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U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

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Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#171

Post by nairboon »

bluehatbrit wrote: post #79
nairboon wrote: post #75

The EU still keeps science as a hostage for political games. Think about, who looses when you prevent science from happening? All of society. This is very self-destructive.

To be fair, the offer to rejoin Horizon has been on the table to the UK for a long time now. The UK government have been the ones dragging their heels on actually doing the work to kick off that process. Scientists like Sir Paul Nurse have been very outspoken for several years about this. That's not to say there aren't failings in the EU, there definitely are, but this is heavily on the UK.

I don't know the details about the UK. But the EU has been playing this game with Switzerland since 2013. Switzerland can bankroll the costs, but it's the scientists and science overall tha slows down due to this.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#172

Post by gadders »

a_humean wrote: post #157
gadders wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Turkey is negotiating its accession to the European Union (EU) as a member state, following its application to become a full member of the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of the EU, on 14 April 1987.[1]" It's officially classed as a candidate. That doesn't seem consistent with "Never joining" unless the EU knowingly lied to Turkey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_Eur...

You have to be ignorant on this topic or a liar to say that Turkey is going to join the EU for the foreseeable future. I accept that you might be ignorant (no shame in that), but the people that created that campaign material were lying because they did know better. Even back in 2015 it was pretty clear that Turkey was probably never going to join the EU - at least a generation off if ever. They have nominally been t…

So you agree the EU lied to Turkey then?

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#173

Post by pjc50 »

kypro wrote: post #113
PedroBatista wrote: post #69

This is "great news" for researchers and UK universities in particular but this is also "terrible news" because it's yet another instance of special treatment that weakens the overall system. What I mean by that it's the notion of "we can be out while still be kinda in". No system can survive for long if this is widespread. I get most of the UK scientific community was against Brexit, but the truth is the majority vo…

Or looked at another way, it just weakness the parts of the system where there are disagreements. The most frustrating thing about the EU is that there are both great and awful things about it. Some things almost all EU nations agree on, such as having strong trading relationships and joint research programs, but often this comes bundled with stuff there is far more disagreement on the Schengen Area and the Euro. I t…

Ironically both Schengen and the Euro are opt-in, as can be seen by not all members of the EU being members of one or the other.

Post-Brexit wrangling crystallized something for me: the EU should be seen as the venue for solving problems rather than the solution. Leaving the EU does not make problems go away, they still need to be resolved; (re)joining it does not solve problems either, but it provides a series of discussion and agreement mechanisms which can be used to solve them.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#174

Post by walthamstow »

bowsamic wrote: post #27
O_nlogn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I voted to remain, but this is a great example of misleading/fear mongering by the remain campaign. They very vocally claimed that all the "good bits" of the EU cooperation would be permanently ended by leaving the Union. As evidenced by this news and others, that is untrue. There is clearly room for close cooperation in many areas without surrendering sovereign control over your nation.

Your attitude is strange. If you break a friendship in a painful way, you don't at the same time think "oh but I can surely resume borrowing his record collection in the future". > There is clearly room for close cooperation in many areas without surrendering sovereign control over your nation. Are you sure you voted remain? This is basically the prototypical pro-leave argument.

If everyone on the internet who claimed to have voted remain actually did so, we wouldn't be having any of these conversations and I wouldn't have so many bloody stamps in my passport.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#175

Post by Mordisquitos »

O_nlogn wrote: post #8
tetris11 wrote: post #2

This is great news. I remember when Brexit was announced in my last lab, and at first everything seemed okay, but as the months went on I saw more professor bashing heads or colluding to get those rare precious grants as it became clear that the well was drying up.

Disclaimer: I voted to remain, but this is a great example of misleading/fear mongering by the remain campaign. They very vocally claimed that all the "good bits" of the EU cooperation would be permanently ended by leaving the Union. As evidenced by this news and others, that is untrue. There is clearly room for close cooperation in many areas without surrendering sovereign control over your nation.

> They very vocally claimed that all the "good bits" of the EU cooperation would be permanently ended by leaving the Union.

I was living in the UK during the referendum and voted remain [0], and that sentence that I quote does not align with my experience and I dare say it sounds like revisionist history.

It was never a part of the Remain campaign to claim that the UK would 'permanently' end the 'good bits' of EU cooperation. It would be bad enough to abandon the EU, so what would be the point of Remain claiming that the loss of the 'good bits' of EU membership (surely all of them in their view!) would be permanent?

What's more, what I do remember is many of the Leave campaign's talking points insisting that the UK would NOT leave the 'good bits', many of which are open to non-EU members (Horizon, Erasmus, customs union, freedom of movement, etc.)... and then guess what happened?

