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Das Kapital

Posted in Science Politics with tags Comprehensive Spending Review, ESO, STFC on October 29, 2010 by telescoper

After a short-lived burst of optimism following the announcement of the better-than-expected results of the Comprehensive Spending Review for science funding, it seems levels of nervousness are again increasing about what might lie in store for the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

It appears the “near-cash” funding for RCUK, the umbrella organisation that sits above the seven Research Councils will be fixed over the period of the CSR but, within that overall pot, the Medical Research Council (MRC) will have its funding stream protected in real terms, meaning the others will be have to be reduced in real terms. How the pie will be divided up remains to be seen, but I believe there is some pretty tough negotiating going on behind the scenes right now. RCUK chief Adrian Smith has apparently been given detailed instructions by the Treasury on how to carry out the budget allocations, but I haven’t seen the manual…

However, this is only part of the story. The other part, as the e-astronomer has already pointed out, is rather scary. As well as “near-cash” funding, the Research Councils also receive funds marked “capital”. I’m not an accounting expert, but I’m told this is all pretty normal practice for large organisations. What has emerged recently is that the capital part of the RCUK budget is to be cut by a whopping 44%. A rumour is spreading that STFC has been told to expect at least a 30% cut in capital funding and instructed to budget accordingly.

This could herald a return of the nightmare scenario I blogged about not long ago. The point is that, owing to the nature of STFC, a very large part of its budget is tied up in the capital stream. In fact it’s even worse than you might imagine because large international subscriptions, including CERN and ESO, are currently paid for, at least in part, out of STFC’s capital budget. According to the journal Nature,

That money pays for everything from radio telescopes to Antarctic research stations. In particular, the cuts will hit the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which funds particle physics and astronomy. The council, which has struggled financially for years, has been told to prepare for its capital funding to fall by a third, according to documents seen by Nature. That could jeopardize Britain’s participation in organizations such as the European Southern Observatory.

Another factor that adds to the vulnerability of our ESO membership is the longrunning saga of the VISTA telescope. When the UK joined ESO (in 2002), this telescope – which hadn’t been built then – was put up as an “in kind” contribution to the UK’s joining fee. However, VISTA wasn’t actually handed over to ESO until December 2009, significantly behind schedule and it is still undergoing performance verification. In principle, ESO could require the UK to pay a substantial fine for the late delivery and it is STFC that would have to find the funds. I don’t know what the precise fine would be, but I’ve heard figures from £16M to about twice that.

Although Science Minister David Willetts is on record as saying that he was not planning to withdraw from any European collaborations, including ESO, the VISTA debacle may force his hand if it means the cost of continuing membership exceeds the penalties for withdrawal.

Withdrawing from ESO would destroy a huge part of the UK’s ground-based astronomy activity, as we have already withdrawn from (or are planning to withdraw from) most other facilities we used to have access to. It would also damage our credibility as international scientific partners in a more general sense. But if it isn’t ESO that gets chopped it will be something else. It’s difficult to see how STFC can cope with this cut without something going to the wall.

The Royal Astronomical Society has written to Fellows requesting that they write to their MPs to point out the consequences of drastic cuts to STFC’s budget, citing withdrawal from ESO as one possible outcome.

There’s no doubt about it, it’s brown trousers time.

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Engineering a Conflict

Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags Colin MacIlwain, Engineering, Particle Physics, Science on October 25, 2010 by telescoper

I don’t have time to post much today so I thought I’d just put up a quick item about something that the e-astronomer (aka Andy Lawrence) has already blogged about, and generated a considerable amount of discussion about so I’ll just chip in with my two-penny-worth.

Some time ago I posted an item explaining how, in the run-up to last week’s Comprehensive Spending Review, the Royal Academy of Engineering had argued, in a letter to the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), that government research funding should be

… concentrated on activities from which a contribution to the economy, within the short to medium term, is foreseeable. I recognise that this calls for significant changes in practice but I see no alternative in the next decade. This may mean disinvesting in some areas in order properly to invest in others.

They went on to say that

BIS should also consider the productivity of investment by discipline and then sub-discipline. Once the cost of facilities is taken into account it is evident that ‘Physics and Maths’ receive several times more expenditure per research active academic compared to those in ‘Engineering and Technology’. This ratio becomes significantly more extreme if the comparison is made between particle physics researchers and those in engineering and technology. Much of particle physics work is carried out at CERN and other overseas facilities and therefore makes a lower contribution to the intellectual infrastructure of the UK compared to other disciplines. Additionally, although particle physics research is important it makes only a modest contribution to the most important challenges facing society today, as compared with engineering and technology where almost all the research is directly or indirectly relevant to wealth creation.

