Buy Irish?

ionix5891

jimmmy wrote: »

I could be using solar power or wind power for my p.c. for all you know, not that its any of your business. I am certainly not a green hippy.
However, I think its a pity more people do not think before they buy or consume anything. We can all take small steps to help save jobs locally and help the environment.

I bet 99% of the items you buy anywhere have fossil fuels being used in its creation, food, goods, transportation etc

the "green" argument is hilarious

i worked in power generation, this country is far from green, in fact they burn mountains of coal and peat at plants spewing all sorts of toxic and radioactive (yes radioactive) **** into the environment

Nody

jimmmy wrote: »

I However, I think its a pity more people do not think before they buy or consume anything. We can all take small steps to help save jobs locally and help the environment.

Don't drink any tea or coffe, forget the tomatos and don't even talk about the "green" cars who take materials from South America, ship it to China to convert in dirty factories to batteris, then ship it back to Europe to build...

johnnyskeleton

FoxT wrote: »

I don't applaud the job losses of course, but the people who shop in the North are playing a critical role in removing market distortions, improving efficiency, and forcing Tesco in particular to abandon its price distortion policy.

I remember clearly a time when income taxes were well over 50% & companies like irish Steel were being massively subsidised by the Government to keep people in non-productive jobs. Dont want to go back to that again.

A point I'm surprized hadn't shown up prior to your post.

Ireland's problem at the moment is that we are very uncompetitive. We got that way mainly because of the property boom, but the fact that Irish consumers are very price inelastic played a large part.

Some people say "what can you do, we are a high cost society" but we are high cost because we allowed ourselves to be, because we kept increasing wages, kept increasing prices and generally refused to try to have any level of competitiveness to our economy.

In order to get the economy working again, we need to get our costs down, and so the people who do shop around are, as you say, saving Irish jobs in the long term. Refusing to buy up north, in Aldi/Lidl etc might save a few jobs short term but is costing us a lot of jobs long term.

eamonnm79

FoxT wrote: »

I remember clearly a time when income taxes were well over 50% & companies like irish Steel were being massively subsidised by the Government to keep people in non-productive jobs. Dont want to go back to that again.

GO Back??? that implies its not rife.
There are very few companies with more than 100 people working for them that do not get some form of state subsidy/s
Its called state capitalism and its the prefered means of governanace for western countries.:p

fly_agaric

FoxT wrote: »

I don't applaud the job losses of course, but the people who shop in the North are playing a critical role in removing market distortions, improving efficiency, and forcing Tesco in particular to abandon its price distortion policy.

So shoppers can bring their euro out of the country and still puff out their chest and feel like their doing their bit for Holy Ireland in its hour of need? What a cod!:pac:

I don't think people can have it both ways.

But I suppose the desire to have it both ways is typical of Irish "thinking" when it comes to most things...

Peanut

fly_agaric wrote: »

So shoppers can bring their euro out of the country and still puff out their chest and feel like their doing their bit for Holy Ireland in its hour of need? What a cod!:pac:

I don't think people can have it both ways.

They can't have it both ways - as has been said, they need to shop around for the best price to avoid propping up overpriced goods. If this means buying from outside of the country, so be it.

seanybiker

Not really bothered if I buy Irish or not. If its cheap I dont care where its from.

johnnyskeleton

fly_agaric wrote: »

So shoppers can bring their euro out of the country and still puff out their chest and feel like their doing their bit for Holy Ireland in its hour of need? What a cod!:pac:

Yeah, it's called tough love. But let's be clear on something, the people who are encouraging others to shop at home are most likely the people who are shopping abroad. FF encourage people to shop locally but get their website from a US company (plenty firms in Ireland willing to do the work). Dundalk chamber of commerce hire a NI priniting company to print "buy local" fliers to distribute to the locals.

I'm not having a go at you, but I'd be surprized if the people who post on boards urging other posters to buy Irish are not buying, for example, DVDs from amazon.co.uk, second hand cars from NI, holidaying abroad buying cheap Israeli potatoes, eating in McDonalds etc.

I'll put it simply, if I can buy a DVD for €20 in HMV Grafton Street, or for €10 from Amazon.co.uk (including postage and packing), why on earth would I buy it in HMV? Unless HMV can match that price (and in fairness, there is no objective business reason* why they can't) why should I buy it from HMV. Until they can match the amazon price, they are charging too much.

*the reasons stated by Irish companies that rates, rents, bills and wages are higher here is nonsense, as it is their responsibility to keep costs down in the first place.

capsubsidy.com

ionix5891 wrote: »

Lets hope people in other countries dont get bright protectionist ideas like that

all we need now is another nail in our exports

Nail on the head.
Considering we import €56b but export €86bn we would be screwed if our trading partners started playing the same game

tattoodublin

Mingey wrote: »

Are you going to save the economy by buying and shopping in Irish shops, or are you going to further the downturn by lining other countries pockets for the sake of saving a few bob? George Hook put it well a few weeks ago regarding the 80's. We banded together to boycott South African apartheid produced goods, so can we do they same to save ourselves?

