Sir, Sadly, the government agency responsible for supporting astronomy, space science and particle physics is to withdraw funding from Jodrell Bank (report, March 6). It is only one of many likely casualties in areas of scientific research in which the UK has long excelled, following the demise a year ago of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC). The protection of “blue-skies” research, built into the founding charter of the PPARC in 1994, was lost with that recent change, leaving fields such as astronomy highly vulnerable at a time when a welcome increase in overall science budgets has been accompanied by Treasury demands for evidence of economic return. As Nigel Hawkes pointed out: “Astronomy is not a science designed to give us new products or better devices” — though serendipitously it often does — “but to help us place ourselves in space and time.”

The major restructuring of UK research by the last Conservative Government, which created new, smaller research councils, including the PPARC, has generally worked well by having more expert advisory structures and better links with the respective research communities.

However, the benefits of that restructuring were held back in the 1990s by a shrinking science budget.

Successive Labour governments deserve plaudits for reversing that trend over the past decade. Unfortunately, unnecessary tinkering with the support structure is now threatening long-term damage to UK research of international excellence, and which is a key attraction for students to take up challenging subjects such as physics and maths.

Ken Pounds
Professor of Space Physics, University of Leicester

Sir, As an American, I suppose I should be pleased with the decision of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) not to fund e-Merlin and Jodrell Bank. It can only exacerbate the British brain drain and fuel the emigration of young, talented British scientists to the US, Australia and elsewhere under the impetus of better research funding and better salaries.

As an amateur astronomer and armchair cosmologist, I am appalled. The £2.5 million cost to maintain e-Merlin pales in comparison to expenses claimed by MPs and Cabinet members for second homes, taxi rides and family member salaries. It constitutes only a small percentage of the grants and subsidies to British royalty or the profits from overzealous enforcement of parking regulations and is not too high a price to pay to maintain Britain’s eminence in astronomy. How can the STFC end the tradition of brilliant British astronomers for the sake of 4p per person?

James Roosevelt
Detroit

Sir, It is surely an important waymarker on the road to decadence that this country seems to have reached the point where we can countenance the loss of Jodrell Bank and the e-Merlin programme for a sum of money which I believe is not untypical of the annual salary paid to many a Premier League football player. Sad days indeed.

Peter Williams
Abergele, Conwy

Sir, While the proposed cutbacks to the Merlin project are alarming, it is not true for its head to say that “it would mean a complete withdrawal from observational radio astronomy in the UK”. There is world-class observational radio astronomy being undertaken from other UK sites, including the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cambridge. Indeed, Antony Hewish and Sir Martin Ryle won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work there.

Jonathan Zwart
Cambridge

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