Alexandre Afonso
Leiden University
Author: alexandre afonso
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La cuisine statistique de l’UDC
On vote dimanche sur l’initiative “contre l’immigration de masse”. L’UDC a produit des projections de croissance de la population dans ses encarts publicitaires qui ont déjà été critiquées par Martin Grandjean (ci-dessus). l’UDC base ses projections sur la croissance de la population si l’immigration restait à des niveau similaires à ceux de ces dernières années,… Read.
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Dealing with email bankruptcy
On January 1st, New York Times journalist Nick Bilton, acknowledging that he would never be able to answer all of them, deleted a backlog of 46,315 unanswered emails and, officially declared email bankruptcy. A number of high-profile individuals have declared email bankruptcy over the last decade, the first being Lawrence Lessig in 2004. Just like… Read.
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A Modest Proposal to Improve Value for Money for Customers of Universities
Students increasingly want “value for money” from their university education. On a number of occasions, I have heard or read students concerned about what they get for the money they pay, especially with respect to the different individual components of their education. I have received emails calculating the price of individual modules saying that for… Read.
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How securing borders increases the number of immigrants
In Nick Robinson’s BBC documentary “The Truth About Immigration” aired today, there was an interesting mention of the government’s objective being to reduce *net* migration to “the tens” of thousands. Net migration is obtained by computing two very large figures: the number of people who arrive in the country minus the number of people who… Read.
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An Official Message from the British Government to all Romanians and Bulgarians
Related posts: The Next Home Office’s PR stunt Read.
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Why is welfare tourism such a big thing? Because rich people care about it
Ipsos Mori (a partner of King’s) has an interesting report on public attitudes to immigration in Britain which came out on January 2. In relation to the previous post on welfare tourism, there is one graph that I found particularly interesting (below). It shows the main reasons given by people who consider immigration to be a… Read.
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What if More Austerity Meant More Immigration?
Since January 1st, citizens from Romania and Bulgaria can freely access the labour markets of all EU member states, including the United Kingdom. Fed by the threat of UKIP and a tabloid press that doesn’t really bother with facts, both Tories and Labour are up in arms in the face of a potential “invasion” of… Read.
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Reforming Southern Europe: How to Square the Triangle of Employment, Fiscal Austerity and Inequality?
Mass unemployment is probably one of the most worrying features of the Eurozone crisis. As youth unemployment is hitting record levels (one in four people under 25 in Europe and more than one in two in Spain are officially out of work), many observers are warning against the rise of a “lost generation”, especially in… Read.
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A Modest Proposal to Improve Cycle Safety in London
Cycle safety in London has become an issue of growing concern. After five cyclists died on the road in only nine days, the Mayor Boris Johnson has had to appear a number of times on telly to justify his cycle policy. The top cornflake’s superhighways have notably been criticised for leading cyclist into dangerous roundabouts.… Read.
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How Margaret Thatcher Made Britain a Soviet State
When I moved to the United Kingdom a year and a half ago, I thought that I was moving to a free market experiment. Margaret Thatcher and her followers – from Blair to Cameron – had crushed the unions, liberalized labour and financial markets, privatized public services, reformed the state following business principles and reduced… Read.
Alexandre Afonso 