Last year Apple planned to build a data centre in Athenry, County Hicksville for the purposes of servicing the whole world with things digital they have to offer and that are in big demand globally. An Bord Pleanála granted permission for the data centre on the 166,000 square metre site, an €850 million euro development as proposed in mid-2016 But, being Ireland some prick or pricks naturally lodged an objection/s. As a result, planing now rests on a case to be heard on the 17 October 2017 with the attendant High Court’s decision.
The fucking proposed data centre is miles out in the stix, huge distances from any praying Catholics and anyhow, it cannot do any harm to anybody, given the nature of that particular digital beast. It would have been a docile building providing much needed money for the community through well paid employment and the utilization of local services. Indeed, it would have provided very high end technical jobs, (and training), for an area known for poverty and backwardness. But, oh no! We have to have some jumped up souls with either a moral or health issue to raise in objection. At least something like that is what probably went on the objection form. The rest of us know that this dishonest ploy is being done for personal profit from the biggest company in the world by greedy, selfish, ugly little shits with narrow minds. “Imagine the millions we’ll get,” I can almost hear the objectors whisper gleefully among themselves over tea. “We’ll bleed those rich Yanks for every penny we can.”
Well Athernry, Ye’ll get fuck all! Tonight the Silicon Beat reports that Apple are to build a $1.3 billion data center in Iowa and create 550 new jobs in the process. No pesky objections and no parasites waiting to blackmail blood money out of a company for their decision to invest in their area. No! The people of Iowa are delighted and the data center is expected to start construction early 2018 and come online in 2020. And critically, a modern data centre is location independent. It does not matter to a multi-national where on the globe it is set up because in the digital age, it can serve the whole world 24/7 from anywhere regardless. Meanwhile in Athenry in 2019, I expect the thick/ignorant-objectors to have lodged their third appeal to the court’s go-ahead decision while in Cupertino’s Apple Headquarters, they’ll have moved so far forward, they won’t even remember the name “Athenry.”
But the rest of us here will!