the Irish governments that followed that decimated the Irish economy.

As someone who travels to Norway (particularly Oslo) 8+ times a year, comparing anything about Ireland to Norway (or Dublin to Oslo) is just ludicrous.

Diceicle · 02-02-2020 3:54pm

Would Denmark not be a better Coutry to benchmark against?

dubrov · 02-02-2020 3:58pm

I used to work with a Norwegian company who had offices in Norway and California.
There was a one way flow of employees out to California, most never returning.

So although Norway looks great on paper, it hasn't got everything right.

02-02-2020 5:35pm

dubrov wrote: »

I used to work with a Norwegian company who had offices in Norway and California.
There was a one way flow of employees out to California, most never returning.

So although Norway looks great on paper, it hasn't got everything right.

Norway's net emigration of Norwegian citizens in 2018 was 1,777 people on a population of 5.4million.

It's net migration overall was 18,103 immigrants.

Anecdotes are no replacement when official statistics are easily available.

gjim · 02-02-2020 7:15pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Ireland's economy was very strong in the period up until Independence

That's not an entirely accurate picture. Ireland had been in relative economic decline for over a century before independence. GDP per head in Ireland was a little over half the UK average before independence. Its economy at the time - outside of a few pockets in the north - was almost completely based on low-tech/low-value-add agriculture - exporting food to the rest of the UK.

03-02-2020 1:14am

gjim wrote: »

That's not an entirely accurate picture. Ireland had been in relative economic decline for over a century before independence. GDP per head in Ireland was a little over half the UK average before independence. Its economy at the time - outside of a few pockets in the north - was almost completely based on low-tech/low-value-add agriculture - exporting food to the rest of the UK.

Ireland had been in economic growth in the 50 years leading up to WW1 - indeed, the British-Irish real-wage gap had been narrowing (and faster than the ouput per-capita gap which had also been narrowing).

You're also incorrect, GNI per capita of the Free State was at 56% of Great Britain's in 1922 (i.e. after both a rebellion and a civil war) — 35 years later the ratio was only 49%.

I'd recommend 'Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780-1939' and to a lesser extent, 'Economy of Ireland'.

gjim · 03-02-2020 8:42am

Deleted User wrote: »

Ireland had been in economic growth in the 50 years leading up to WW1 - indeed, the British-Irish real-wage gap had been narrowing (and faster than the ouput per-capita gap which had also been narrowing).

You're also incorrect, GNI per capita of the Free State was at 56% of Great Britain's in 1922 (i.e. after both a rebellion and a civil war) — 35 years later the ratio was only 49%.

I'd recommend 'Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780-1939' and to a lesser extent, 'Economy of Ireland'.

I said Ireland had been in relative economic decline. Given the fact that, uniquely in Europe, Ireland's population had been falling for the previous 70 years, "narrowing the wage gap with the GB" which is a per-capita measure does not invalidate that claim.

I claimed Ireland had little over half of the GDP per head at the time of independence - you say this is incorrect it was 56%? I've no idea what your point is here - is 56% not "little over half"?

And it feels like you're just looking for argument since I said nothing about the post-independence economy.

03-02-2020 1:44pm

gjim wrote: »

I said Ireland had been in relative economic decline. Given the fact that, uniquely in Europe, Ireland's population had been falling for the previous 70 years, "narrowing the wage gap with the GB" which is a per-capita measure does not invalidate that claim.

I claimed Ireland had little over half of the GDP per head at the time of independence - you say this is incorrect it was 56%? I've no idea what your point is here - is 56% not "little over half"?

And it feels like you're just looking for argument since I said nothing about the post-independence economy.

You're changing the goalposts while being disingenuous but apparently I'm looking for an argument.

"I said nothing about the post-independence economy, but used figures from post-independence to support ahistorical revisionist claims about pre-independence. I also meant absolute GDP rather than per capita, even though economics (and economists) always use per capita."

K m8, valuable contribution thanks so much

dubrov · 03-02-2020 2:14pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Norway's net emigration of Norwegian citizens in 2018 was 1,777 people on a population of 5.4million.

