UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

[*T*]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

Sorry to get upset "T", but how many great inventions were made in Blighty only to be used else where to NO ben-a-fit to UK PLC?

Microwave cooking?
Magnatic scaning?

The list is endless!

Why in GOD's name should I folk out cash to ben-a-fit an overseas company?

Mike

Point taken. But why burn the cart because the wheel is broken?

EDIT: to which I might add, the skills learnt by the PhD students doing the research typically remain in the UK to the benefit of UK based companies.

Also, many high-tech startups are university spin offs, despite the high profile examples you cite.

Plus I added a comment on the OP.

[Chris Coles]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

Sorry to get upset "T", but how many great inventions were made in Blighty only to be used else where to NO ben-a-fit to UK PLC?

Microwave cooking?
Magnatic scaning?

The list is endless!

Why in GOD's name should I folk out cash to ben-a-fit an overseas company?

Mike

There are two separate problems here. The first is that the universities have, over a very long period of time, allowed themselves to become too attached to the government teat. The other is that the rest of the financial system, banks, savings and pension funds etc. have lost sight of their responsibilities to fund anything beyond the next microsecond.

The result is that we keep getting violent swings away from a long term strategy to develop adequate funding for research. Everyone talks about the advantages of doing the research, no one wants to pay for it.

Mega talks about not wanting to fund research that might flow out of the country, but does not realise that there is far more in the way of thoughtful proposals, here in the UK; that NEVER get funded.

If any of you have funds, then invest. It will not take much effort at all to find someone in need of funding. But in the end, perhaps blazing off is easier than taking action.

[*T*]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

If any of you have funds, then invest. It will not take much effort at all to find someone in need of funding. But in the end, perhaps blazing off is easier than taking action.

What about research whose payoff would not be in my lifetime? Fundamental research, into cosmology for instance? Research is not just an investment activity, it is also a cultural activity. We are human beings, not utility maximisers.

[Chris Coles]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

What about research whose payoff would not be in my lifetime? Fundamental research, into cosmology for instance? Research is not just an investment activity, it is also a cultural activity. We are human beings, not utility maximisers.

*T*, What is interesting about this debate is that we live, perhaps, no more than 40 miles from each other while at one and the same time we are on quite different planets as far as conventional research is concerned. (I am not trying to wind you up, simply that you appear to be a conventional scientist and I am an unfunded independent inventor).

I suspect that we both have, potentially, major research proposals that are, as of today, unfunded.

On your side, (under my assumptions above), your funding comes from either charity or government.

On my side, there is no one who will fund me, and will leave me a free individual, under what I describe as free enterprise rules; other than if I can find a friend to do so.

In neither case, for you or me, is there a well thought out functioning mechanism, no agreed set of rules, no administrative structure, set out in law, to provide a successful, working, widely agreed mechanism, recognised by everyone, to reinvest equity capital, on free enterprise terms, back into every social layer, of any nation; from any form of savings or pension fund.

Both the conventional researcher and the unconventional inventor are today, unfunded to one degree or another.

What I am trying to.... no, that is not correct. What I intend to do is change that. Period.

It is a no brainer. We have to find a solution. That is why I have set into motion a debate about a solution, what I call a "Local" (place your locality name in there), Capital Spillway Trust fund. Taken from The Road Ahead from a Grass Roots Perspective www.chriscoles.com/page3.html

We need to get all our "Local" individuals with available funds, (not directly required to live their normal lives), and get those spare funds into local investment. Our real problem is that all of the spare money is today swilling around in the FIRE economy and is not being put to any greater use than to run a computer based investment scheme paying out bonuses to bankers and the like.

That is the challenge. Who will step forward and help me?

[Mega]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

What about research whose payoff would not be in my lifetime? Fundamental research, into cosmology for instance? Research is not just an investment activity, it is also a cultural activity. We are human beings, not utility maximisers.

I think its better to put food on the table at this point "T".
Mike

[Chris Coles]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

I think its better to put food on the table at this point "T".
Mike

As a nation, absolutely not!

