Gordon Brown reshuffles science, Europe and the pursuit of guilt-free energy, reviving the chestnut to fight climate change, creating clonal crops, and letting the sun shine on government.
Publication: Seed Magazine
TJ Kelleher
June 12, 2009
UK’s Blue Skies Turn to Gray?
The mood in British science has been bleak of late. Two months ago came the announcement that, while their colleagues across the pond would be receiving a large stimulus package, scientists in the UK would have to do without. Then they found themselves fighting off an attempt by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to ban scientists who had a record of failing to get grant applications approved from even applying for grants at all. And now they find themselves dealing with the fallout from Gordon Brown’s reshuffling of the British government last Friday, when among other things, he abolished the Department of Universities, Innovation, and Skills—the umbrella organization that included the Ministry of Science and Innovation—and created a new Department of Business, Innovation, and Skills that would be home to a restructured Ministry of Science and Innovation that now includes a substantial military orientation.
