Space Cadets

The present Government's commitment to honesty, responsibility, public probity and data protection is rivalled only by its dedication to science. The no doubt fortuitously acronymed Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network of radio telescopes at Jodrell Bank is the "only world-class astronomical facility based entirely within the UK", and is therefore a low priority for the Science and Technology Facilities Council, which has a budget shortfall of eighty million pounds, or slightly less than the Government has already pissed away on Northern Rock. The STFC also intends cutting university research grants by twenty-five per cent, so that the Ministry of Education Within the Bounds of Reasonable Profit can do a bit of agonising over why we have so few graduates in the hard sciences. However, we can rest assured that investment will continue in "one of Nasa's space exploration missions designed to study explosions in the universe", which remains safely among the STFC's highest priority projects.