“The Finns don’t even know what prosciutto is”. Thus spoke Italy’s prime minister in 2001, as Helsinki and Parma competed to host the European Safety Food Agency. The following statement caused an uproar among Finland’s media; one of its main dailys even thought it wise to run a mockr full page advertisement in clarification: ‘Prosciutto [...]
Features
The rational approach to Hare Krishna
As Nash did in his time at Princeton, we will discredit widely held economic truths at LSE through reason. Assume ubiquitous queues for Hare Krishna meals. We posit that non-consumption of this well-intentioned and free food makes complete economic – and therefore absolute – sense. It will save time, (widely accepted to be worth money), as [...]
A celebrity of the crisis
I don’t have any journalistic heroes, but if I had to pick one, Gillian Tett would probably be it. Trained as an anthropologist, she came to journalism almost by accident. During her work experience at the Financial Times, revolution broke out in Lithuania and the paper needed a Russian-speaker to cover it. She then [...]
Behaviour and bubbles
What first attracted you to studying at the LSE? I was finishing my undergraduate studies at Harvard and applied for a Marshall Scholarship. Everyone told me to go to the LSE to study with Mervyn King, who ran LSE’s Financial Markets Group back then. Once I was awarded the Marshall Scholarship there was no doubt [...]
Argentinian beef
A re-emerging sovereignty debate The Falklands are back. Facing economic hardship and political unpopularity, Argentina’s president, Crisina Fernandez de Kirchner has brought attention back to Argentina’s claim to sovereignty over las Maldinas, also known as the Falkland Islands. The sovereignty stand-off flared this month as Ocean Guardian, a rig to drill offshore for oil and gas, [...]
Conservative giants
In just a few weeks, the British public will choose the party that is to form Her Majesty’s next Government. While after thirteen years in power, New Labour and Gordon Brown are well-known to voters, David Cameron and his Conservative Party are not. DC (which is what Tory Parliamentarians and activists call him) has been [...]
Measured musings: A virtual right
A recent BBC World Service poll says that four in five people in the world view internet access as a “fundamental” right, with countries like Finland and Estonia having accorded it the status of a human right. Perhaps it is because they can afford to. The construction of a statistic is never an easy task. The [...]
Interview experience: Lord Waheed Alli
Talk of pragmatic change and an end to homophobic discrimination Lord Waheed Alli is not your average peer. He was raised as an Indo-Carribean Muslim, left school at 16, is just 45 and is the only openly gay member of the House of Lords. Despite his outsider credentials, he has been labeled a crony and was [...]
Qaddafi on the world stage
Last week, Ali Aujali, the Libyan ambassador to Washington, clarified remarks made by leader Muammar Qaddafi, who apparently called for an armed holy war against Switzerland in yet another high-profile invective. Aujali told press last week that Qaddafi was, in fact, bidding for an economic boycott when he invoked jihad against the Alpine nation [...]
Cheney versus Palin
The lowdown on the recent elections in the Lone Star State “And he sticks by his guns – and you know how I feel about guns,” wrote Sarah Palin in her letter endorsing Texas Governor Rick Perry for re-election in early 2009. Liberal Texans groaned at the thought of their most despised national politician [...]
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