I had hoped that this unseemly attack on particle physics would have been seen for what it was and would have faded into the background, but a recent article by Colin Macilwain has brought it back into the spotlight. I quote

UK engineers have started a scrap that will grow uglier as the spending cuts begin.

I should add that MacIlwain isn’t particularly supportive of the engineers’ position, but he does make some interesting remarks on the comparitively low status held by engineers in the United Kingdom compared to other countries, a point alsotaken up on Andy Lawrence’s blog. In my opinion this bare-faced attempt to feather their own nest at the expense of fundamental physics isn’t likely to generate many new admirers. Neither is the fact – and this is a point I’ve tried to make before – that the engineers’ argument simply doesn’t hold any water in the first place.

The point they are trying to make is that research in engineering is more likely to lead to rapid commercial exploitation than research in particle physics. That may be true, but it’s not a good argument for the government to increase the amount of research funding. If engineering and applied science really is “near market” in the way that the RAEng asserts, then it shouldn’t need research grants, but should instead be supported by venture capital or direct investment from industry. The financial acumen likely to be available from such investors will be much for useful for the commercial exploitation of any inventions or discoveries than a government-run research council. To be fair, as MacIlwain’s article explains, a large fraction of engineering research (perhaps 75%) is funded by commerce and industry. Moreover some engineering research is also too speculative for the market to touch and therefore does merits state support. However, that part that needs state support needs it for precisely the same reason that particle physics does, i.e. that its potential is long-term rather than short term. This means that is in the same boat as fundamental physics and shouldn’t keep pretending that it isn’t. If engineering research needs government funding then ipso facto it’s not likely to generate profits in the short term.

I think scientists and engineers would all be better off if they worked together to emphasize the amazingly successful links between fundamental physics and technology, as demonstrated by, e.g., the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the mutual interdependence of their disciplines.

United we stand, and all that…

10 Comments »

The Day After: A Welsh Perspective

Posted in Education, Politics, Science Politics with tags Cardiff University, CSR, education, HEFCE, HEFCW, Physics, Universities, Wales on October 21, 2010 by telescoper

It’s well after 11am and I’m still at home. Came down last night with some sort of bug that kept me awake nearly all night with frequent visits to the smallest room in the house. Whatever it is is still rumbling on so I’ve decided to stay at home until I give myself the all clear.

This sudden attack of lurgy is probably not connected with yesterday’s dramatic announcements of the results of the comprehensive spending review, which are now being dissected and analysed all over the mainstream press, the blogosphere, and countless common rooms around the country.

I haven’t got the energy right now to go over the ramifications in detail, but encourage you to read the whole thing, which is available in a nifty online reader for your perusal. I will, however, make a few brief comments, with particular emphasis on the situation here in Wales.

First, the announcement of large cuts to the teaching budget administered by HEFCE has clearly sent shockwaves through academia. It appears that only STEM subjects will continue to receive the state contribution and in future students will have to bear the full cost of tuition (but only after they’ve graduated and started to earn over the threshold of £21K). As a supporter of the Science is Vital campaign I was relieved that we seem to won a victory, although the war is far from over. However, I feel great sadness at the cost that our success seems likely to inflict on other disciplines. If you think these are nervous times for scientists, imagine what it must be like working in the Arts and Humanities.

Of course this all applies directly only to English universities: the budgets for Higher Education in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are administered separately, so in principle things could work out very differently for Higher Education here in Wales.

However, the total amount of money available for the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) to spend is fixed by the Westminster government through the Barnett Formula. This determines the overall cash for the devolved governments by allocating a proportion of what England spends on those things that are devolved., i.e. Wales is notionally allocated an amount for Higher Education which is proportional to HEFCE’s allocation and similar for other areas of spending such as Health. Once the size of the overall pot is fixed, however, the WAG is not obliged to spend its money in the same way that England does.

Buried in the pages of the CSR document is Wales’ allocation over the CSR period, which shows real terms cut of about 7.5% over the term. However, the Welsh Assembly Government’s reaction puts it rather differently:

In real terms, our total Budget is set to fall by around 3.1% per year on average, or 12% in total over the coming four years. This means that our Budget in 2014/15 will be £1.8bn lower in real terms than it is this year. Overall, in cash terms the reductions to our Budget will be 3% over the period.

