31 October 2014

4 Days to go

So I'll be in Japan in 4 days.

Actually I'll be on a plane in 4 days. I don't arrive in Japan until November 5th.

Last night I got a card and presents from the office for my trip. I'm happy about the card but I wasn't expecting presents. And there's been quite a few collections already for people who are actually leaving so I feel doubly selfish about it. Still, I guess nobody forces people to give money... Apart from peer pressure.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about!

I'm not really thinking about leaving too much because then I'll just be sad about it but if I just go with the flow one day at a time I know I won't have the capacity to be sad. I really am looking forward to it, but it's difficult to focus on the things I'm looking forward to instead of the things I'll be missing out on. I'm waiting for the 'perspective shift' that happens when you move on and can focus on the things in front of you. This is my own problem; I find it difficult to concentrate on things that aren't in front of me.

In order to leave I've been getting my room / life as clean and uncluttered as possible so I can just slip right back into it.

This is my postcards wall. I’m not sure when I started collecting postcards but it’s a pretty cheap habit.

The theme of this collection is ‘Summer ‘. Pretty original. The top three are things that I did and the bottom four are ‘A Summer of the Past’.

Things like this I've been changing so that when I come back I get depressed because it's like I never left!

I guess I'm updating this blog and not my tumblr one then. Tumblr makes it so easy to post photos that I wondered which one I was going to use.... Honestly this isn't really the place for me to post introspective things like this.

5 September 2014

LANGUAGE AND PERSONALITY

Or as this study puts it: The Language OF personality.

If you didn't want to click through, this is an old study (I remember posting about it on facebook a few years ago), that created word clouds based on personality traits using data gleaned from social media sites.

It's a curious thing. I tried to go through this list of clouds and see what I would be classified as based on my own language on facebook (just because that's the account that I've had the longest):

I most strongly correlate with the introverted (left) and openness (below right). Interestingly I used more 'introverted words' when I was younger and more 'open words' now.



Agreeableness seems to be synonymous with religion. I think less conscientious people are basically teenagers. Less neurotic people talk about volleyball at lot?

People who mention anime are more likely to be introverted, less contentious and neurotic. I'm guessing that these people are also teenagers who think  everyone else would feel depressed all the time too if they could just see the way the world was. Thankfully I think everyone grows out of it (personal experience) although it takes some more time than others.

Finally, based on my disinterest in sharing my feelings online and preferring nouns I'm probably male.

29 August 2014

WHY I'M NOT WORRIED ABOUT NET MIGRATION


The way things are going right now it sounds like everyone is worried about net migration figures. A while ago the latest figure was published and the Government is now set to miss it's target of getting net migration under 100,000 by 2015.

Specifically people are worried about low skilled immigration and if UKIP are to be believed most of this immigration is coming from within the EU, specifically Poland. Students are fine (as long as they're paying high tuition fees and thereby covering those of home students) highly paid people who require an employer to sponsor them are fine. Holiday makers are fine. In fact everyone is fine apart from people who are here illegally and low skilled workers.

And should we be worried about low skilled workers? If everything is being done legally then they're just as cheap/expensive as domestic workers and surely a domestic worker would have greater command of the English language and be more able to perform well in interviews, applications etc.

So really the problem is either 1) Illegal working conditions in which people are fudging visas/getting paid below minimum wage 2)Immigrants having greater skills in English or greater ability to work than current domestic workers.

Issue 1 is a problem with border control. Issue 2 is a culture problem which I think is being overblown by the media and encouraged by the welfare system.

So I'm not worried about immigration and I would argue that most people aren't worried about it other. I'd argue that most people are worried about border control more than immigration. Which is why I really don't understand why there's always focus on these net migration figures!

I've been informed it's because there's an overcrowding problem. I disagree. I don't think we have an overcrowding problem. I think we have a regionalisation problem. This is just an extension of the general infrastructure problem that we're having due to London being the only place that is growing. On top of the immigrants are the only thing stabilising our population right now because although it might not feel like it, family sizes are getting smaller and people are living longer. The reason Germany isn't doing as badly as everyone was predicting is in a large part due to the free movement of EU citizens.

