Read it here. I especially agree with no. 1 on this list.

I am a neutron scatterer by profession, and whilst I do not expect you to fully appreciate what that entails, let me assure you that the benefits to science, the economy and to society as a whole that neutron scattering can provide is immeasurably high. It goes without saying that in our “knowledge based economy” that politicians of all flavours band about, a strong science output (some of which is from neutron scattering) is essential. Measured by the number of publications per instrument at the UK’s only neutron source ISIS (and the world’s most intense source), ISIS is the world leader.

And as a consequence, the UK government has been funding several projects recently. In addition to the existing facilities (opened by one M Thatcher), there has been funding for an additional neutron target station at ISIS (effectively doubling the number of neutron instruments) and an X-ray synchrotron. To put it into perspective, the capital budget of the STFC (the Science and Technology Funding Council - a government quango recently set-up with somewhat disasterous consequences, responsible for funding large scale science projects) is £1bn. When taking into account the operational budget of the facilities, we are talking big money.

However, recently there has been a budget crisis, to the tune of £80m. I am unsure why or how this came about, but apparently, according to third hand information, the running costs of the facilities were underestimated. And how, pray tell, are the STFC going to deal with this budget shortfall? Well a couple of weeks back, a report was released by the Chief Exec that had the following paragraph:

“ISIS is the world’s most productive pulsed neutron spallation source. In the short-term, given financial constraints, we may have to consider reducing availability to UK users in universities. The precise scale of this reduced provision will be determined over the next 3 months. “

One might ask how limiting UK users can save money. Well, if you are from a UK university you are paid expenses - a train fair, about 15 quid per day for food and the on-site guest house fees. It averages to something like £80 per day per UK scientist using the facility. At 650 experiments per year, 1/2 from the UK not based at ISIS (no expenses paid for these), an average of 5 days per experiment and 2 scientists, that is a whopping £300K. Of course, my numbers might be a little off, but you can see that it is chicken feed when compared to the capital expenditure and running costs.

So in other words, the government spends BILLIONS on building and running a facility, only to tell UK researchers they can’t use it to save a few hundred thousand (at best). It gets worse than that - word has it on the street that scientists jobs are on the line, meaning we spend billions on infrastructure and will have no one to run it.

The full “delivery plan” on the funding crisis can be found here: