18/03/2010
North East of England becomes electric car hub
As widely reported in the media today, the UK’s first mass market electric car, the Nissan Leaf, will be built in Sunderland. The move safeguards existing jobs at the plant and creates a number of additional high value jobs in the North East, a Low Carbon Economic Area and an Electric Car Hub. In July […]
12/03/2010
Maintaining JLGC’s ties with INLOGOV
For a long time – pretty much since its inception – JLGC has enjoyed good links with the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham, the oldest and most respected academic department specialising in local government in the country. As one important element in that relationship, the Institute ran a two-week special […]
10/03/2010
The Centre for Remote and Rural Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland has recently published a briefing paper ‘Demographic Change and Retirement Migration in Japan’. The paper can be downloaded here (PDF).
08/03/2010
Last week staff of the Japan Local Government Centre accompanied a delegation of professors from Hokkaido University and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies to the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Local Government Studies (Inlogov), hosted by Dr Peter Watt. Topics discussed included local government finance and the Barnett Formula.
04/03/2010
This week, staff from JLGC went to The Hague and Amsterdam to examine initiatives to support human resources and staff development in local government in the Netherlands. VNG (Vereniging van Nederlandse Gemeententrip), the Association of Netherlands Municipalities directs such projects and has a national strategy to attract citizens into a career in local government, with […]
01/03/2010
Last week, a delegation from JLGC went to Germany. The trip had a number of purposes – one was to look at recent developments in Hamburg. The German ‘city states’ Hamburg, Berlin and Bremen have powers which both Japanese and UK councils can only dream about – under the highly devolved German system they are […]
01/03/2010
JET Alumni Association AGM in Cardiff
On the 20th and 21st of February members of the Japan Local Government Centre attended the annual general meeting of the JET Alumni Association in Cardiff, Wales. The weekend consisted of various sessions during which the JLGC was able to hear all about what JET-AA had been up to over the past year. From the […]
26/02/2010
Japanese investment in UK green technology
Some news concerning Japanese investment in the UK green technology industry. Firstly, Mitsubishi Power Systems Europe has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department for Energy and Climate Change, signalling its intention to invest up to £100m in UK wind turbine R&D projects, with up to 200 highly skilled jobs to be created by […]
25/02/2010
Officers of the Japan Local Government Centre visited Barcelona on 22 and 23 February for the European Summit of Local Governments.
16/02/2010
Officers of the Japan Local Government Centre visited the Irish capital Dublin on 15 February. The purpose of the visit was to meet with the Ireland chapter of the JET Alumni Association, IJET. A description of IJET’s mission from their blog: IJET AA aims to maintain and develop interest in Japan and Japanese culture amongst […]
