The Wellcome Trust's decision to only fund a new synchrotron facility (DIAMOND) in the south-east practically killed Daresbury laboratories in 2000, despite the UK's knowledge base for this science being based in the labs near Warrington. One of the D's in DIAMOND even stands for Daresbury.....
Now higher than proportional cuts are to be made at the site - supposedly one of the two bi-polar sites that are supposed to be the backbone of UK science. And it will be the Daresbury site that suffers most....
This is an unconsciable attempt (again) to relocate all of the nation's science facilities to the South East.... and yet we are supposed to turn the UK's economy into a knowledge economy, when by definition only the South East will have any knowledge.
I think it is a disgusting sign of abandonment of the North. (I want to write more in the future about levers in the regions, which I think is the big differentiator between Labour and Tory economic policy). There should be an unwritten contract that if the region invests in the facility (which it has through the NWDA) then the national bodies have to come through with their side of the bargain.
Again they have failed and Wellcome's new investment is only going to make it harder to keep science here.
I don't like being doom and gloom, but without encouraging the ability of people in the north to create and invent, we will never become the economy we should....
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