Tuesday 28 March 2017

EU referendums 1975 and 2016

With the triggering of Article 50
here is an opportunity to compare the 1975 and 2016 EU referendum campaigns
Launched this week as part of the fab LSE Digital library the Brexit collection which has digitised pamphlets from 1975 and 2016 allowing you to directly compare content, style and rhetoric. You can sort by title, subject or affiliation.

Web archives of the 2016 referendum
the UK webarchive preserved websites 
search the collections to find mentions

A dedicated collection is the UK European Union Membership Referendum webarchive , from the the UCLA Library  which has 46 important "Remain" and "Leave" websites, ranging from environmental and academic grassroots organizations to trade unions and business groups. Also included were the main official websites about the referendum by the United Kingdom government.


How does this compare with 1975?
History and policy has an article from Adrian Williamson in 2015 which sets some issues
The House of Commons Library provides a briefing on the purpose of the 1975 referendum
the UK data archive has a 1975 election study survey which offers insight into voter attitudes.(subscribers)

if you have access to box of broadcasts you can view TV coverage of both the 2016 and 1975 referendum results
British Social Attitudes has been monitoring public changes in opinion since 1983

Good sites for keeping up to date
UK Parliament EU news. includes debates, legisaltion, select committee activity
UK Government Department for Exiting the EUropean Union
European Sources online - free access to this database of reports and articles.
 The Conversation - topical discussuion from UK academic blog
YouGov opinion polls
Links to papers and reports from think tanks posted weekly on our blog





Friday 24 March 2017

European Union - 60 years treaty of Rome- check out these free resources



The EU has been celebrating the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome.
The Treaty of Rome, yis an international agreement that led to the founding of the European Economic Community (EEC) on 1 January 1958. It was signed on 25 March 1957 by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany.

 to mark the occasion it has also been discussing its future.
It also has a special commemorative page where tyou can view EU60 in 60 seconds.

Eurlex - the official EU legal site has a special feature on the Rome Treaty . It includes the full text plus explanations and glossaries of terms.
The EU bookshop has a new publication called the Europe Story with interesting facts and figres which you can download. It also has a selction of free books on European Union history.

 AEI Archive of European Integration
 is a great  electronic repository and archive for research materials on the topic of European integration and unification which has been created by the University of Pittsburgh and provides free aces to thousands of historic documents, reprts and journal articles covering all aspects of history
CVCE à l’Université du Luxembourg has historic materials in French . It has a good section on historic events.

The Historical Archives of the EU are administered by the European University Institute of Florence. Get access to their catalogues and study guides from the website

Wednesday 22 March 2017

What is the link between house prices and schools?




Do houses close to the best performing schools cost more?

Yes according to research released this week by the Department of Education.
According to the report 'The average home in England cost £233,000 in July 2016. If the average home were in an area close to one of the 10% best performing schools, this is holding other factors constant, £15,800 higher when close to one of the bestperforming secondary schools and £18,600higher near the best performing primary schools'

This reiterates earlier reports.

in 2016 Lloyds Bank research found that the parents they surveyed were prepared to pay £53,000 to live near a 'top school'.

In 2015 the Telegraph published a map prepared by Savills which showed where the top schools were causing house prices to rise.


from the LSE Centre for Economic Performance. These are summarised with links on this blog posting.

Sources of House Price data

The UK Land Registry publishes official UK data UK House Price Index

Price Paid dataset

Nationwide House price Index - from leading mortgage supplier.

Halifax House Price Index

Free access to reports on residential property markets from Savills

IMF Global House Price index and housing prices research

Remember those who cannot afford a home

Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has just released the annual 2017 Homeless Monitor for the UK which shows an increase over the last few years.

On a world wide scale consult data from UN Habitat. The most recent World Cities report records a decline in affordable housing and a rise in slum dwellers.





Tuesday 21 March 2017

Where are the world's happiest countries? Research happiness using our free resources

International Day of Happiness is celebrated on the 20th March
the theme for 2017 was

aiming to encourage children to make the world a happier more peaceful place.

Where are the world's happiest places?
World Happiness Report 2017, ranks 155 countries by their happiness levels. It found that Norway is the happiest nation. Download the data and consult the methodology on the website.


How can you measure happiness?
The OECD has discussed methodology (in terms of OECD nations) in a number of its reports.
this includes the very interesting
How Was Life? Global Well-being since 1820 - which covers 25 nations.

Other well known measures include:
  Centre for Bhutan Studies and GNH Research's works on Gross National Happiness. relates to public agendas in Bhutan 


World Database of Happiness research from Rotterdam University has a bibliography and searchable database of more articles and reports on all aspects of the topic of Happiness

Thursday 16 March 2017

National insurance and tax reform- get some academic facts

This week the chancellor Philip Hammond made a statement regarding the cancellation of changes to National insurance payments for the self employed which were announced in the budget 2017.

The UK government website has basic facts on National Insurance system and its categories.
Taxaid charity has basic understandable guides for citizens.

on 10th March 2017. Fact checking organisation fullfact examined economic cliams about the impact of changes to the NI rates

Why was the change necessary? what was the reaction to the original budget?
See comment on the original NI changes from a number of newspapers and pre4sure groups



Federation of Small Businesses
CBI
Institute of Directors
ICAEW .


Research on UK tax reform.


Adam Smith (Free Market think tank)
.