Last Wednesday I zooted down to Londinium for an informal ad-hoc meeting of senior astronomers with STFC bosses Keith Mason and Richard Wade. It was Chatham House rules, which means no quotes; but we therefore made a point of arriving at a statement we could all agree on. Enjoy.
Meanwhile Stuart over at the Astronomy Blog has a summary of recent parliamentary debates.
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Some good resolutions there.
One thing is that I know at least one member of PPAN has rejected the statement “We accept that these bodies have been fully involved in the preparation of the Delivery Plan and in the ongoing Programmatic Review.”
One hopes you enjoyed the ego trip, but I can’t see anything of use in this document. In fact, I cannot see how this differs from leaving matters in the hands of PPAN et al., a committee no less representative than the one here.
Of course I enjoyed the ego trip. There’s got to be some reward for being Head of School. But I didn’t enjoy the depressed feeling of being powerless; you can probably guess that the inevitable bland output does not reflect the tension and bitterness of much of the meeting. As to whether the document is of any use, I urge you to take the recommendations dead seriously. Line up your VC, and feed your local MP with the importance of astronomy, or we REALLY are screwed. As to not being representative, there’s a much fuller community meeting (SCAP) tomorrow; but you won’t get Mason et al to a meeting like that.
oops – take I it all back ! Keith M will be at SCAP. Hope he escapes alive.