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I just finished an EU funded CompSci Masters degree in Wales, the poorest country in the UK and it's devastatingly sad to think that once the EU research funding stops, those opportunities will be gone forever for future students coming through the department.

There aren't enough large tech companies in the area for there to be any sponsored degrees available, which probably means that when the funding finishes, the research will start to dry up and the interesting researchers will leave with it. Take away the research and what's left is a department of third-rate lecturers. That's not an inspiring way to learn.

Will the NHS get some of the £350m? Maybe, maybe not. It's likely to be up for discussion. Will the post-Brexit government allot research funding for CS departments in North Wales? Not a chance.

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Couple of things: The UK has premier scientists. The EU would be remiss to not find a way to work things out. If not, I'm sure other places will pick them up. These are field leading scientists.

Two, upper middle class still don't get it. They're still tone deaf. The Brexit was the working class demanding what was promised them, which was prosperity that never came. Instead they got sold out for a cheaper European work force (not faulting the Poles for wanting better, if just is) while the middle upper classes (professional class) got to enjoy the spoils and got to snicker at the working class for being upended by outsiders.

The professional class are now complaining that they will lose their privileged position... A position the working class never got to taste. So, there it is, they called in the promise and foolish or not, they at least are doing it by their own hands rather than that of the tone deaf professional class who never cared for the working class.

Of course, the professional class, showing their class in style, as they are wont to do, go about castigating the working class by telling them how provincial and selfish they are... But just look who is complaining about losing their privileged status.

The UK's premier scientists can always get jobs elsewhere - and probably will. After a while, if research funding dries up, there won't be any more premier scientists being produced.

Two, if you vote for people who are going to deny you prosperity, you don't get prosperity.

If the working classes don't understand that, it's not the fault of the professional classes who - mostly - do.

The reality is that some of those hoity toity Islington socialists care a lot more about the rest of the country than anyone else does.

The upper classes are happy to con the people they think of as plebs with flag waving, a bit of bunting, and wall to wall lies.

You can't blame the middle classes if they get shouted down with name calling for pointing this out.

I still don't hear the voice of the working class in your response. Never the less, both the Tories and Labour fleeced the working class with the promise that they too could enjoy the prosperity the professional class would get to enjoy.

The problem with socialists with respect to the working class, is that they treat the working classes all as one. The native working class are subverted for the non native working class. They didn't work hard enough for their own working class. The English and Welsh working class want the UK government to work and care for them, then, when they meet that, they can work on their pan- European workin class... However, the UK working class were given the short shrift, and now they are demanding what was promised them. And, lead to what it may, there is satisfaction in having your hand on your destiny, because frankly, leaving it in the hands of others have left them holding the empty bag of promises.

[s/subterfuged/subverted]

Was it actually "socialists" promising any of this in the UK? Corbyn seems like the first leader of the Labour Party in decades who you could call socialist, and he hasn't been in long enough to contest a single election yet (and might not be allowed to stay in the party leadership long enough to ever do so). I don't think you could say Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and Ed Miliband were really even attempting to sell a socialist agenda to the working class, which might be part of why they didn't succeed at it. They were trying to sell something like U.S.-Democratic-Party-style centre-left progressivism, which didn't really inspire the traditional Labour base, especially in the poorer, post-industrial parts of the UK. Although Blair did win a few elections, and inspired a different group of people, the cosmopolitan, socially progressive middle class.

> The native working class are subterfuged for the non native working class

Subterfuged isn't the right word there but I'm not sure what is -- "passed over"?

There has been so much snobbery about Leave voters. I find it almost as disturbing as the (media magnified) hate speech from the other side.

All of this was laid out in the Brexit arguments. We all watched it on TV and read about it. Leave said they would continue to fund science, farms, Wales and Cornwall and match the EU funding.

Weather this actually happens will be interesting. I think the Tories will neg on that. I think Labour would keep funding.

But in Cornwall, all those millions of EU funding were spent on total crap and none of the local people saw much (if any) of the investment. Most of it went to big business or to stupid stuff.

> Leave said they would continue to fund science, farms, Wales and Cornwall and match the EU funding.

How can they fund all that stuff when they said they would spend all that money on the NHS?

http://imgur.com/indvx6a

"Let's give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week" - that's not "some of" or "part of", that's "all of".

The leave campaign was made up of a lot of random people who all had different ideas. You pick one who has an idea that you agree with and vote for that person.

Not everyone in the leave campaign agreed with "Let's give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week" .... the people who DID don't want to fund science with that money. I assume that have another idea for where that money will come from.

Ah, so a lot of random people all make different promises and every voter believes in their favourite pick. For every broken promise you just have to point at the "random people" and say 'Booya, that promise doesn't count" even if all promises get broken. Neat trick.

The stay argument was 'more of the same' and millions of us can't live with more of the same.

I need money for food. For shelter. For clothes. There are a lot of us really far down on the maslow's hierarchy of needs. We need change, even if that change is chaotic.

Seriously? That is your reasoning here?" Let's change something and I keep reading these scathing headlines about foreign bureaucrats and foreigners having jobs here, so let's get rid of them." One giant ill prepared and not really thought out knee jerk. That's one of the most stupid decisions I've ever seen.

says the rich man sigh

That promise is from the "official" leave campaign, and was promoted heavily by that campaign.

It wasn't a general election and I didn't vote for either of the sides. If "Leave" (as if that were one organisation) said "it" was going to do something, how could that be guaranteed, unless they were able to form a government? If you believed them then it must be disappointing but welcome to UK politics.

