Iceland beats England again Iceland is the best place on earth to locate a data centre, according to real estate outfit Cushman & Wakefield's most recent Data Centre Risk Index. The (reg-walled) index considers the cost of energy, international bandwidth, taxes, political stability and other factors to cook up a ranking for data centre hosts. Iceland …
Unable to take a second bout of national humilation from Iceland, vandals across England rushed to smash up their local freezer centre.
When it was pointed out that he had the wrong target, one such vandal said "Yeah, I just found out that the Kerry Katona and Peter Andre advertised chain has nothing to do with the country. Silly me, huh?"
After he'd finished chortling, we then clarified that, in fact, what we'd meant was that he'd smashed up his local branch of Farmfoods.
"Er, well... I don't like them either," he replied, before adding "They all look the same to me".
I'm a little 'iffy' about some of these stats.
How the hell is Ireland rated 23rd for political stability?
It's sailed through a massive economic crisis electing totally sane governments without any instability at all.
It has no far right parties rising, no serious far left and tends to vote for pretty bland centrist politics using the longest established form of proportional representation in existence. The only major political protests were over the introduction of water charges and they were extremely mild mannered compared to what you see almost every weekend in France.
Meanwhile the UK is ranked 4th?!?!
It's just voted to leave the EU without any plan at all based on jingoism largely.
Both major political parties fell apart.
Scotland is actively threatening to leave and split the country.
and Northern Ireland (which *is* fully part of the UK although many people conveniently forget that when they want to offload its issues onto Ireland which is actually a different country) had a violent conflict which was the closest thing to a civil war in Western Europe running from the 1960s right into the 2000s and is still rather unstable today.
I suppose though to some business and banking minds, the UK is the square mile, Belgravia, Chelsea (and for those slumping it Kensington) and maybe the nicer bits of the Home Counties, which is generally very stable.
Meanwhile the US is ranked 9th for political stability.
So clearly Federal Government shut downs and the possibility of electing Trump in November are indicators of total stability.
Did nobody notice that the US federal structures basically stopped for 16 days in 2013 - Even NASA was off line.
The US is actually pretty stable politically - we have two right-wing parties (Republicans and Democrats) which take turns in running the country from time to time. There's no real competition to either party and their actual policies are generally well to the right of centre (sic).
True, you might think that the current Trump/Hillary farce should be factored into the calculations but since whoever wins in November will be held hostage by the Congress, it's unlikely to make much difference. Thus, the US is politically stable ... in theory.
Actually just on further reading of that report...
It ranks Ireland (23rd) as more politically unstable than Turkey (16th) which just had a military coup.
Clearly whatever methodology is being used doesn't seem to understand non-first-past-the-post political systems very well.
Let me get this straight ?
"Instability" = a country with a complex proportional representation system that constantly elects centrist coalitions has no far right, no serious far left and that might rearrange the deck chairs a bit from time to time in arguments about mundane issues about water utility charging.
It's capable of modifying its constitution through very stable, mature debates and referenda e.g. the gay marriage debates were pretty tame compared to what is going on in the US etc. In general it's very difficult to describe Ireland as 'politically unstable' by any comparison. It ranks very, very highly on things like press freedom, human development indices etc etc.
Meanwhile in the same rankings: "relatively more stability" = Turkey ... a country that has just had an attempted military coup and is currently undergoing what looks like a right wing islamic purge of academics, journalists and others.
So, I think you can basically give it a quick read through with a massive bucket of salt handy, never mind a grain.
It sounds like whatever analysis they're doing of Ireland, the they are using metrics don't work for Ireland's model of electoral politics.
We (I'm Irish) may have a different government next year that we have this year, whereas I'm pretty sure Erdogan will still be President of Turkey by then.
Of course whichever shower we elect and whatever their platforms will work together to make sure nothing much changes, especially not corporate tax rates or inward investment programmes, while the Turkish government may drive tanks into your data centre and nationalise them at any instant. You pay your money and take your chances.
Iceland? Volcanoes, redundant routing options, geographic dispersal, availability of sufficient skilled workers, both construction and operations especially? I'd need to see C&W's raw data and idea of what a risk really means before committing (and I'm waiting for my download since before starting this comment, perhaps from a Turkish data centre).
Yeah, Erdogan's basically going to be "President for Life" while Ireland is going to actually change politicians at the top of the pile from time-to-time. Ergo, Turkey is more politically stable than Ireland!
So what is your problem again? :)
(Icon shows El Presidente Erdogan changing into his presidential uniform, complete with yards of gold braid, medals and epaulets)
I can't see the logic, OK no-one is going to invade Iceland but it's a bit isolated. South Korea, great place, lousy neighbours. Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, cheap hydro, low cooling costs. Singapore? I suppose for APAC it's there, Australia or Taiwan but New Zealand should rate at least as well as Iceland, shouldn't it? Meh - is it based on who's spent the most entertaining the people who composed the report?
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