It's net migration overall was 18,103 immigrants.

Anecdotes are no replacement when official statistics are easily available.

Could you link to the source?
I am not doubting it is true but would like to see the details.

hognef · 03-02-2020 3:05pm

dubrov wrote: »

Could you link to the source?
I am not doubting it is true but would like to see the details.

That ultimate source for that type of statistic will be Statistics Norway (Statistisk Sentralbyrå, SSB). The net migration figure, 18103, can be found here:

https://www.ssb.no/innvandring-og-innvandrere/faktaside/innvandring

That particular page doesn't appear to be available in English, but search for "Nettoinnvandring".

The 1777 figure for emigration looks wrong. The line chart just above the 18103 figure on that page shows 2018 immigration of 52485 and emigration of 34382, indeed yielding a net inward migration of 18103.

CrabRevolution · 03-02-2020 3:07pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Norway only gained independence in 1905. It's economy performed terribly in the late 1800s and into the early 1900s as it was predominantly agriculture/fishing+timer+maritime shipping.

Norway has fantastic natural resources, but aside from hydro they only really came into play post ww2.

Ireland was never asset stripped, wasn't a colony, and wasn't 'ravaged' by any genocide

Keep your ahistorical nonsense to me_ira on Reddit, and maybe try stick to actual facts on here?

Ireland's economy was very strong in the period up until Independence - it was the economical policies & protectionism of the Irish governments that followed that decimated the Irish economy.

As someone who travels to Norway (particularly Oslo) 8+ times a year, comparing anything about Ireland to Norway (or Dublin to Oslo) is just ludicrous.

So what caused the emigration from Ireland at levels unseen in the rest of Europe from the 1840s until independence? Lifestyle choices?

Ireland was by far the poorest and most neglected part of the UK.

"History of the Commercial and Financial Relations between England and Ireland from the Period of the Restoration" by Alice Effie Murray was written in 1903 and as you'd guess is a comprehensive contemporary account of the Irish economy at the time. It details how much life (and the economy) had been getting worse for Ireland over the years.

In the opening page discussing Irish nationalism: "Still, it is poverty that is at the root of the present troubles, the real reason why political agitation is so successful.....Free Trade, which gave cheap bread to English artisans, and an enormous impetus to the commercial prosperity of the country, only brought ruin to Irish industries and agriculture. Irish manufacturing industry still concentrates itself in the north, hardly spreading beyond certain districts; emigration has been draining Ireland of her population for more than half a century...."

In Chapter 16 on the Irish economy: "...industrial life is spread over a much smaller area now than it was then, a smaller percentage of the population is employed in industrial pursuits, the many minor industries which flourished before the Union disappeared in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the smaller towns sank into decay, and Irish manufacturing industry became confined within strict limits."

"It was inevitable that the depression of agriculture which followed the repeal of the Corn Laws, but which became more severe in the (eighteen) seventies, should fall with greater severity upon Ireland than it did upon Great Britain. It has, of course, produced the same effect in both countries, that is to say, it has drained the population from the rural districts to the towns. Only in England the drain has been merely to the English towns, whereas in Ireland the rural population have emigrated to the towns in America and the colonies. It was always open to the English or Scotch agriculturist to take up some industrial pursuit in his own country, but few Irishmen could hope to find employment as artisans in Irish towns, and the alternative to starvation was emigration. "

"The last twenty years of the nineteenth century have been for Ireland years of economic strain.....There are various signs that the agricultural depression which has produced such distress in Ireland during the nineteenth century has reached its lowest point, and that in the near future we may look for some return of prosperity. " (i.e. the Irish economy had been in a depression for 20 years at that stage and they still weren't sure if or when it'd get better.)

Then chapter 17 on the lack of investment in Ireland: "On the whole the Committee came to the conclusion that the distress from which Ireland was suffering was not due to pressure of taxation, but rather to bad seasons. It did not think that the existing system of taxation interfered with the industrial development of the country or that it was called upon to recommend any relief to Ireland which would be at the expense of British tax-payers. As regarded further additional expenditure in Ireland, the Committee stated as its opinion that more harm than good was done in this way, at any rate as regards unproductive expenditure."