Immigration is not the big deal it seems to be. Illegal immigration, yes. But that is not represented in the net migration figures.

15 August 2014

1 August 2014

INTERNING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BUCKINGHAM




(This isn't really a review, more just raising awareness of the University of Buckingham. If anyone reading this was thinking of applying or wanted more information then please feel free to message me.)

After finishing my course at the University of Buckingham in December I was invited back to the economics department as an intern until April. The University had only just got funding for offering such internships so I didn't know much about what I would be doing and it wasn't paid;I was only able to claim back expenses but I knew I wasn't ready to move back home yet so I was happy to take the opportunity.

I interned mostly with Dr.Castañeda looking at optimal currency areas which mostly consisted of collecting data. If I'm honest I didn't work as much as some of the other interns (there were six of us) but I was happy for the work whereas another intern didn't complete the full term and another missed a deadline by quite a large margin.

I learnt a lot about how to use excel and go about research, which you think I would know about already, but there was only one module during my degree in which I had to look up raw data.

The way the work was structured was very flexible and I had to set my own hours and milestones. I was able to do a lot of things in the local area that I didn't have time for during my degree while also being to attend events such as The Freedom Festival. The skills I learnt using various features of excel and databases actually helped me with my next internship too.

In summary, I think if you want to go into research or academia then this would be a useful internship for you. It also allows for more freedom within the University. Two of the interns I worked with have stayed on until the end of July doing some more in-depth projects and both of them are going on to do a master's in October whereas the rest of us decided to move onto other skillsets.

28 July 2014

BOOK REVIEW: 'THE WELFARE STATE WE'RE IN' BY JAMES BARTHOLOMEW

Introduction
This was a recommendation from The Freedom Festival which I attended earlier this year, put on by The Freedom Association. The weekend was packed with lectures and then I was able to meet the author, James Bartholomew, at The Freedom Festival a few months later. Each chapter is dedicated to a different aspect of the welfare state in Britain and explains how provisions were made previous to the welfare state being introduced. It's a great history lesson and shows how each part of the welfare state could actually be provided by the private sector.

Style
Mostly easy to read although at times I felt the opinions of the author really came through, influencing and supporting the data rather than the conclusions being drawn from the data. Bartholomew writes in a conversational style that is easy to follow although at times the sheer amount of data and anecdote made the writing dense by necessity.

Content
Each chapter considered different aspects of the welfare state grouped around a general chapter heading. The chapter is usually introduced through the use of an anecdote which draws you into the chapter by asking you questions like 'What did Catherine of Aragon have to do with the origins of the welfare state'? while also addressing more general questions like 'Do welfare benefits cause unemployment?'

Other topics include the NHS (subtitled: like a train crash every day), Education, Housing, Parenting and Pensions. The last chapter is a very useful summary of the book while also drawing general conclusions over whether we should get rid of the welfare state altogether.

Conclusions
‘The Welfare State We're In’ was exceedingly interesting to read; I vaguely felt that the welfare state needed reforming before reading this but I wasn't at all aware of how much it had taken over from the private sector in previous years. Bartholomew presents data and anecdote together to form an interesting narrative and picture of Britain. I was quite convinced by the picture presented. However, straight after reading this I read Jack London's "The People of the Abyss" in which London goes tramping around the east end of London in 1902; before the welfare state was properly introduced. This made me realise that although Bartholomew is statistically correct when he says that people got along perfectly well before the welfare state London describes people sleeping six to a bed or people sleeping under and above the bed, or doing 'shifts' depending on the work schedule.

In summary: Very interesting book, excellent picture of how the welfare state doesn't need to exist in it's current state but best taken with a pinch of salt and another set of writings from the opposite perspective.

Usefulness
Very useful read if you're studying public sector economics or if you're looking for a solution to the expansion of government.

14 May 2014