From Mike Martin
London
The rhetoric of Ian Taylor, minister for science and technology, with
blanket assertions of “excellent budget settlement” and “favourable reactions”,
is just what you would expect from a representative of a government that has
been responsible for the decimation of independent research in science and
technology in Britain (Letters, 17 February, p 48).
We have seen the closure of many government scientific departments and
research organisations, their privatisation or just the lumping of them together
with considerable loss of scientific employment and cuts in funding. This has
been acknowledged in these columns for many years. For a government that has
been so economical with everything, why should the truth be any
different?
We have also seen the general destruction of a large amount of basic British
industry (particularly engineering) over the past 16 years, with foreign-based
transnationals taking its place. They have taken advantage of the weakness in
our industry, with its now subdued and compliant workforce ready to work for
lower wages. This has been very costly for Britain as a trading nation and has
spoilt our economic future compared with other countries.
Advertisement
Short-termism rules and the future is left to care for itself as best it can.
How many young and not-so-young scientists and technologists know where their
jobs will be next year, or if they will have a job at all? There is no
continuity, no money, no context in which to plan the future for many people
today.
Taylor’s letter is an elegant cover-up for years of cutbacks and
penny-pinching. Yes, the government would like to “harness the intellectual
resources” of talented people to “improve economic performance”, but who would
receive the improved “quality of life”?
It was reported recently that the British government is facing a deepening
crisis in the quality of higher education. With the contradiction of expanding
enrolment and funding cuts, the funding per student has fallen by one third
since 1989. According to Science (23 February, vol 271, p 1045),
“Deteriorating staff salaries and conditions have paid for the expansion, and
quality is suffering” and “Funding cuts have hit science departments directly,
with money for new equipment and buildings slashed by 30 per cent in November”.
This is the nation’s future in jeopardy!
The education and employment secretary, Gillian Shephard, has set up an
independent review under Ron Dearing. But this is unlikely to surface before the
next election. Will this review recommend the scrapping of free tuition for most
students?
