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Monday 14 September 2020

Brilliant sustainable diversity



Science Minister at Vitae Connections Week 2020

In a recorded message, Amanda Solloway spoke about the promoting a culture of wellbeing for researchers and improving the way we evaluate research...

Blimey - what a vacuous pile of politically correct waffle it is too.

And the great privilege of being Minister for Science and Research is that I get to meet these amazing and diverse people – from the brilliant researchers working on nuclear fusion at the JET laboratory in Culham, to the medical scientists working on coronavirus treatments at the University of Birmingham and the wonderful people working on the Boundless Creativity programme...

Diverse and sustainable funding

And we also need to fund that work properly.

We must look seriously at whether the system of short-term grants for projects is really working, really supporting people to do their best work. Or whether it’s instead promoting a monoculture of bureaucracy and risk aversion.

I want us to think about how we can use our funding to support creative and brilliant people, and places, not just the most promising projects.

Worth reading as yet another example of how narrow our political class is. May as well appoint junior bureaucrats as ministers.

3 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

Love it! That's almost pornography isn't it? Cram in as many vacuous phrases as you can think of onto one page of A4.

Graeme said...

"how we can use our funding to support creative and brilliant people, and places, not just the most promising projects"

In other words, funding for my friends rather than the clever people

A K Haart said...

Mark - maybe it could be called virtue porn. I'm surprised she didn't have better advice on making herself sound vaguely professional and scientific.

Graeme - yes, social contact is everything and good science comes nowhere in the circles these people inhabit.