UK participation in astronomy and particle physics funding

[Crepuscular Ray]

There are moves afoot to cut spending to the UK budgets for astronomy, astrophysics and particle physics. In the grand scale of government spending, the amounts are minute (e.g., about 1.5 Eurofighters or 1/500 Northern Rock rescue package) and many people would argue that there are better things to spend our taxes on, but it would mean that the UK withdraws from the Gemini telescope group (so, given that we've already pulled out of the observatory on the Canaries, UK astronomers would have no access to large visible light telescopes in the northern hemisphere) among other things and doesn't participate in the next phase of work at CERN.

There is, naturally, a petition on the Number 10 website:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Physics-Funding/

Anyone who wants to add their name to the petition, feel free.

CR

[davehsug]

Happy to sign Ray. I sometimes think the government would be happy if we all read the Star & watched GMTV all day!

[Bottesford]

I've signed too - it worries me how little particpation the UK has space flight and research. We used to be a world leader in engineering & technology but appear to have lost our way somewhat and tended to concentrate on call centres & services instead.

[full_frontal_occlusion]

Cautious congratulations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7268065.stm

ffO