Benjamin Lauderdale
@benlauderdale.bsky.social
Professor of Political Science at University College London
It is also a generational opportunity to squeeze a few hundred million from universities without their best staff fleeing to the US, I guess.
November 24, 2025 at 9:29 AM
It is also a generational opportunity to squeeze a few hundred million from universities without their best staff fleeing to the US, I guess.
Thanks! I do remember you!
November 22, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Thanks! I do remember you!
"Oh no... you cut student events to invest in staff recruitment. The students are protesting, and the noise is reducing research productivity."
November 22, 2025 at 4:35 PM
"Oh no... you cut student events to invest in staff recruitment. The students are protesting, and the noise is reducing research productivity."
Apparently I have not fully recovered from being Head of Department yet, as the thought of playing this game made me slightly ill.
November 22, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Apparently I have not fully recovered from being Head of Department yet, as the thought of playing this game made me slightly ill.
There is a fun revisionist argument to be made that when George Washington declined to be a monarch, that was bad actually. And this derived from the original mistake of focusing the Declaration of Independence on George III, who was not really the driver of the things the colonists objected to.
November 7, 2025 at 7:40 PM
There is a fun revisionist argument to be made that when George Washington declined to be a monarch, that was bad actually. And this derived from the original mistake of focusing the Declaration of Independence on George III, who was not really the driver of the things the colonists objected to.
If you are losing money on every student, fewer students is good, right? All those Home students are crowding out the overseas students! 😉
November 6, 2025 at 12:14 PM
If you are losing money on every student, fewer students is good, right? All those Home students are crowding out the overseas students! 😉
It isn’t arbitrary if they are using more land. Now, one can certainly debate whether that is the right criteria for taxation or not, whether there would be bad effects from such a shift, and also how the valuation would work (eg does it take into account planning permissions? it probably should)
October 10, 2025 at 8:16 AM
It isn’t arbitrary if they are using more land. Now, one can certainly debate whether that is the right criteria for taxation or not, whether there would be bad effects from such a shift, and also how the valuation would work (eg does it take into account planning permissions? it probably should)
There is a transition fairness problem for people who have just paid high SDLT and would be paying high annual LVT, but some partial crediting of recent SDLT against the initial years of the LVT would be a fair transition.
October 9, 2025 at 8:06 PM
There is a transition fairness problem for people who have just paid high SDLT and would be paying high annual LVT, but some partial crediting of recent SDLT against the initial years of the LVT would be a fair transition.
I realise that nothing is ever simple, but wouldn’t replacing Council Tax, Business Rates, and SDLT with a Land Value Tax at a rate that raises similar revenue be a massive improvement on many dimensions?
October 9, 2025 at 8:04 PM
I realise that nothing is ever simple, but wouldn’t replacing Council Tax, Business Rates, and SDLT with a Land Value Tax at a rate that raises similar revenue be a massive improvement on many dimensions?
Greater love hath no man than to ask for an R function to check a matrix for rows with identical elements, however permuted.
October 3, 2025 at 8:31 AM
Greater love hath no man than to ask for an R function to check a matrix for rows with identical elements, however permuted.
My understanding is that HMRC will not let an employer do this.
September 22, 2025 at 11:24 AM
My understanding is that HMRC will not let an employer do this.
That said, there is still the timing problem: you can’t pay people until they have secured right to work.
September 22, 2025 at 10:38 AM
That said, there is still the timing problem: you can’t pay people until they have secured right to work.
These fees are not eligible to be reimbursed as expenses, they have to be paid (post-tax) by the applicant. UCL gives people relocating from abroad a taxable relocation supplement to cover this: www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resour...
Relocation Scheme
Support and benefits for staff relocating.
www.ucl.ac.uk
September 22, 2025 at 10:32 AM
These fees are not eligible to be reimbursed as expenses, they have to be paid (post-tax) by the applicant. UCL gives people relocating from abroad a taxable relocation supplement to cover this: www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resour...
Vive La France!
September 5, 2025 at 7:28 AM
Vive La France!
Analogously, if you want research assistants to code some data for you from some texts that purports to measure some feature of the texts, you don’t get to cite that someone once successfully used RAs to code data for them, you have to validate it for your application.
August 9, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Analogously, if you want research assistants to code some data for you from some texts that purports to measure some feature of the texts, you don’t get to cite that someone once successfully used RAs to code data for them, you have to validate it for your application.
This issue goes way back, I wrote a blog post in 2018 about this with respect to Brexit, referencing TARP in 2008. Markets are not suited to provide informative political signals about the merits of policy: benjaminlauderdale.net/blog/archive...
You cannot trick financial markets into solving your political problem if you tell the markets that this is the plan. : benjaminlauderdale.net
benjaminlauderdale.net
July 15, 2025 at 9:01 PM
This issue goes way back, I wrote a blog post in 2018 about this with respect to Brexit, referencing TARP in 2008. Markets are not suited to provide informative political signals about the merits of policy: benjaminlauderdale.net/blog/archive...
Is it the year of Linux on the desktop yet?
June 12, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Is it the year of Linux on the desktop yet?
When we had this visit many years ago they asked us “isn’t this a great form?” and it is a miracle that neither of us said anything impolite. Maybe you are supposed to frame it?
June 6, 2025 at 9:38 AM
When we had this visit many years ago they asked us “isn’t this a great form?” and it is a miracle that neither of us said anything impolite. Maybe you are supposed to frame it?
Well, not the whole show, the Dambusters Dog Prize section will also be pretty substantial.
May 10, 2025 at 9:09 AM
Well, not the whole show, the Dambusters Dog Prize section will also be pretty substantial.
I will once again suggest en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operati... (if you want to have that segment of the show become the entire show).
Operation Petticoat - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
May 10, 2025 at 9:07 AM
I will once again suggest en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operati... (if you want to have that segment of the show become the entire show).
Had just tapped through to make this joke when I saw Andy’s reply.
May 4, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Had just tapped through to make this joke when I saw Andy’s reply.
My solution to this constrained optimisation problem is to focus on generating lots of true and novel trivialities. Maybe some day they will add up to something? Maybe not. Other strategies are available.
March 27, 2025 at 9:20 PM
My solution to this constrained optimisation problem is to focus on generating lots of true and novel trivialities. Maybe some day they will add up to something? Maybe not. Other strategies are available.