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UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

theguardian.com

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Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#71
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll of course be allowed to do the research - the question is who is going to pay for it as much of the funding comes from the EU.

EU money doesn't come out of thin air. It comes from taxpayers. The UK is a net contributor to the EU so the UK government could choose to fund all current commitments and still be better off.

Except for...revenues are not going to stay the same.

For example, George Osborne has just proposed to slash the corp. tax rate from 20% to 15%, in order reduce (not eliminate) the almost certain reduction in UK investment.

Last year, CT net receipts were £ 42 billion[1]. At the current 20% rate. At 15%, that would be £ 31.5 billion, for a reduction of £ 10.5 billion. Let's divide that by 52 weeks and you get £ 200 million. Which happens to be £ 10 million more than the UK's net contribution to the EU budget.

So all your "savings" just evaporated just with corporation tax alone, and that's assuming that Osborne's plan works and there is no reduction in activity/investment, which is dubious.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#72
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did anyone doubt what experts said? I was under the impression that most voters knew about it and still wanted to go ahead with leaving the EU, because they felt their arguments weighted more heavily than economic concerns. It's possible that both sides are correct.

Yes, people doubted what experts said. Brexit, along with several other contemporary movements such as Trumpism, have been driven by a profound distrust of the establishment.

The term "expert" in the referendum debate almost always meant economists and referred to the long range economic impacts.

You don't need to be an expert to know the EU will find all kinds of weird ways to try and "punish" the UK for leaving, you just have to listen to men like Juncker. Instead of convincing people their ideas are good, they are 100% focused on maximising the pain of disobeyed Brussels. None of these sorts of things were unexpected by anyone who voted out.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the reaction will be simply to adopt minimal changes in the short term in ways in which Euro treaties and laws are brought wholesale onto Westminster statute books. Significant change will only occur over time and limbo is to be avoided where possible - not just for the UK, but for everyone else as well. This is the only thing that would make sense even if everything was planned and orderly, which I thin…

If I am not mistaken - individual countries are not willing to negotiate trade treaties before the UK invokes article 50. Even if by some miracle Theresa May decides to withhold invoking article 50 before creating new treaties using back channels with the 50 other trading partners of the UK, it wont be possible to enact them until the UK leaves the EU and negotiates a new trade deal with the EU.

The EU will not really negotiate using back channels, the only miracle the UK can hope for is that it would be deemed that a full vote in both houses is needed to invoke Article 50 and hopefully it would fail.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#74
post #60

I just finished an EU funded CompSci Masters degree in Wales, the poorest country in the UK and it's devastatingly sad to think that once the EU research funding stops, those opportunities will be gone forever for future students coming through the department. There aren't enough large tech companies in the area for there to be any sponsored degrees available, which probably means that when the funding finishes, the…

and that £350m a week that is supposedly sent to the EU is more like £140m

IIRC, £350m/wk is the gross amount, £140m/wk is the net.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#75

I just finished an EU funded CompSci Masters degree in Wales, the poorest country in the UK and it's devastatingly sad to think that once the EU research funding stops, those opportunities will be gone forever for future students coming through the department. There aren't enough large tech companies in the area for there to be any sponsored degrees available, which probably means that when the funding finishes, the…

You're talking about a government that recently made computer programming class a mandatory part of the high school curriculum. Your leap from "UK exits the EU" to "there will no longer be funding for computer science research" is based purely on your own emotions, not rational analysis. Like so much else I hear from pro-EU people these days.

The current funding is going away and there has not yet been an announcement of its replacement. The government has however spent years implementing "austerity" and attempting to cut public spending. It's very optimistic to think that any more money will be forthcoming.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#76
This isn't really political.

If the UK exits, they are no longer paying their EU club dues, which means the EU will no longer fund UK people/project in return; and it is easier to preemptively block further UK funding that hasn't already been funded and then (re-)fund it in the near-future if Brexit doesn't happen (no reason currently to think it won't, the UK just needs to get their shit together and actually do it), than it is for the reverse, semi-funding UK people/projects until Article 50 is signed by the UK.

This is the path of least bullshit, as far as I can tell. Given that the UK has to leave the EU to survive, wants to leave the EU, and the EU has given them significant reason to go ahead and leave the EU and not go down with the ship. I'm trying not to judge anyone, but France/German bailout of Greece, and the failure to save Spain in any respectable manner; all the while Iceland did the correct thing (and from the viewpoint as an American, our founding fathers would be applauding Iceland), the EU's economy is going to have their own Japan-style Lost Decade over this.

Side note: The point of investments is that they are not guaranteed. This is why investments have return, and there is an entire industry around calculated risk and the mathematics that go into it. As in, a low risk investment pays little (but most likely will pay it), a high risk investment must, in turn, have the chance of paying out a lot (but also has a high risk of paying nothing).

Given that (something everyone on HN should know, given HN was started as YC's news outlet, and grew into a rather nice community later on), if an investment fails, it must fail if that is the only way out. Continually bailing out bad investments is almost literally theft from everyone else who didn't fund that investment.