Most people eat too much nowadays and the long term future of the nation will stand or fall on the quantity and quality of the long term research that leads to the new industries that will underpin the future prosperity.

While you eat and get fat, those that take research seriously will own the future.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

As a nation, absolutely not!

Most people eat too much nowadays ...

We eat too much junk. It's too much industrially processed destroyed vegetable oils and fructose (as in high fructose corn syrup) and excitotoxins (glutamates etc). This food excites our taste buds, but does not trigger the satiety (sense of being full) that traditional or healthy food triggers. It's cheap to manufacture, has a long shelf life, and "you can't eat just one!" (sells in abundance.) Junk, junk, junk, ...

[Chris Coles]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

We eat too much junk. It's too much industrially processed destroyed vegetable oils and fructose (as in high fructose corn syrup) and excitotoxins (glutamates etc). This food excites our taste buds, but does not trigger the satiety (sense of being full) that traditional or healthy food triggers. It's cheap to manufacture, has a long shelf life, and "you can't eat just one!" (sells in abundance.) Junk, junk, junk, ...

Wriggly,

you need to bone up on Dr. Mercola

Why Do You Continue to Eat When You're Full? http://articles.mercola.com/sites/ar...-Are-Full.aspx

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

Wriggly,

you need to bone up on Dr. Mercola

Why Do You Continue to Eat When You're Full? http://articles.mercola.com/sites/ar...-Are-Full.aspx

I read Mercola regularly. This article of his you reference is consistent with what I wrote. I listed fructose as one of the problems, and this article states:

Fructose, a cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks, can damage human metabolism and is likely fueling the obesity crisis. This is because your body metabolizes fructose in a much different way than glucose, and fructose is now being consumed in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound.
If anyone tries to tell you “sugar is sugar,” they are way behind the times. It is increasingly becoming clear that just by eating fructose, including high-fructose corn syrup, you may be drastically increasing your tendency to overeat.

Fructose is the fruit sugar that when fermented, produces the ever popular drug, alcohol.

Unfermented fructose unfortunately has many of the same harmful affects on the body as alcohol when taken in excess, without the compensating "benefits" of inebriation. It digests along many of the same chemical pathways and destroys the liver in a similar manner.

[*T*]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

I think its better to put food on the table at this point "T".
Mike

We have to think ahead.

[*T*]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

In neither case, for you or me, is there a well thought out [COLOR=#333333]functioning mechanism, no agreed set of rules, no administrative structure, set out in law, to provide a successful, working, widely agreed mechanism, recognised by everyone, to reinvest equity capital, on free enterprise terms, back into every social layer, of any nation; from any form of savings or pension fund.

I agree we need grass root equity investment. I would like to see something like zopa.com, but for equity investment, not debt.

To be fair, there IS a lot of freedom for academics to pursue their own more crazy ideas (if you are willing to slow you career progression down, as I am) but I fear for the future of off-the-wall stuff now that Mandelson's in charge of the purse. He wants to tie research investment to expected industrial payoff. Like it is known in advance.

[Rajiv]

Thousands to lose jobs as universities prepare to cope with cuts

Thousands to lose jobs as universities prepare to cope with cuts

• Post-graduates to replace professors
• Staff poised to strike over proposals of cuts

Universities across the country are preparing to axe thousands of teaching jobs, close campuses and ditch courses to cope with government funding cuts, the Guardian has learned.

Other plans include using post-graduates rather than professors for teaching and the delay of major building projects. The proposals have already provoked ballots for industrial action at a number of universities in the past week raising fears of strike action which could severely disrupt lectures and examinations.

The Guardian spoke to vice-chancellors and other senior staff at 25 universities, some of whom condemned the funding squeeze as "painful" and "insidious". They warned that UK universities were being pushed towards becoming US-style, quasi-privatised institutions.