Our capital Budget has been hit particularly hard, and will be cut by 40% in real terms – 34% in cash terms – over the next four years. This substantial reduction, particularly next year, where the cut is more than 25% in real terms, will clearly have a major impact on the private as well as the public sectors.

These figures seem different from those in the CSR document, which might be because of some nuance such as the way capital expenditure is accounted. If anyone can explain the discrepancy through the comments box I’d be grateful.

The main point is, though, that if Wales is going to keep current levels of investment in Higher Education (or even cut less than the English are doing) then it will have to take the money from elsewhere, which is not going to be easy to get through the Welsh Assembly. The picture, therefore, may not be any better here in Wales than it is in England, and could well turn out even worse, depending on how the WAG sets its own spending priorities. To complicate matters further, there’s an election next year for the Welsh Assembly, so there’s a wider political perspective to consider.

Within the overall issue of Higher Education spending is the question of whether Wales will decide to protect funding for STEM disciplines at the expense of all others. The WAG has already produced a document that suggests a strong focus on the so-called regional agenda, which may mean more money going into Further Education, vocational training, and part-time studies rather than, say, research-led science. I know what I would prefer, but whatever I say, it’s the WAG’s decisions that really count. And so it should be. After all, unlike me, they were elected!

Of course, if STEM subjects aren’t protected in Wales, those of us working in those areas are likely to lose even more ground to English universities, which already out-perform us in many respects. We have to make our case as best we can and see what happens.

However, I will end with some more local news which is extremely promising. Yesterday we had a staff meeting in the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University during which two extremely positive items came to light. One is that we will shortly be interviewing for the extra physics posts we advertised some time ago. Hopefully there will be a new Professor and three new Lecturers joining the staff in the very near future. I’m told we had a huge number of applicants for these positions, and the shortlists for these positions are very strong indeed. This is all very encouraging.

On top of this there is another exciting development on the horizon. After the disappointing outcome of the last RAE for physics in Wales, we have been thinking very hard at working closer with colleagues at Swansea with a view to building a sort of South Wales Physics Alliance. The departments are complementary in many ways: Swansea does particle physics, but Cardiff doesn’t; Cardiff does astronomy, but Swansea doesn’t. Where we are both relatively weak is in so-called “mainstream” physics, which is in the minority in both departments. With a bit of help, I think these two small(ish) departments could form a research institute that really challenges our competitors abroad (especially in England). I’m strongly in favour of this plan, and hope it goes ahead with full HEFCW support (including extra cash), but in this as in some many things, it’s a case of “fingers crossed”.

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The Great Escape? Not yet.

Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags astronomy, Particle Physics, RCUK, Science funding, Science is Vital, STFC on October 20, 2010 by telescoper

I expected to wake up this morning with the blues all round my bed, about the results of the Comprehensive Spending Review about to be announced today, but news appearing in the Guardian and the BBC websites last night suggested that the UK Science budget may, repeat may, be spared the worst of the cuts.

This news has been greeted with euphoria in the science community, as we were expecting much worse than the settlement suggested by the news. The RCUK budget, it seems, will be fixed in cash terms around £3.5 billion per annum for four years, as will the approximately £1bn distributed for research through HEFCE’s QR mechanism. This translates into a real terms cut that depends on what figure you pick for inflation over this period. The Treasury suggests it will corresponding to a 10% reduction figured that way, but inflation has defied predictions and remained higher than expected over the past three years so things could be different. Also important to note is that this budget (amounting to around £4.6 billion) is to be ring-fenced within RCUK.

So why the apparent change of heart? Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think the Science is Vital campaign played a very big part in this. Huge congratulations are due to Jenny Rohn and the rest of the team for doing such a fantastic job. The Guardian makes this clear, stating that science is usually a non-issue for the Treasury, but this time it was

high on the political radar because strong representations have been made by the scientific community about what they have described as “long term and irreversible” damage to the UK economy if there are deep cuts to research funding.

That means everyone who wrote to their MP or lobbied or went on the demo really did make a difference. Give yourselves a collective pat on the back!

BUT (and it’s a very big BUT) we’re by no means out of the woods yet, at least not those of us who work in astronomy and particle physics. As the BBC article makes clear, the level cash settlement for RCUK comes with an instruction that “wealth creation” be prioritised. The budget for RCUK covers all the research councils, who will now have to make their pitch to RCUK for a share of the pie. It’s unlikely that it will be flat cash for everyone. There will be winners and losers, and there’s no prize for guessing who the likely losers are.

