Attracting and retraining talent: lessons for Scottish policy makers from the experiences of scottish expatriates in Dublin

With a view to contributing research of value to the Fresh Talent Scotland Initiative, this research project has been devised with specific reference to the first of the three goals noted above. Specifically, it is concerned with gaining insights into why talented individuals leave Scotland in the first instance, and thereafter to ascertain whether anything might be done to both stem the outflow and lure back to Scotland some of its most talented diasporeans. Such a goal in turn begets, it will be argued, greater insights into the actual experiences of contemporary diasporeans in the run up to migration and whilst in exile. Using one emerging magnet for Scottish expatriates as a case study, the Republic of Ireland and more specifically Dublin, the project seeks to examine the embroilment of skilled Scottish expatriates in the so called Celtic Tiger phenomenon. The basic purpose of this report is to present insights into the decision making processes that have led migrants to leave Scotland and to move to Dublin, to gain an appreciation of what life has been like for expatriates living in Dublin and what Scotland might learn from these experiences, and finally to review future locational preferences with a view to establishing whether a return to Scotland may be a possibility

Third way urban policy and the new moral politics of community: a comparative analysis of Ballymun in Dublin and the Gorbals in Glasgow

Whilst Third Way Urban Policy (TWUP) often associates itself with a kind of anarchic vision of self-regulating and self-reproducing local communities, it can in fact be thought of as a thinly veiled moral crusade targeted towards vulnerable residents in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Sustainable communities are defined as those who can stand on their own two feet within the terms set down by neo-liberal market economics. When these morally charged crusades fail to connect locally, they have the potential to stir local conflict over who has the authority to judge forms of community life. As third way urban regeneration rolls out across capitalist cities, mapping and accounting for the uneven development of moral conflicts over community is a pressing concern. Focusing upon the ongoing regeneration of two of Europe's most famous social housing estates- Ballymun in north Dublin and the Gorbals in central Glasgow - this paper presents a comparative analysis of the different ways in which moral disputes over community have surfaced in these two neighbourhoods. On the bases of an analyses of both the localisation of TWUP and the prior biographies of both estates, the nature of conflict is shown to be contingent upon who has ownership of the local social capital agenda

Power, discourse and city trajectories

Examines social theory and contemporary human geography in the context of urban development. Covers theoretical debates in political ecology, the cultural turn in the economy, social relations and scale, space and place, and colonialism and post-colonialism

Sticky Stories, Fluid Narratives, or Vanishing Tales: The Fate of 'Nations' in a Globalised World

A main preoccupation within Political Geography has been conflict between nation states. Conflating the notions of 'nation' and 'state', research has tended to focus upon disputes between 'actually existing' sovereign states over territory, borders, ideologies, and resources. In the face of current world events such a focus is surely still of crucial importance. As I write (August 2002), Afghanistan continues to struggle to recover from the 'war on terror' waged by the United States and its allies. Meanwhile, the world holds its breath as George Bush promises to continue this war until there is a 'regime' change in Iraq. All of this is, of course, taking place against the backdrop of the ongoing and bloody feud between Israel and Palestinian resistance movements. Elsewhere, the face off between the India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, simmers on; Russia and Chechynan rebel groups continue to clash; the uneasy peace in Northern Ireland stumbles along on a knife edge; and Nepal and Tibet persist in promoting their claims to sovereignty in spite of dire threats from China. One could go on

Property, politics and the neo-liberal revolution in urban Scotland

This paper is written in the context of current debates about the extent to which business coalitions are shaping the political agendas of the contemporary city. With a growing critique of the use of North American frameworks as a basis for the interpretation of business politics in the British city, we make a contribution towards the development of a more theoretically informed account of capital’s involvement in local politics in Britain. Our research design takes analysis beyond the confines of what we term a ‘state-centred perspective’ insofar as we focus on the political behaviour of one key fraction of capital, property, in a range of urban areas in one political system, Scotland. Through the first survey to be conducted in Scotland of the political activities of property agents, the paper draws out conclusions about the extent to which new forms of neo-liberal urban governance are serving to construct an environment within which contemporary property politics are being played out. Our results point to a politically engaged fraction of capital but one which is largely oblivious to the changes in governance taking place around them. In an effort to further understanding property politics, we conclude that more attention needs to be given to capital and its trajectories. In calling for an epistemological shift towards a capital-centred perspective, we conclude that an understanding of property politics might profitably draw upon both a rehabilitated version of neo-Marxist frameworks and more recent institutional perspectives

Property, politics and the neo-liberal revolution in urban Scotland

This paper is written in the context of current debates about the extent to which business coalitions are shaping the political agendas of the contemporary city. With a growing critique of the use of North American frameworks as a basis for the interpretation of business politics in the British city, we make a contribution towards the development of a more theoretically informed account of capital’s involvement in local politics in Britain. Our research design takes analysis beyond the confines of what we term a ‘state-centred perspective’ insofar as we focus on the political behaviour of one key fraction of capital, property, in a range of urban areas in one political system, Scotland. Through the first survey to be conducted in Scotland of the political activities of property agents, the paper draws out conclusions about the extent to which new forms of neo-liberal urban governance are serving to construct an environment within which contemporary property politics are being played out. Our results point to a politically engaged fraction of capital but one which is largely oblivious to the changes in governance taking place around them. In an effort to further understanding property politics, we conclude that more attention needs to be given to capital and its trajectories. In calling for an epistemological shift towards a capital-centred perspective, we conclude that an understanding of property politics might profitably draw upon both a rehabilitated version of neo-Marxist frameworks and more recent institutional perspectives

Accurate gravitational waveforms for binary-black-hole mergers with nearly extremal spins

Motivated by the possibility of observing gravitational waves from merging black holes whose spins are nearly extremal (i.e., 1 in dimensionless units), we present numerical waveforms from simulations of merging black holes with the highest spins simulated to date: (1) a 25.5-orbit inspiral, merger, and ringdown of two holes with equal masses and spins of magnitude 0.97 aligned with the orbital angular momentum; and (2) a previously reported 12.5-orbit inspiral, merger, and ringdown of two holes with equal masses and spins of magnitude 0.95 anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum. First, we consider the horizon mass and spin evolution of the new aligned-spin simulation. During the inspiral, the horizon area and spin evolve in remarkably close agreement with Alvi's analytic predictions, and the remnant hole's final spin agrees reasonably well with several analytic predictions. We also find that the total energy emitted by a real astrophysical system with these parameters---almost all of which is radiated during the time included in this simulation---would be 10.952% of the initial mass at infinite separation. Second, we consider the gravitational waveforms for both simulations. After estimating their uncertainties, we compare the waveforms to several post-Newtonian approximants, finding significant disagreement well before merger, although the phase of the TaylorT4 approximant happens to agree remarkably well with the numerical prediction in the aligned-spin case. We find that the post-Newtonian waveforms have sufficient uncertainty that hybridized waveforms will require far longer numerical simulations (in the absence of improved post-Newtonian waveforms) for accurate parameter estimation of low-mass binary systems.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravit

Analyzing Farm Layout and Farmstead Architecture

This article refines the analysis through a discussion of how arhcaeological data recovered from individual farmstead ites were incorporated into the GIS database