£270m of taxpayers money was used to prop up the ailing Rover car manufacturing company, which is now Chinese owned. As a result £68m given to the scientific research councils by the DTI will now be taken back to help balance the books. This means that thousands of research grants will be turned down and thousands of PhD and Postdoc projects across all scientific disciplines will never come into being. The worst hit research council is the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) which loses £29m.
Science is the biggest thing in history. It has had a bigger impact than any king, politician, war, disease, political ideology or natural disaster. The changes in the world over the past 100 years have been science driven. Computers, TVs, mobile phones, space flight, electric lighting and much more have come directly from Physics. Hacking away at scientific research budgets in this country will cause it to fall behind. And it may prevent the spark of inspiration that will help find a cure for aids or cancer, develop the electric car or make clean nuclear fusion energy a realistic prospect.
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