It would be interesting to see where the majority of public servants, who are paid by the Irish people, have the majority of their investment monies lodged these last 20 years, was it invested in Ireland, using the money garnered from the irish people? or overseas? I think thats a much more crucial issue than where we are spending, If the chief of a tribe took his peoples monies and invested it in the neighboring tribe he wouldnt be chief for long.. in fact he'd be strung up. drawn and quartered. Stoned publicly.
In fact, Isnt a bit of a conflict of interest? " We will lead you but we dont believe in you, we believe in your competitiors" what a joke!
Pluto

greendom

jimmmy wrote: »

A lot more than if you shop in lidl or aldi - there all ( well, most of ) the money goes direct to Germany.

Do you have stats to prove that ? If not, I think you might be surprised

P. Breathnach

tattoodublin wrote: »

It would be interesting to see where the majority of public servants, who are paid by the Irish people, have the majority of their investment monies lodged these last 20 years, was it invested in Ireland, using the money garnered from the irish people? or overseas?...

So you believe that public servants, in their private dealings, should not have the same rights as other people?

allthedoyles

Does the OP mean to actually buy Irish manufactured goods or does he mean to buy from Irish businesses .

Its impossible nowadays to live alone on Irish manufactured produce ., but certainly by supporting Irish businesses would help.

Only around 20% of our weekly shopping bill in Super-valu is Irish made .

I would be happy if we did not need to shop in the likes of Tesco , Curry's , Debenhams , Penney's , River Island , Next, Boots , Argos , or many of the other UK shops in Ireland , However if we do not go in there, then there are going to be more job losses, so this will not help the Irish economy

laura27314

I think this is a really prickly issue, that seems to have a lot of anger around it for something as simple as where our produce comes from.

Personally I buy Irish where I can, organic with very few exceptions, and avoid dairy most of the time and beef completely, it's more for the sake of my health and the enviorment than the state of the economy. I'm not wealthy, I live in a small apartment with my bf, and we're both students and live off our summer earnings, but it's still possible to eat well, organically and Irish if it's important to you, and you're willing to cut back on other areas of your life. At the end of the day, everyone's gonna do what makes them happy and what's right for them.

I'm far from an expert but it seems to be that increased labour (and it's knock on effects in the property market) costs are what makes Irish produced produce so expensive, but if you think about it the labour costs is the money we have. So it all evens out. We get the same value here as the British do in Britain and the Spanish do in Spain (except we get great value holidays compared to the poor people who come here!). It would seem to me that if Irish producers really were achieving a greather profit (as a percentage of the cost of living here) than our foreign counterparts that another Irish producer would cut their prices by 10% and take all the consumers, and then another producer would cut their prices by another 5% until all the producers were just about covering their costs and wages and a small profit that made the business feasible. Unless you think that all Irish producers across the range of products are actually in a cartel to keep prices artificially high?

Laura

ionix5891

laura27314 wrote: »

I think this is a really prickly issue, that seems to have a lot of anger around it for something as simple as where our produce comes from.

Personally I buy Irish where I can, organic with very few exceptions, and avoid dairy most of the time and beef completely, it's more for the sake of my health and the enviorment than the state of the economy. I'm not wealthy, I live in a small apartment with my bf, and we're both students and live off our summer earnings, but it's still possible to eat well, organically and Irish if it's important to you, and you're willing to cut back on other areas of your life. At the end of the day, everyone's gonna do what makes them happy and what's right for them.

I'm far from an expert but it seems to be that increased labour (and it's knock on effects in the property market) costs are what makes Irish produced produce so expensive, but if you think about it the labour costs is the money we have. So it all evens out. We get the same value here as the British do in Britain and the Spanish do in Spain (except we get great value holidays compared to the poor people who come here!). It would seem to me that if Irish producers really were achieving a greather profit (as a percentage of the cost of living here) than our foreign counterparts that another Irish producer would cut their prices by 10% and take all the consumers, and then another producer would cut their prices by another 5% until all the producers were just about covering their costs and wages and a small profit that made the business feasible. Unless you think that all Irish producers across the range of products are actually in a cartel to keep prices artificially high?

