QUB public policy blog

Queen’s University Belfast have just launched a new blog at http://qpol.qub.ac.uk/ (via Muiris MacCarthaigh).

QPol is the ‘front door’ for public policy engagement at Queen’s University Belfast, supporting academics and policymakers in sharing evidence-based research and ideas on the major social, cultural and economic challenges facing us regionally, nationally and beyond.

Our over-arching vision is to share the University’s independent expertise with policymakers so they can make informed decisions about the most effective and sustainable ways to tackle these challenges, now and in the future.

Our mission is to:

Facilitate the provision of independent evidence-based advice, guidance and information to policymakers, ensuring that policy formulation and law-making are informed by world-class research emerging from the University
Ensure Queen’s as it the heart of the public policy discourse, shaping and driving the debate on emerging challenges, helping policymakers to think ‘longer term’ and more strategically about the challenges facing us today
Cultivate and encourage engagement between the academic and the policymaker through effective methods of communication and mutually understandable language
Accelerate the socio-economic impact of research relating to public policy issues at Queen’s and raise awareness of the influence of the University’s research on government policy and legislation
We want to inspire intelligent debate between democratic institutions, academia and wider society in a vast array of policy areas including the economy, public health, social justice and more.

3 replies on “QUB public policy blog”

I posted this on the other thread about the Eurozone. But, it seems possibly more appropriate for a thread on Northern Ireland.

As I predicted on a different thread a few weeks ago, there is mounting evidence that economic growth in Northern Ireland is falling behind that of the Republic of Ireland and the rest of the so-called U. Kingdom.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/news/northern-irelands-recovery-lagging-behind-rest-of-uk-30109408.html

Unemployment is rising and wage increases are negligible.

The main cause is the current very high £sterling exchange rate. This is been driven by the relative strong economic growth in south-east England. But, its having a significantly bad effect on manufacturing, tourism and the retail trade in Northern Ireland.

Clearly, although southern England is booming, the UK’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy is having a significantly bad effect on peripheral UK regions, of which Northern Ireland is the most peripheral (and the poorest). I wonder of this will receive as much attention from the author of this thread (i.e. the thread on the Eurozone) as the alleged bad effect of the Eurozone’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy on its periphery. The only way out for Northern Ireland would appear to be the dissolution of the UK. Hopefully, Nicola Sturgeon’s triumph a week ago will bring this about much sooner than was previously expected.

Comments are closed.