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

Disagree re food. I've been to America and cannot believe how bad the food is there even in so called good restaurants. It's better here, better quality ingredients. A generalization of course. Weather, well, we're on an island at 53 degrees latitude with a vast ocean to the west and that isn't going to be palm trees and Hawaiian music all year round. He obviously got spurned by a lovely colleen years ago, dancing at the crossroads, musha, hence his bitterness.

The only thing that annoys me about Ireland is that we care what some tech bro says about us. It’s a sign of a serious lack of self confidence.

What he’s said contradicts what most people say about Ireland. I would tend to go with what the majority, not some guy who jumps on “Ireland, they eat corned beef and cabbage, right?!” stereotypes.

We’ve huge numbers of people who make a decent life here and just speaking personally in my own circle and family: the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, China, Australia, NZ.

I know several French, English, Germans, Americans and a couple of Aussies who’ve moved here, setup businesses, are extremely integrated into the community in every way.

Maybe he had one bad experience or something, but I wouldn’t really pay much attention to him.

Everywhere is cliquey in Europe in my experience, with a few exceptions like Brussels and London and then only if you move in expat circles or certain industries. Irish cities are pretty bubbly places and easy enough to get to know people in. A lot of rural areas are ok too. Some places are a bit tough to break into, but that’s the same anywhere I’ve ever been, especially small places where everyone knows everyone.

We don’t have Californian weather, but then we don’t have burning forests or earthquakes to contend with either. We do have weather quite like Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, and that’s regarded as a very attractive place to live.

Dublin and several other cities are currently over priced, that’s because a lot of people are opting to live there. It’s a market : demand goes up, prices go up. Places people want to live are rarely cheap.

The absolutely traditional food here is hearty at best, but like the U.K. or Australia and NZ, we aren’t very locked into any particular cuisine. So unlike a lot of Europe’s classically foodie places, things here tend to evolve, fuse, adapt very rapidly. There’s a really good range of excellent food available in all of the cities and most of the towns and villages in Ireland. I get a bit fed up with people writing off irish and also British food as awful, without any experience of it other than some stupid stereotypes.

As for the direct vs indirect culture, I think we are somewhere in the middle. It’s also not north / south in Europe. Spain for example, especially in business, can be direct to the point of nearly painful and France can be so indirect that it would compete with the most indirect part of Kerry for roundabout ways of phrasing things - everything is buried in politeness and subtly.

English business culture is also quite indirect and to many Americans can seem over polite.

In general in business I find Irish people are fairly direct but not rude. In personal life you can have more hint dripping stuff but, again I think that’s possibly down to small circles and you can’t really afford to make enemies as you’ll inevitably run into them again.

Also our political system is remarkably stable and consensus forming due to the structure and unusual voting system. We tend to be able to have quite nuanced and grown up debates. If you’d had the marriage equality or abortion referenda in the USA they’d probably have had a civil war. I won’t take many lecturers from anyone in the USA on topics like that.

I also find Americans incapable of discussing hard topics, which is how they ended up with Trump - a knee jerk reaction to “tell it like it is” after years and years of politicians on both sides who are so puritanical they’d have been flayed alive for using the word toilet instead of restroom and god help you if you’re not overtly religious, be divorced, gay, have an affair etc. They wanted plastic conservative politicians who were often corrupt as hell but as long as they didn’t have “pottymouths”, smoke and said praise Jesus often enough it was fine. They can’t even seem to see what’s wrong with Trump, as long as he waves a bible and says he loves flags often enough - any amount of insane, scandalous stuff can just be overlooked because he’s rich and says a few important conservative keywords over and over.

Yet, they’ll accuse us of being indirect. Just say “where’s the toilet?” or use the F word or say you’re an atheist in some more buttoned up parts of the US and you’ll discover what it means to be indirect. NY, Boston etc are totally different, but there are places I’ve been where you felt you were constantly self censoring and avoiding saying anything controversial or critical.

If you want to take your selfworth from what some tech bro say about you though, you’re on a road to misery.

He’s also moaning about Portugal on Twitter btw.

Shrug off & move on.

He's clearly an arrogant, ignorant gobsh!te.

The one big difference is if you’re from a country with an at home dining tradition like France or Italy, for example, socialising takes place over the dinner table by inviting people home. The USA has elements of that, more so outside the big cities and in the suburbs.

Ireland, Britain, Belgium and also big, east coast US cities and to a degree (more than france) Spain are far more likely to do their socialising in a bar or a restaurant.

We call them “public houses” because they were where you socialised and met people. We tend to see our homes as a more personal space than some cultures do and that is a cultural difference and there are all sorts of reasons for that.

There isn’t the same tradition of dinner party circuits and all of that that you get in the US, but then there isn’t a range of excellent places to meet outside the home in some ways either.

It’s a different culture and you’re not going to turn Ireland into Minnesota or rural France either, nor would that necessarily be a good thing to attempt to do either.

It doesn’t mean people are less friendly, it just means we tend to do our socialising in shared spaces, more than at home.

We also do have a completely different attitude to alcohol to the USA, if you ignore the big especially eastern cities anyway. Ireland is far, far more comparable to the U.K. on this or Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, etc etc too.

A lot of Europe is also very wine focused. The French for example consume huge amounts of alcohol, just it’s mostly wine and spirits and there are endless excuses for drinking. I mean they only banned alcohol in primary school in France in the 1950s and it was still served in secondary school until the early 80s. That would be shocking and unthinkable even here. Before the 1950s it was normal enough to put a small bottle of wine in your kids’ lunchbox!

1956 France bans alcohol for under 14s at a school:



America has a history of extremely puritanical attitudes to alcohol, even going as far as full prohibition and I think that tends to feed into a notion that bars are exclusively about drinking. You can go to an Irish bar and have a meal, teas, coffees etc. I often have nights out where you’d have a table with some people having a beer and others having a pot of tea or flat white. It’s hardly unusual, but you get the impression from some colleagues of mine that pub = den of iniquity

We share a common language, but in many ways we are a lot more like European neighbours than we are like the USA across a whole load of topics like this.

L1011 wrote: »

As do plenty of US states, either direct state owned or franchised (Oregon does this).

Generally beer is available in shops, maybe wine in those states; but you need to buy spirits from the State.

In British Columbia, wine was available only through BC Wines / BC Liquor and they seem to push in a lot of Canadian wines (they exist!) and now “BC Cannabis Stores”.

And if you look under 85 (too young to be a president) you’re aggressively “carded” at all times.