The performance of the STFC Executive during the last CSR should also be born in mind. STFC did very poorly then at a time when the overall funding allocation for science was relatively generous, and precipitated a financial crisis that STFC’s management still hasn’t properly come to grips with. The track-record doesn’t inspire me with confidence. Moreover, at a town meeting in London in December 2007 at which the Chief Executive of STFC presented a so-called delivery plan to deal with the crisis he led his organisation into, he confidently predicted a similarly poor settlement in the next CSR. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s hope they get their act together better this time.

Taking all this together it remains by no means improbable that the STFC budget could be squeezed until the pips squeak in order to liberate funds to spend elsewhere within RCUK on things that look more likely to generate profits quickly. The nightmare scenario I mentioned a few days ago is still on the cards.

As we all know, STFC’s budget is dominated by large fixed items so its science programme is especially vulnerable. As the BBC puts it

So any cut in [STFC’s] budget will be greatly magnified and it is expected that it will have to withdraw from a major programme. Alternatively, it would have to cutback or close one of its research institutes.

We could have to wait until December to find out the STFC budget, so the anxiety is by no means over. However, the ring-fencing of RCUK’s budget within BIS may bring that forward a bit as it would appear to suggest one level of negotations could be skipped. We might learn our fate sooner than we thought.

Overall, this is a good result in the circumstances. Although it’s a sad state of affairs when a >10% real terms cut is presented as a success, it’s far less bad than many of us had expected. But I think STFC science remains in grave danger. It’s not an escape, just a stay of execution.

But there is one important lesson to be learned from this. When the STFC crisis broke three years ago, reaction amongst scientists was muted. Fearful of rocking the boat, we sat on our hands as the crisis worsened. I hope that the success of the Science is Vital campaign has convinced you that keeping quiet and not making a fuss is exactly the wrong thing to do.

If only we’d been braver three years ago.

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Astronomy Cuts Rumour Mill

Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags BIS, cuts, funding, RCUK, STFC on October 18, 2010 by telescoper

Following on from my recent post of the STFC budget, and the comments thereon, I thought it might be useful to make the discussion a bit more prominent as the scale of the cuts is revealed this week and people feel the consequent need to work off nervous energy.

To get things started I’ve taken the liberty of paraphrasing some of Paul Crowther‘s comments (in italics):

\begin{paraphrase}

More or less 20% of the total STFC budget shifts across to UKSA from April 2011. This means the STFC budget will reduce from around £570m to around £455m even if the settlement is flat-cash. Grants for space science exploitation remain the responsibility of STFC even after the transfer of the other space activity to UKSA.

George Osborne has announced that ‘infrastructure’ cash from LFCF (Capital Fund) will go towards an upgrade of the Diamond light source. This is a different pot of money from individual Research Councils, but still part of the overall RCUK budget. The Drayson plan for STFC was always to separate Harwell operations (Diamond, ISIS, CLF) from the rest of STFC programmes, so support for Diamond upgrade is likely to come with operations cash too.

Putting these two items together, the STFC allocation will shrink and some of the remaining cash is going to be ring-fenced for Diamond operations. Assuming that the overall RCUK budget falls by 20% in near-cash terms and 50% in capital on Wednesday 20th and STFC not do worse than “average” across the RCUK portfolio, the cash+capital for the rest of the non-UKSA programme at STFC would fall by 25% or so, i.e. approx £100 million pounds less to spend per annum than at present.

In practice this might mean..

…Mothballing ISIS + CLF (£35m) AND withdrawing from ESO (£30m) AND cancelling all PP grants (£24m) AND stopping all accelerator R& D (£8m)…

… or some other equally hideous combination of items in the spreadsheet.

\end{paraphrase}

In other words this really would be “game over” for large parts of STFC science. Even if the cuts are at the level of 15%, which is apparently what the word on the street is saying, then there are still going to be extremely hard choices.

One nightmare possibility is that STFC not only cuts back on new research grants – as it has already done by approximately 40% over the past three years – but actually decides to claw back grants it has already issued. If this happens at the same time as the Treasury slashes HEFCE’s support for research through the QR element then many physics departments will go under very quickly, as they will no longer be even remotely viable financially.

