Save our Science. Again.

This sort of thing seems to come up with depressing monotony. The Institute of Physics has issued a plea to the Science and Technology Facilities Council not to introduce cuts until Professor Bill Wakeham review of Physics is reported to the government.

The STFC is short of 80 million. In comparison, the Northern Rock building society has had to have a loan of £26bn because - well, frankly they were too greedy and didn't worry if things went wrong because the government would have to bail them out.

Looking at the Hansard report on the discussion on Tuesday in the House of Commons on STFC funding, I find some interesting quotes:

The important point... is that the STFC has been telling Ministers about the problem since July

Although it looks as though the research councils have had a cash uplift, they are in fact spending not new money, but old money that was going towards research costs

As far as I am aware, every physics community in every university is affected by these cuts.