Number Crunching
Only time for a (very) brief post this evening, as I’ve been in London all day and got back much later than expected.
In this morning’s Guardian there was a story about how the UK’s banks intend to pay out a whopping £7bn in bonuses this year. Banks. Remember them? They’re the organisations whose behaviour almost brought this country’s economy to its knees a few years ago and needed to be baled out by the taxpayer, at enormous cost to the public purse.
Meanwhile, the Science is Vital campaign is gearing up for Saturday’s rally. An article over on cosmic variance has raised the profile of this increasingly vocal campaign to stave off cuts which threaten to destroy Britain’s position as a leading scientific nation. The petition has now been signed by over 17,000 people (including the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics, announced yesterday).
It’s worth emphasizing the numbers behind this story too. The annual UK science budget, before the next round of cuts, stands at £3.2billion. That’s everything – particle physics, astronomy, chemistry, biosciences, and countless other things.
I need hardly point out the irony. The amount we’re waging an increasingly desperate fight to protect is less than half the amount to be spent on yachts and fancy cars by the people who got us into this mess in the first place. Some of us hoped the financial sector would show some contrition after the disaster of 2007. Fat chance! Their rescue by the taxpayer has probably just convinced them that however they behave they can always rely on Joe Public to get them out of trouble. It seems they’ve reverted to type.
So let’s have no more of the specious arguments about having to cut science in order to avoid having to cut, say, the National Health Service. Science isn’t as expensive as some people would have us believe, and it’s not a luxury either. It’s vital to our economic and cultural well-being. Each pound spend on science is worth a lot more to this country than two disappearing into a banker’s offshore tax haven.
In any case the government should just tax the greedy bankers’ bonus payments and use the money to increase the science budget. Better still, put pressure on the banks to themselves invest in science, alongside other areas of innovation, which we know will generate healthy profits for those brave enough to take a calculated risk, rather than going back to the old game of playing around with dodgy property-based financial speculations, which have a good chance of taking us down the plughole for good.
In the Dark 
October 6, 2010 at 11:35 pm
Couldn’t agree with you more. It should also be pointed out that British science has two of the three science Nobel Prizes in the bag this year – because of research excellence that will not continue if the savage cuts take place.
October 7, 2010 at 9:13 am
Do governments and the general public care about who gets Nobel Prizes? I mean, they aren’t like Olympic gold medals or anything.
October 7, 2010 at 12:02 pm
They’re worth a lot more than the Gold medal for underwater clay fish harpooning or whatever.
On the other hand, the BBC hardly covered the physics Nobel Prize at all, so maybe you’re right.
October 9, 2010 at 7:19 pm
It’s sometimes to get a perspective on these big numbers (although scientists and engineers should be used to big numbers!) but you have done this in a way we can all understand.
Thanks.
October 9, 2010 at 10:53 pm
[…] the US, France, Germany are all increasing spending on science now. While we were willing to spend billions to keep banks afloat, as they were too big to fail, science appears to be something the government may be willing to see […]