🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <28866@castle.ed.ac.uk> jeremy@castle.ed.ac.uk (Jeremy Henderson) writes:

   I see that the University is to give an honorary degree to Jacques Delors.
   No doubt this is in recognition of the role of the EC in diverting money
   away from the UK Research Councils, which, for all their faults, are fairly
   equitable and somewhat accountable, towards various European schemes, which
   are not accountable to anyone, are administered by a stunningly
   inept bureaucracy moving with the speed of an asthmatic tortoise, and
   demand the investment of countless man-years of researchers' time to extract
   even a fraction of an ECU.

Better the fraction of an ECU than worthless pieces of paper with the
word "pound" on them (I actually wonder, usually either the Queen or
some Scottish Bank promises to "pay the bearer on demand" ...  but how
are they going to pay me? In silver ? In ECU ??).

More seriously: Many people are quite annoyed with the European
Research funding. However, can you substantiate your claim that money
was diverged from UK Research Councils to the EC? I rather got the
impression that British researchers are so desparate to get money from
the EC because their own government hasn't got any. And wasn't it
Delors who came up with this "Subsidarity principle" that every
decision should me made on the lowest possible level?

Certainly lots of things have to be changed in Brussells. And
certainly British influence on EC decisions will decrease further if
the government continues with this undecisive and half hearted politics. 

The EC may have lots of shortcomings. What is the alternative? The
revival of the Empire???
--

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