It was therefore agreed that, financially speaking, Ireland had gained nothing from the Union, and might have lost much.

gjim · 03-02-2020 7:18pm

Deleted User wrote: »

You're changing the goalposts while being disingenuous but apparently I'm looking for an argument.

"I said nothing about the post-independence economy, but used figures from post-independence to support ahistorical revisionist claims about pre-independence. I also meant absolute GDP rather than per capita, even though economics (and economists) always use per capita."

K m8, valuable contribution thanks so much

You seem to suffer severe comprehension issues. Why don't you actually try reading what I wrote instead of inventing strawmen. I didn't quote any figures, I said:

GDP per head in Ireland was a little over half the UK average before independence.

You're the one who produced a post independence GDP per capita statistic and then later claimed I was being disingenuous and was switching goalposts.

And what originally set you off was:

Ireland had been in relative economic decline for over a century before independence.

Read the words very carefully. I didn't put "relative" in there to fill space. I said "economic decline", not GDP per head.

And I'm the one moving goalposts and being disingenuous?

AAAAAAAAA · 04-02-2020 5:19pm

dubrov wrote: »

Could you link to the source?
I am not doubting it is true but would like to see the details.

https://www.ssb.no/statbank/table/11327/tableViewLayout1/

Set "Statistikkvariabel" to "Nettoinvandring", "Statsborgerskap" to "Norge", "Kvartal" to the quarters you want to see and then click "Forsett"

In 2018:
Q1: -426
Q2: -9
Q3: -643
Q4: -705

Year total: 1783 more Norwegians emigrated than returned to Norway in 2018.

cgcsb · 04-02-2020 10:53pm

ncounties wrote: »

Their economy?

Please explain how not having a high speed rail system would benefit the Spanish economy.

04-02-2020 11:04pm

A better comparison would be Ireland & Finland, fairly similar population.
Wages pretty similar, costs & prices fairly similar.
Third level education, free, maybe 200 Euro registration fee.
Health care, free & no long waiting lists.

Fritzbox · 04-02-2020 11:15pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Norway's net emigration of Norwegian citizens in 2018 was 1,777 people on a population of 5.4million.

It's net migration overall was 18,103 immigrants.

Anecdotes are no replacement when official statistics are easily available.

The statistics for Ireland are even better:

00129725-614.jpg?ratio=1.71

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/pme/populationandmigrationestimatesapril2019/

dubrov · 04-02-2020 11:23pm

AAAAAAAAA wrote: »

https://www.ssb.no/statbank/table/11327/tableViewLayout1/

Set "Statistikkvariabel" to "Nettoinvandring", "Statsborgerskap" to "Norge", "Kvartal" to the quarters you want to see and then click "Forsett"

In 2018:
Q1: -426
Q2: -9
Q3: -643
Q4: -705

Year total: 1783 more Norwegians emigrated than returned to Norway in 2018.

When I select all countries for that period, Norway comes out the worst.
All the numbers are very low for all countries so are they reliable?
Even Syria seems to have net inward migration of nearly 4k for the year.

Fritzbox · 04-02-2020 11:27pm

bubblypop wrote: »

A better comparison would be Ireland & Finland, fairly similar population.
Wages pretty similar, costs & prices fairly similar.
Third level education, free, maybe 200 Euro registration fee.
Health care, free & no long waiting lists.

Agree with that.
Don't forget the 14% VAT on a loaf of bread and other foodstuffs (Standard rate: 24%)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Finland#VAT_and_excise_taxes

Yellow_Fern · 04-02-2020 11:39pm

bubblypop wrote: »

A better comparison would be Ireland & Finland, fairly similar population.
Wages pretty similar, costs & prices fairly similar.
Third level education, free, maybe 200 Euro registration fee.
Health care, free & no long waiting lists.

Wrong. Plenty of waiting lists in Finland. You cant have waiting list free health. Doesnt work.

05-02-2020 12:11am

Fritzbox wrote: »

Agree with that.
Don't forget the 14% VAT on a loaf of bread and other foodstuffs (Standard rate: 24%)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Finland#VAT_and_excise_taxes

And yet, healthcare, education & childcare is all much much lower than Ireland.