Laura

let me explain something about capitalism


* main aim of (non charity) companies is to make profit (everything else is secondary no matter what the marketing departments say)
* competition exists in ever market, monopolies are broken up (ESB in Ireland) or fined (Intel and Microsoft by the EU), now i can go on rant that monopolies usually come to power due to state intervention and fining monopolies is a form of state intervention too
* profits are usually gained by either cutting costs of new technology increasing efficiencies


The "buy irish" campaign is usually put on by interested parties who do not want to cut costs and instead think they can take a shortcut by playing on peoples patriotism, by introducing market distortion which in the long term plays out as being bad for everyone, theres a very good article on the subject here

http://cynicuseconomicus.blogspot.com/2009/01/free-trade-yes-mercantilism-no-why.html

Hasschu

There is nothing wrong with buying Irish as long as the price and quality are right. If goods are more expensive in Ireland than elsewhere then there are usually one or two reasons for that the cost to produce in Ireland is higher or the cost of imports is higher to the Irish retailers or the retailers/wholesalers are marking up more than their fair share. The price will never come down if you continue to pay the pride or nationalist premium, the more people who shop in NI or elsewhere the sooner prices will come down. With regard to organic the whole industry is scam prone. If you know the farmer well or go to the farm and watch them pull the carrots or cut the cabbage then pay a premium. If organic is coming to you via the usual distribution routes then the chances of a rip off are high. Human nature is what it is and I could not tell the difference between a potato from an Irish organic farmer or an industrial scale potato farm in Schleswig Holstein.

Digi_Tilmitt

What if everyone in every country followed this arbitrarily only buy products that were made in the immediate vicinity? Don't you see this is self defeating?

Everyone would end up paying more because countries would have to make things they are inefficient at making and wouldn't be able to specialise and benefit from comparative advantage and world trade.

What you'd "gain" in reducing imports you'd "lose" in reducing exports. By your logic, why don't the people in Limerick only buy stuff made in Limerick, to protect their local economy? In that case maybe I should only buy products made in my local town, otherwise my money would be "lost" to somewhere else?

Let's not be retards.

realismpol

Friends I would buy Irish bananas if they are not grown in Dáil

yes its true we do llve in a banana republic just look at our politicians. Anyway back to the topic at hand, why do people not buy irish?. Its the price, simple as that. We have been ripped off for years in this country. This is probably one of the most expensive countries to live in in the world all because we stupidly accept the prices, but its changing.

Ill give you a perfect example. A friend went to buy a guitar recently and was looking around. In Ireland it would have cost him 1,500 to buy in a well known dublin retailer. He went online and found a dealer in northern ireland selling the exact same guitar for 800. Thats a difference of 700. Now comon, no wonder people won't buy things in ireland...everything is bloody overpriced.


Problem is we have ultra greedy retailers who are setting the prices at nearly double or triple the price that it really costs. Most people take one look at the price and say forget it mate, i'll go on the internet or to a cheaper supermarket aldi, liddel etc and get it cheaper. Thats just human nature. The irish retailers aren't doing themselves any favors. There will always be a certain amount of people who will pay the 'sucker' prices but more and more people won't and these retailers will lose out. If they sold things cheap on masse like liddel and aldi do they'd make the more money because it would be volume of sale based in large numbers rather then invididual unit based.

Most people in ireland don't give a hoot about buying irish or not. Its about how much it affects their wallet or purse on a daily basis. Arguing about wheither things are produced here and keeping jobs local is a thing of the past. Wake up, we now live in a total globalised society. I don't care if i get my beef from wellington new zealand if its better and cheaper then the irish one im buying it. Simple as.

I get the feeling these irish producers of irish goods slap a 'made in ireland', 'gaurenteed irish' sign on their goods or use corny logos 'the difference is we're irish' and expect people to go hey yeah wait a minute im irish...these goods are irish....yeah yeah ill pay the extra 700 to support my country... go on da ireland. I mean look at the ads on t.v you know the 'what does it mean to be made in ireland? ' one.. and they have all these people saying it means 'quality first', 'something you can trust' and all these other jingoistic, bordering on xenophobic phrases being jotted out by a group of paid actors/actresees.....right, yeah, but they seem to have forgetten to have the guy who should pop up right at the very end of the ad and say 'most importantly it means getting ripped off' with a big smile on his face and his thumbs up. The one good thing is you know is that they are now worried by the emergence of foreign low cost retailers here and other online retailers and they are being forced to lower their prices. The days of monopoly are over.

Just because your irish doesn't mean you have to buy irish. If you want people to buy irish then start making and selling goods which can compete at international prices.

97i9y3941

well if your on a budget for a week you have no choice but to shop around,even the fecking gov used printing press up the north to print buy irish leaflets!

ejmaztec

I know an Irish shop, owned by Irish people, but about 98% of the goods on sale are imported from the rest of the EU and the far east.

97i9y3941

you would see that alot in the shops,instance i would see it on the cola cans,the country of orgin or where they are processed is printed on the side...