We’re on the brink…

23 Comments »

Science is Vital – the Video

Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags Science is Vital on October 18, 2010 by telescoper

A comment on my earlier post about the Science is Vital rally on 9th October included this video of the occasion. Actually it’s more a series of stills than a proper video, but if you look very closely around 39 seconds in you’ll see me lurking among the ~~ill-disciplined rabble~~ well-behaved demonstrators seeking to ~~overthrow the state~~ argue the case for science ~~and bring about the collapse of global capitalism~~ and try to dissuade the Treasury from huge cuts to the budget for research.

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Thatcher’s Final Victory?

Posted in History, Politics, Science Politics with tags Comprehensive Spending Review, Golgafrincham, Margaret Thatcher, Winter of Discontent on October 16, 2010 by telescoper

Next Wednesday (20th October) we will hear the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review, and what it means for the scale of the cuts to UK public spending in each of the government departments. After that the detailed breakdown of cuts within each Ministry will gradually be revealed. Some news has already leaked out, of course. The Browne Report published last week almost certainly heralds huge cuts in the state subsidy to the UK University sector, with the cost of Higher Education consequently shifting from the taxpayer to the student. On top of that, and despite the best efforts of the Science is Vital campaign, it seems highly likely that there will be a steep decrease in investment in scientific research – both through the Research Councils and through the research component of Higher Education funding. On the other hand, the defence budget appears to have been spared the worst of the hatchet, with the Trident nuclear submarine programme set to go ahead (with a price tag around £25 billion) and two new aircraft carriers to be built at a cost of £5.5 billion (although it is not clear there will actually be any aircraft to operate from them).

Obviously, knowledge and learning are less important to the future of this country than the ability to fight pointless wars against invented enemies. Morover, we already spend more than most competitor economies on defence as a fraction of GDP, and less on universities and science. How did we end up with such distorted priorities?

On top of these cuts we have to contend with a draconian cap on immigration. New restrictions on visas for non-EU citizens will make it much harder for British universities to recruit overseas students and staff. The new rules give exemptions only to those coming to the UK to take up highly paid jobs, such as professional footballers. Postdoctoral researchers and university lecturers don’t get paid enough to register as economically relevant, so many fewer will be able to enter this country. While these restrictions may satisfy xenophobic Daily Mail readers, they promise to damage the University sector almost as much as the funding cuts, as a significant fraction of the best staff in UK science departments are from outside the EU (including the two winners of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics).

All this sounds depressingly familiar to those of us who lived through the various Thatcher governments and their successors. In fact, looking at the following graph (which I nicked from Andy Lawrence’s blog, but which comes from a document produced by the Royal Society) you’ll see the steady reduction in science investment under previous Conservative governments

I know I’m not alone in interpreting these cuts as not being about the need to secure the country’s finances. The UK’s public debt as a fraction of GDP is rising, of course, and something needs to be done about it. But this graph shows the actual situation:

Serious? Yes, but not sufficient to justify the carnage we’re about to experience.

What is going on is that the parlous state of the UK’s finances is being used as a pretext to resume the Thatcherite attack on the welfare state through a campaign of privatisations and closures so that wealthy Tory voters can get richer at the expense of ordinary working people.

No doubt there will be people reading this who really think that cutting back state expenditure is a good thing, and even I agree with that to some extent. However, there is a part of Thatcher’s legacy that is actually the root of the problem and it represents a fundamental inconsistency of the Thatcher project. Unless it is tackled, the cut-and-burn route will not lead to a sustainable economy, but will take this country into inexorable decline.

The nub of the matter is the Invasion of the Bean Counters into every aspect of public life. The breakdown of trust between government and the public sector that ushered in Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the 1979 General Election has led to a huge increase in red tape involved in the assessment, regulation and general suffocation of public services. As the Thatcher project continued through John Major’s, and, yes, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments (Blair was undoubtedly a Thatcherite) any rises in public spending went not into providing better services but in a vast and unwieldly machinery of regulation. Now it matters less whether the public sector does things well. What matters is that they tick the boxes imposed by civil service mandarins. This mentality has led to a proliferation of overpaid administrators in the National Health Service, schools are hamstrung by the rigid constraints of the National Curriculum, the Police spend more time filling in forms than they do investigating crime, and the number of staff employed in university administration has increased at the expense of teaching and learning.

You might say that this is all the fault of New Labour, but I don’t think that’s right; the suffocation of the UK’s public sector began with Thatcher and it began as a direct result of the Winter of Discontent (a re-run of which seems eminently possible). The reason why a succession of right-wing governments have failed to get a grip on public spending is that they’ve all been run by control freaks and have pumped money into wasteful self-serving bureaucracies.