Fritzbox · 05-02-2020 12:19am

bubblypop wrote: »

And yet, healthcare, education & childcare is all much much lower than Ireland.

What do you mean - that these things are better in Ireland - or worse?

05-02-2020 12:32am

Fritzbox wrote: »

What do you mean - that these things are better in Ireland - or worse?

Oh I mean the cost is much lower in Finland. And much better run in Finland.
Bad grammar!

05-02-2020 11:16am

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

Wrong. Plenty of waiting lists in Finland. You cant have waiting list free health. Doesnt work.

No waiting for years, you may wait 2 or 3 months, that's not really waiting.

Yellow_Fern · 05-02-2020 10:40pm

bubblypop wrote: »

No waiting for years, you may wait 2 or 3 months, that's not really waiting.

Median (mean) waiting times in days for common surgical procedures.
Hip replacement Knee replacement Cataract Hysterectomy Prostatectomy Cholecystectomy
Finland
2011 113 136 111 81
Ireland -127 -149 -114 -94
2011 103 119 118 96
-130 -153 -144 -131

Siciliani, L., Moran, V., & Borowitz, M. (2014). Measuring and comparing health care waiting times in OECD countries. Health policy, 118(3), 292-303.

Looking at this table, the differences are not so large. Granted its data from 2011 but still.

magicbastarder · 06-02-2020 10:10am

maybe this is why the waiting lists in ireland for cataracts are lower than finland:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/cataract-patients-forced-to-travel-to-belfast-for-treatment-1.4160526

Lord Fairlord · 07-02-2020 9:17pm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Norway only gained independence in 1905. It's economy performed terribly in the late 1800s and into the early 1900s as it was predominantly agriculture/fishing+timer+maritime shipping.

Norway has fantastic natural resources, but aside from hydro they only really came into play post ww2.

Ireland was never asset stripped, wasn't a colony, and wasn't 'ravaged' by any genocide.

Keep your ahistorical nonsense to me_ira on Reddit, and maybe try stick to actual facts on here?

Ireland's economy was very strong in the period up until Independence - it was the economical policies & protectionism of the Irish governments that followed that decimated the Irish economy.

As someone who travels to Norway (particularly Oslo) 8+ times a year, comparing anything about Ireland to Norway (or Dublin to Oslo) is just ludicrous.

Norway had a peaceful separation from Sweden, unlike our independence process. I also believe that partition on our island caused some economic damage. That's not to say that our economy wasn't managed well for significant periods of time.

Last Stop · 08-02-2020 10:59am

magicbastarder wrote: »

maybe this is why the waiting lists in ireland for cataracts are lower than finland:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/cataract-patients-forced-to-travel-to-belfast-for-treatment-1.4160526

Of course this is part of the reason.
And there is not a lot wrong with this method in the short term.
Belfast clearly has spare capacity and we clearly have a deficiency.
We should obviously built more facilities to allow us to do that work here but in the intervening 10 years until new facilities are built this is a good solution.

This is where FF have got it right on health. The national treatment purchase fund is a great way of reducing waiting times in the short term

spacetweek · 15-02-2020 12:45pm

Probably worth pointing out that the $47 billion coastal highway video in the first post on the thread has now been cancelled.

Agreed that Norway has great infrastructure, but you're probably better to compare to somewhere like Denmark. Their infrastructure is really good too, not as good as Norway but very high quality.

NIMAN · 15-02-2020 12:50pm

spacetweek wrote: »

Probably worth pointing out that the $47 billion coastal highway video in the first post on the thread has now been cancelled.

So all the impressive graphics and engineering stuff was nonsense in the end.
It was put on here as a reason to beat up the Irish again and show how great other countries are doing things, but it was all just a fancy pie in the sky.

/thread

Sam Russell · 18-01-2024 4:14pm

Mod: This is a four year old thread with the last previous post nearly four years ago.

Start a new thread with a better reason to do so.

Norweigian Infrastucture Compared to Irish

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