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Comment by librasteve | Hacker News Reader

prior to brexit, the UK lost a ton of US inward direct investment to Eire … Dell, Intel, Apple etc. the factors were Eire corporation tax was low and public policy was to footdrag in the attempts to set an EU minimum tax, fantastic lobbying by Irish representatives in Washington leveraging the big Irish diaspora, big subsidies that walked to the edge of the EU rules (as seen here), and an English speaking workforce with ability to bring in speakers of all national languages for EU wide customer support

meantime the UK civil service was gold plating the EU rules and then came the brexit disaster

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"Eire" is a weird exonym. The country this happened in is called Ireland (officially and colloquially). It's a republic and shares the island (also called Ireland) with a non-sovereign country called Northern Ireland. It's often referred to as the Republic of Ireland, which is a fine description, but not the official name.

In the Irish language, the name of the country is "Éire", but saying that in English is like saying Magyarország instead of Hungary. The accent on the first letter isn't optional, and the pronunciation is difficult, it's hardly worth it.

Please just say "Ireland".

Ireland can also refer to the whole island though, so it can be ambiguous.

We have the same problem, even worse, with people calling the EU "Europe".

The diplomatically neutral term is "the island of Ireland" for the whole thing.

"These islands" refers to the British Isles, in the context of Anglo-Irish relations.

It's some fascinating wordplay, born out of the Good Friday Agreement, trying not to step on various people's buttons.

It's not really ambiguous. When talking about Ireland in an economic sense, we generally refer to the Republic of Ireland. Geographically you would say the island of Ireland if you were to include Northern Ireland.

Do you also avoid using the names of Korea, Georgia and China?

will do

btw I think I got the idea that its the official name from the word Éire being stamped on all the coins

There was also a long tradition of the British government (and by extension, the BBC) using Eire as they didn't want to acknowledge the name Ireland in case it was seen as a recognition of claims on Northern Ireland. Since the Good Friday Agreement in the 90s however, that was resolved, and now even the British government uses Ireland and most style guides in the UK media advise people away from "Eire" (It slips through occasionally though).

The UK government seems intent on getting the "worst of both worlds" out of every single issue.

The previous one seemed to. The jury is out on the current one.

AT best it will be similar. SO far the main difference seems to be a willingness to be harsher to old people and those on moderate (not minimum wage, but lowish to average) incomes.

> harsher to old people

Old people not on pension credit.

The old WFP was £300 in the pocket of every pensioner, regardless of means and that's a stupid thing for a government to be paying for when it's trying to balance the books.

I do accept the problem —as with many means-tested benefits— is catching and supporting the people who don't qualify, haven't filled in the paperwork, and still vitally need the support the WFP gave them. The DWP has to be given the support to help people who need it, and quickly, especially in Y1.

But I think they're getting way too much stick for this.

They are not getting anything as much stick as the Conservatives would have if they have done it. Every Labour supporting rag would have been going on about it, and my FB feed would have been flooded with people complaining about "uncaring Tories".

I suspect we are going to get a lot of austerity and privatisation in the next few years simply because Labour can get away with things. Some good things may happen (IMO the NHS badly needs reform) but so will a LOT of bad things.

In fairness, the UK got a lot of 'opt-outs' which probably gave it a competitive advantage in certain areas.

I can think of one set of EU rules where the UK used its considerable influence to secure major changes to the original proposals only for UK regulation to limit the benefits of those changes.

Of course, those rules were later held up by the UK Govt as an example of where the UK could reap 'Brexit benefits'.

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