Britain has turned into a version of Golgafrincham, with the “useless third” now in the position of wielding the axe over those few remaining things in the UK which are actually pretty good.

Apparently, Margaret Thatcher is not in very good health and may not live much longer. I won’t mourn her passing. In Thatcher’s time in office, this country took giant steps towards becoming a police state. She encouraged xenophobia and intolerance, and spawned the generation of small-minded money-grabbing lizards who now occupy the Government benches. As Britain turns into a wilderness of cashable things once more, it looks like she might be set for her final victory.

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Has your MP signed EDM 767?

Posted in Politics, Science Politics with tags Early Day Motion, Science is Vital on October 15, 2010 by telescoper

One of the interesting curiosities of the British parliamentary system is the Early Day Motion (EDM), which is a brief motion to be debated at an unspecified date in the future. Few of them ever get debated and they remain open for signature throughout a parliamentary session.

Early Day Motion 767 relates to the Science is Vital Campaign. It was tabled on 16th September 2010 and the text is as follows:

That this House notes the UK’s proud history of excellence in science and engineering, whereby it produces over 10 per cent. of global scientific output with just one per cent. of global population; believes that continued investment in research is vital in order to meet the technological and social challenges of the 21st century, and to continue to attract high-tech industries to invest in the UK; further believes that large cuts to science funding are a false economy, due to evidence that research investment fuels economic growth; further notes the increased investment in science by the UK’s international competitors, such as the USA, France and Germany; further believes that investment in research and development is vital to help rebalancethe economy towards hi-tech manufacturing and away from over-reliance on financial services; recognises the work of the Science is Vital coalition and the Campaign for Science and Engineering in arguing that the UK should seek to retain its role as a world leader in these fields; and calls on the Government to safeguard the UK’s scientific excellence by providing a research investment strategy which builds on the success of UK science and engineering.

(The rules require that at EDM be a single sentence, but often, as in this case, the sentences are somewhat lengthy.)

It was tabled by Julian Hippert, and has so far attracted 81 signatures, which is good going for such things. The following MPs have signed EDM 767.

Is yours among them?

If not, I think you know what to do….

UPDATE: The following 11 have signed since yesterday:

Meale, Alan
Brake, Tom
Brooke, Annette
Brown, Russell
Dowd, Jim
Main, Anne
O’Donnell, Fiona
Blomfield, Paul
Sarwar, Anas
Vaz, Valerie
Dakin, Nic

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STFC Budget 2010-11

Posted in Finance, Science Politics with tags astronomy, Particle Physics, STFC on October 14, 2010 by telescoper

Just a quick post to point out that the Science and Technology Facilities Council have released a reasonably complete breakdown of their current budget. I’m sure many readers working in astronomy and particle physics will find it interesting reading, though others will probably find it incredibly boring.

Here it is, for easy reference, in bits, generated by a clumsy cut-and-paste-technique wholly unbefitting the hi-tech nature of STFC, starting with the PPAN Programme:

and now the rest

For those of you not up with the accounting lingo, “near cash” means assets investments and other things that could in principle be exchanged for cash in a relatively short period of time.

These are, of course, the figures before the impending cuts take place….

There’s a much more legible version of the whole thing here.

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Science (still) is Vital

Posted in Politics, Science Politics with tags Ben Goldacre, Evan Harris, Science is Vital on October 9, 2010 by telescoper

Just back from the Science is Vital rally in Whitehall, which was attended by an estimated 2000 people. I’m actually pretty tired after a late night in town following yesterday’s Royal Astronomical Society meeting and dinner at the Athenaeum after that, not to mention later events…

Anyway, I’m going to catch up with some quality Columbo time so I’ll just post a few snaps to prove I was there!

Just before the rally

A fellow astronomer, whose name I didn’t catch!

Rather unfortunate pose by Dr Evan Harris; he’s not a Nazi, honest!

Ben Goldacre, complete with anorak…

And here’s me in mid-tweet on the left of the picture, in front of the Treasury building and facing the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (to the right).

Picture taken by Paul Crowther

Many congratulations to those who organized the rally at such short notice, especially Jenny Rohn. The only thing I’d say here is that, although this was a truly inspiring and enjoyable occasion, if the campaign is going to make any lasting difference this must be the start not the finish…

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In the Dark