FDIC in the US exists for a reason: disconnect people's non-investment money from banks being commercial enterprises, and let people rationally choose to invest (or not invest) using a safe and well understood system. Telling Wall Street (or the European equivalents) that it's okay to just aim for the stars and pretend to get there every single time, teaches them that hyperinflation is okay and the little people don't matter.

The little people matter, because there's several thousand of us for every one of them, and the only "us vs them" mentality going on isn't some white collar vs blue collar shit, and it never will be, no matter how much CNN, Fox, and MSNBC bang that drum; instead, the only "us vs them" mentality I see going on is really is the 99% vs the 0.1%.

When push comes to shove, we shove back with several times more force. I'm already seeing an unprecedented push for locally grown/raised/manufactured/built/whatevered food/products/services. As in, city first, metro/county/whatever area second, state third, region of the US fourth, the US fifth, and first world countries that don't treat their citizens like shit sixth, with India/China/etc being firmly rejected as they are vehicles for legalized slavery, and only serve to enrich the already enriched.

There has always been this movement, but now I'm seeing poor people, people who simply can't afford to do this... doing it. And it's working. Hell, I'm not rich, I'm not even middle class (I'm probably the poorest regular on HN), and I'm buying $3 a dozen eggs because the money stays local, and the guy raising the chickens buys Blue Seal seed, which they themselves are largely anti-anti-nutritional (ie, not using garbage protein and fat sources, and not loading it full of corn and soy), are medium businessy (13 mills across the US, maybe only employing a thousand people across all of them), and only small local businesses are dealers for it. Their chicken feed is higher quality (== healthier chickens that live longer and produce more, and == better eggs with more nutrition, AND == more eggs), and less expensive than the garbage Purina/Cargill produces and sells to small time farmers.

So, yeah. There is my rant for the day. Good morning, everyone.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#77
post #15
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It discusses this in the article. The challenge here is related to funding that is primary delivered by the EU structures. Now that the UK is leaving the EU, there is some concern that projects that contain UK representation, or are lead by UK researchers, will not be funded on time. This is due to the confusion around what Brexit will mean, how long it will take, how far it will go and what agreements the EU and UK…

Right, but while there is confusion and lack of clarity, it's not clear that immediately removing UK investigators is appropriate. Some amount of this is just petulance or telegraphing unhappiness, rather than rational decision making.

The proposals for the big EU calls like Horizon 2020 contain detailed work packages and plans for how the research effort is going to be orchestrated to be successful. To my knowledge, the quality of this planning is a decisive factor in the acceptance of a proposal.

If a research partner drops out halfway through the project, the whole effort may fall apart - and with research institutions and industrial partners booking the alloted funds each month, such a failure is hard to justify for any EU officer.

Of course, it is ridiculous to simply require that the UK partners be dropped from the project without a significant change of plan or adequate substitution.

Edit: Also, the aim of these projects is always to strengthen industry or scientific progress in the participating countries - so politically, if the UK really drops out this would be giving something for free to a competitor.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#78

A few months ago I attended the "Quantum Europe" conference in Amsterdam, where the new EU flagship project on quantum computing was kicked off and celebrated. With a total funding volume of 1 BN € this initiative is huge, and there are several British universities and research centers involved. Now with the BREXIT it's unclear whether they will be able to still participate in this project, which will start in 2018.…

So tell the EU to let British universities continue to participate regardless of EU membership. If you believe they will say no for purely political reasons, then there's the problem. There are lots of academic collaborations that span the globe. It's only the EU that artificially ties quantum computing research to immigration policies. edit: There is a massive amount of political downvoting going on in this thread.…

Working together on EU projects is significantly easier than getting other sources of (large) funding internationally.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#79

I just finished an EU funded CompSci Masters degree in Wales, the poorest country in the UK and it's devastatingly sad to think that once the EU research funding stops, those opportunities will be gone forever for future students coming through the department. There aren't enough large tech companies in the area for there to be any sponsored degrees available, which probably means that when the funding finishes, the…

You're talking about a government that recently made computer programming class a mandatory part of the high school curriculum. Your leap from "UK exits the EU" to "there will no longer be funding for computer science research" is based purely on your own emotions, not rational analysis. Like so much else I hear from pro-EU people these days.

Yeah, you did not understand what he wrote. He specially mentions his program in North Wales which relies on EU funding.

Re: UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears

#80
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...fiscal and banking mismanagement in Greece/Italy/Spain/Portugual are destroying German and British wealth" Source?

Every conversation we've had about the EU for the last five years or so. The entire world has been talking about the relative lack of wisdom of trying to hold the entire EU to one currency for a long time, financial mismanagement, Germany strong-arming Greece into plans not good for them while Greece holds the threat of leaving over the entire EU to get better deals, and all sorts of such financial issues for a long…

I'm not saying that countries should or should not get out of the EU. I would just like to see some concrete evidences of Greece/Italy/Spain/Portugal on destroying German and British wealth.
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