Alexandre Afonso

Alexandre Afonso

Leiden University

Author: alexandre afonso

  • A succinct political economy of the UEFA Champions’ League

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    The final of the UEFA Champions that will take place in Lisbon on May 24th is remarkable for a number of reasons: it will oppose two teams not only from the same country, but from the same city (Real and Atletico Madrid), none of which actually won the Spanish Liga last year (FC Barcelona did).… Read.

  • “A useless pile of half-truths and sensationalistic linkbait”

    Dear Mr. Salustri, I am the author of the piece “how academia resembles a drug gang” that you describe on your blog with the words above. You also write that it is “mortally flawed”, “laughable” and “a complete mischaracterization”. You call my argument “stupid” in a reply to a comment on your piece which defends mine.… Read.

  • The situation in Ukraine, in a nutshell.

    Read.

  • The Economic Dilemma of UKIP

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    Let us take a short trip Back to the Future. Step into The Doc’s DeLorean modified time Machine, fasten your seat belt, greet Marty McFly in the back seat, and set the destination to 2016 Britain. We accelerate to 88 miles per hour, and after a loud “bang”, it only takes a few seconds to… Read.

  • Journalism also Works like a Drug Gang

    I came across an old but interesting column by Roy Greenslade about “how journalism became a middle class profession“, describing how journalism progressively closed its doors to people from low-income backgrounds in Britain. I found it especially interesting because the logic described there is extremely similar to the “insider-outsider” logic I talked about for the… Read.

  • Why School Choice is Bad for Social Mobility

    I am quite a good example of  social mobility. My parents only completed obligatory school – that was four years in rural Portugal in the 1950s – and started working at 12. They moved to France and then Switzerland in the 1970s, and worked their whole lives in unskilled jobs. In spite of that, I… Read.

  • How Britain claims to fight wage dumping at home but does the opposite in Brussels

    Immigration is all the news. There isn’t a day when the government doesn’t come up with some new measure or declaration to fight or reduce immigration flows because they allegedly depress wages. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said many times that she wants curbs in the free movement of workers in the EU to protect… Read.

  • Oskar Freysinger ou le courage des pleutres

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    Oskar Freysinger a donné une interview à un journal turc où il remet en cause le génocide Arménien. La semaine dernière, le même Freysinger avait publié sur sa page facebook un texte qui dénonçait les dépenses exorbitantes de l’Etat du Valais pour ses prisons et la non-application de l’initiative sur les criminels étrangers: si on… Read.

  • What does the Swiss immigration vote mean for Britain and the European Union?

    On February 9, Swiss voters accepted by a very slight margin a popular initiative spearheaded by the Eurosceptic Swiss People’s Party proposing to introduce immigration quotas for all categories of migrants entering Switzerland. The referendum has made the headlines of the international press, and its unexpected result – all other major parties, trade unions and business associations… Read.

  • Why footballers (may) deserve ridiculous salaries and bankers don’t

    In spite of £8.2bn pounds in losses, the Royal Bank of Scotland is going to pay £588m in bonusses to its staff. The CEO of the – taxpayer-owned since 2008 – bank said that the issue of bank bonuses was a sensitive one, but that “I need to pay these people fairly in the marketplace… Read.