[0] Before anyone is confused if they see other comments of mine, I'm a dual Spainish–British citizen.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#176

Post by nairboon »

FatherPaulStone wrote: post #98
nairboon wrote: post #75

The EU still keeps science as a hostage for political games. Think about, who looses when you prevent science from happening? All of society. This is very self-destructive.

couldn't you simply apply the same logic to any aspect of the EU? The EU still keeps trade as a hostage for political games. Think about, who looses when you prevent trade from happening? All of society. This is very self-destructive. The EU still keeps free movement as a hostage for political games. Think about, who looses when you prevent free movement from happening? All of society. This is very self-destructive.…

These things are different from science. They are local issues with local effects. But science is a global endeavor involving all of humanity, suppressing this for some local political quarrel is quite a low move.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#177

Post by [deleted] »

mrbadger wrote: post #126
walthamstow wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we did surrender sovereign control over our country. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/trading-and-moving-goods-in-and-... > Before you move goods between Northern Ireland and non-EU countries (including Great Britain) We started with borderless free trade from Iceland to Greece and we ended up with customs guidance that pretends that GB and NI are in different countries. The Brexit Trilemma is alive and well today.

Nonsense. There is no pretense that GB and NI are in different countries. They are in different trade zones. As for "our" country, here's your reminder that all of Ireland was coerced into the UK by colonisation and oppression and that NI is a contingent part of the UK not an integral part of it. A majority of its people voted against Brexit; a majority favour the NI protocol and the Windsor agreement; and a majority…

[deleted]

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#178

Post by nairboon »

exar0815 wrote: post #31
atemerev wrote: post #22

And Switzerland is still out, without any pathway for getting back, negotiations have stalled. This is an absolute disgrace for our country.

Switzerland flushed tremendous amounts of goodwill in all of europe, especially eastern europe, with their ridiculous stance on weapons deliveries - or non-allowance of deliveries tangentially related to switzerland. Don't know whether this especially is related, but expect more of that.

You do know that the EU kicked out Switzerland from Horizon in 2013? This has nothing to do with any recent developments, in fact it's the rest of the EU who has been flushing goodwill for quite a while...

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#179

Post by a_humean »

gadders wrote: post #172
a_humean wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be ignorant on this topic or a liar to say that Turkey is going to join the EU for the foreseeable future. I accept that you might be ignorant (no shame in that), but the people that created that campaign material were lying because they did know better. Even back in 2015 it was pretty clear that Turkey was probably never going to join the EU - at least a generation off if ever. They have nominally been t…

So you agree the EU lied to Turkey then?

No, and Yes and No.

No because there is nothing wrong with the EU telling Turkey these are the entry standards for membership. Turkey didn't meet those standards and were backsliding on lots of issues esp around human rights and political/media freedom. It also had unreasolved territorial issues with other member states namely Greece which completely block ascension.

Yes and No because the politics of this are complex both within the EU and in Turkey. Focusing just on the EU side:

There are lots of voices in the EU that want to see Turkey join the EU. Its an important (if sometimes difficult) NATO partner, and in many ways esp in its cities, a very European nation in its history and culture (Istanbul and Antalya are both great hoilday destinations btw - I recommend). We have a lot in common with Turkey. Its also a large econmy and an important bridge to central asia and the middle east. This is why Turkey was accepted as a candidate in the first place.

However there were real voices against Turkey's membership motivated from concerns over the impact to the balance of power within the EU, funding implication for bringing in such a large member with lots of regional depravation, doubts over Turkey ever meeting entry requirements, and the more ugly outright islamophobia and racism.

If you want to cut to the chase then yes the EU kinda sorta lied to Turkey because its officals know these facts, but Turkey's officals themselves are in on it for their own internal politics which I won't get into in part because I know much less about it. It suited both nations to play this ascension dance and technically it was possible that conditions might change and people's minds might be changed. Its a process not a binary.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#180

Post by DanBC »

FiniteField wrote: post #144
AlexandrB wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim that Brexit would redirect 350m/week to the NHS was a particularly egregious example. https://archive.ph/D2Yq4

Did that not happen? [0] shows an increase of £47bn on the department of health and social care from 2019-2020 and 2020-2021. That's £900m/week. If you compare to post-covid years then it's more like an increase of £28b or £540m/week. From the article linked in your comment, it seems to make a overly large "smoking gun" out of the fact that a referendum campaign website changed their website to reflect the fact that…

The DH&SC isn't the NHS. How much of that money went from DH&SC to the NHS, vs to Tory pals selling defective PPE? Or private hospitals?
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