The cuts are being put in place to cope with the announcement last week by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) that £449m – equivalent to more than a 5% reduction nationally – would be stripped out of university budgets.
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[Chris Coles]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

The UK Civil Service is now faced with having to reduce the size of the service and rather than do that they pass on the savings that must inevitably be made to such as here, by reducing the funding to the universities, where it becomes difficult to do. It is a very cynical ploy; leave us as we are or we make all sorts of things difficult for you all down the line.

What is needed is a root and branch clear out of the Civil Service itself. But the problem is; no one has any mechanism to do that.

What we need is a new government that will reduce the size of the Civil Service to about a quarter of its present size and close all the Quangos.

[*T*]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

The UK Civil Service is now faced with having to reduce the size of the service and rather than do that they pass on the savings that must inevitably be made to such as here, by reducing the funding to the universities, where it becomes difficult to do. It is a very cynical ploy; leave us as we are or we make all sorts of things difficult for you all down the line.

What is needed is a root and branch clear out of the Civil Service itself. But the problem is; no one has any mechanism to do that.

What we need is a new government that will reduce the size of the Civil Service to about a quarter of its present size and close all the Quangos.

Parkinson's law in action.

The current form of the law is not that which Parkinson refers to by that name in the article. Rather, he assigns to the term a mathematical equation describing the rate at which bureaucracies expand over time. Much of the essay is dedicated to a summary of purportedly scientific observations supporting his law, such as the increase in the number of employees at the Colonial Office while Great Britain's overseas empire declined (indeed, he shows that the Colonial Office had its greatest number of staff at the point when it was folded into the Foreign Office because of a lack of colonies to administer). He explains this growth by two forces: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals" and (2) "Officials make work for each other." He notes in particular that the total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done."

[Chris Coles]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

This turned up in The Sunday Times today. Here in the UK we have a small, sic!!, quango that has taken hold of a 269 acre estate to house what would be quite appropriate on one floor of a small office block anywhere in the country.

It then proceeds to start to spend as if they are some royal potentate from a far off country.

February 14, 2010

Quango spends £750,000 on bridge to nowhere

The 'bridge to nowhere' at Bramshill House, Hampshire

David Leppard and Chris Williams

The quango charged with improving police efficiency has spent £750,000 on a project that involved restoring an ornamental bridge on the country estate it uses as a police training college.

Chief Constable Peter Neyroud, chief executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), oversaw the decision to spend taxpayers’ money on what a former agency official described as “a bridge to nowhere”.

The bridge, built as a folly in the late 1940s, is at Bramshill House, a listed Jacobean property at the agency’s 269-acre estate in Hampshire. As well as paying contractors to take it down and rebuild it, the agency had to pay to round up a colony of great crested newts that lived in ponds by the bridge.

The agency admitted last week that it was under no obligation from English Heritage to restore the bridge. It said the work had been part of a project that involved repairing a leaky dam.

The £750,000 total bill for the project would be enough to pay the annual salaries of 35 frontline police constables.

The agency was set up three years ago to get better value from the government’s £9 billion policing budget, but it has attracted criticism over its use of public money.

Last December Neyroud admitted to MPs that his agency had “inherited a lot of bad consultancy”, spending £71m on consultants in one year. Some consultants were paid £2,000 to £3,000 a day, he said.

It emerged last month that the NPIA pays £23,000 a year for Neyroud to have the use of a flat in Westminster, and has met the £9,000 income tax bill on the perk. Neyroud also has the use of a flat overlooking the lake at Bramshill.

The quango used premium materials to resurface a mile-long driveway at a cost of £2m. It also spent £31,000 of public money on a black-tie dinner for senior officers in September 2007.

It has been told to cut its £550m-a-year budget, but has just embarked on a £25m refurbishment programme.

The NPIA denied it was wasting public money and said the main reason for spending £750,000 on the bridge project was because of the failure of the 400-year-old dam wall of the pond.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said: “These revelations should force its board to put a stop to this kind of thing.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7026294.ece