Slashdot Mirror
Massive Layoffs Hit University of Copenhagen
jones_supa writes: University of Copenhagen is cutting deep into its staff to cut operation costs. Even though a great deal of the savings are aimed at administration and service, they are expected to affect the quality of education and research many years ahead. More than 500 teachers, researchers and employees in service and administrative jobs will be leaving. This corresponds to 7% of all staff. 209 employees can anticipate being laid off, while 323 jobs are either discontinued or terminated via voluntary redundancy. In addition to this, the university will have to reduce its PhD intake by 10% in the coming years. This is the outcome of the government's 2016 budget which imposes huge savings on research and education. As you might remember, we just heard about a similar situation in University of Helsinki in Finland.
That is cheaper than 14 year in Afghanistan and a decade in Iraq stirring a hornets nest
Europe is not an economy. Some European countries are doing well, others are not.
The economy is just a consensual agreement about things. It is not something like the speed of light or gravity. We choose it. If we can't choose something better, then we deserve to collapse.
Of course, Europe is "an economy", that's the point of the EU: freedom of movement, freedom of goods, and a common currency. And "an economy" is all it is, since it hardly is a common culture, a common language, or common politics.
And no major European countries are "doing well" in any absolute sense; some are just doing less poorly than others. (Minor European countries "do well" mostly as havens for the European elite.)
Well, looking at the facts would change that view on denmark (in schweden your use case could possibly apply)
Numbers for Denmark
Refuges
2,000 (2014)
14,000 (2015)
on a
Population ~5,650,000 (for decimal weak people ~5,65 Million - 5,65*10^6)
which would mean for 2015 a huge 0,25% refugee intake ratio on the population.
Current Situation:
The right wing government with their anti-immigrant action increases the hostility towards imigrants and a bad climate for "progress" in general.
The ageing danes are entering a form of a "solid state society", which is simply wishful thinking because ageing is the progress that breaks the solid state.
People started leaving Denmark(since arround 2010) not because of the many (0,25%) refugees but because of the hostile right wing environment.
(I know nordic nordish danes that now live in germany that simply state: current danish society = narrow minded society = no fun, no progress, no interest in new things)
And the immigrants/refugees in denmark are faced with exclusion and right out xenophobia, leading to a big dependence on wellfare.
Thus generating a negative impact on forgeign investment into the country, now having an impact on the economy. The growing impact on the danish economy is the ageing of the population and with a hostility towards immigrants that won't change - and no the danish people won't start procreating "just because".
Conclusion:
Get a rightwing government and your economy pays the bill. Education isn't the prime directive for a rightwing government, but for a prospering country it is essential.
The Roman Empire was split into Western and Eastern portions in the late 3rd century, with the seat of power for the West being Rome and the seat of the East being Constantinople. The two halves were briefly reunified under Constantine I, but after that they were effectively two separate nations, linked only by history and tradition.
Starting in the mid 4th century, the Western empire was subjected to repeated invasions by Germanic peoples, most violently by the Visigoths and Ostrigoths. In 410, Rome was sacked by Alaric I, King of the Visigoths, and the Western empire was dismantled in 476 when a German mercenary, Odoacer, led an overthrow of Western emperor Romulus Augustus. For nearly two centuries after that, the Italian peninsula was a battlefield between Gothic, Byzantine and Italian forces.
Into the power vacuum stepped the Patriarch of Rome. It is around this time that the Pope assumed the title of Pontifex Maximum, a title held originally by the chief priest of Iupiter and latter held by the Emperors to represent their authority as the gods' divinely annointed representative on earth. It is also around this time that the College of Cardinals begins to take shape, when the now Christianized Collegium Pontificum (originally, an organization made up of the highest ranking priests and priestesses of pagan Rome) and the remnants of the Roman Senate merged and took responsibility over both religious practice and civil law. To this extent, the Catholic Church is, indeed, the inheritor of the Western Empire.