I gave my answer to the question on the ballot slip, something I had a settled view on before the campaign began and I don't think I'm that unusual. I think that claims about the £350m etc made as much difference as claims that brexit would bring on the apocalypse by lunchtime.

A lot of the UK government's money is spent on stupid stuff, too. And big businesses. Badum tzzz...

Except there's no evidence for that, it's been thrown around by the media as it's a good story but the data doesn't support that hypothesis.

Pensioners voted heavily for leave and they've benefited hugely over the last few decades. In the 1980s around 50% of pensioners lived in absolute poverty, it's now around 15%.

The vote is far more complex than can be explained in a simple sound-bite, and pretending it's just one thing be that xenophobia or worsening conditions it vastly over-simplifying a hugely complex issue where many different groups voted for different reasons.

Is this anti-Pole position purely something that has arisen, or is it a product of years of anti-immigrant campaigning by newspapers?

The UK is a net payer to the EU. For instance in 2015 alone, UK's net payment to the EU was about 8.5 billion pounds.

So after the Brexit there will be more than enough money to continue the research funding. But as you mention already, it is another question if the government will be wanting to pay it. But is this really such a bad thing? The difference will that instead of the EU, the UK itself will decide which of its research projects it wants to fund.

"More than enough money" (and certainly the figures I've seen people bandying about) assumes that the cost of accessing the EU market (which I think we will have to pay) would be zero. I think it will be a significant proportion of the amount we were paying (net) to the EU, and in addition there will be other costs which people are just starting to cotton onto as well.

The main thing is that at the moment, we really have no idea at all what the financial costs will be - particularly of accessing the EU market - and until we do then a lot of this must hang in the balance.

WTO max tariffs (worst case scenario) are 4%. But the currency has weaked by about 8%. So even if max tariffs are applied tomorrow, UK goods are still cheaper to buy in the EU than before!

In practice, if the EU doesn't strike a deal with the UK (which it won't) then I think it will suffer more exits. Because the EU has spent years trying to sign free trade deals with America, Canada and other places. If it turns around and says "we will give those countries tariff-free access to our markets but not the UK" this will send a powerful message to all EU citizens that this is not an organisation with their best interests at heart.

If they do give a deal to the UK wouldn't that trigger more exits? If countries see they can leave the EU and still get a trade deal they'd be more likely to leave than if they saw the UK get shafted (so to speak).

Yes, that's why the EU is doomed and will be gone within a decade no matter what they do now.

It is a fundamentally unattractive entity. The people who run it have never even tried to combat rising anti-EU feeling across the continent, as they believe the EU is inevitable and unstoppable, so why bother trying to make it more popular.

Now it's probably too late: they've become so gripped by groupthink they can't reform quickly enough even if they wanted to, hence the focus is now 100% on trying to make leaving as scary as possible vs trying to make staying in as attractive as possible.

In the long run this is a failing strategy. The EU is unresponsive and so makes mistakes that upset local populations. In the UK it was migration policy. The latest was telling Spain and Portugal they'd be punished for breaking rules that France and Germany also break punishment free. That's not going down well.

The combination of a retention policy based on fear rather than respect + a succession of local gaffes do not bode well for the future of the union.

  Yes, that's why the EU is doomed and will be gone within a decade no matter what they do now.

"I give the Bolsheviks a year, two at most". Quote from a famous Czech movie [1] about the ill-fated Prague Spring, 1968 :-)

But in fact, communism survived for more than another twenty years...

My point: these things take longer than one would expect. Unlike logic, where a proven theorem takes its "logical effect" immediately, the politic process has massive inertia. The time gap between "result obvious and unavoidable" and "result effective" can be decades.

I second your sentiment, but I'm afraid it will take much longer for the EU to fall apart. Just like with communism before (and about as "reformable"). I personally think it will take a generation, starting now -- especially in parts of the west that have to tread this glorious neo-marxist path for the first time.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDEsj5QEWwY

I agree it will take longer than anyone thinks, and wanted to add that the EU has been struggling for awhile now. Greece, Italy, and Spain are the real tests.

> It is a fundamentally unattractive entity.

This presumably explains why 28 countries have joined and there are still more waiting to join.

> The people who run it (...) believe the EU is inevitable and unstoppable

The people who run it are for the most part the elected leaders of the member states, who are no strangers to euro-skepticism, since they never fail to exploit it when it suits them (e.g. to deflect criticism of unpopular legislation by claiming that "Brussels" requires it).

That dynamic is exactly why it is unattractive - rather than having a single government responsible for running the country, you get organisations that resort to passing the buck whenever anything bad happens. In the US and Germany, this was eventually solved by putting all the power in the Federal government, but this is fundamentally impossible in the EU, because there is no agreement on how government shoukd work between the different cultures in Europe. The EU should have remained a customs union, in a better world.

Wait, the research program of the EU is doomed and unattractive?

I thought discussion here was under the assumption that the UK wants to participate in exactly those research projects...

> In the UK it was migration policy.

It was the UK governments migration policy.

> Yes, that's why the EU is doomed and will be gone within a decade no matter what they do now.

Serious question: would that make you happy? Would you maybe prefer a replacement for the EU?

I'd prefer the EU to change, setting up such a thing is a lot of work. But it's shown it won't do that. So I'd like to see a replacement, yes.

I've read many of your comments here and I'm not convinced you have a good understanding of how the EU works. [1] is a committee meeting that tries to establish how we could disentangle ourselves from the EU. It's very long but it's full of great info how the exit could work, and as a side-effect full of info how the EU itself works.

Making a case from an uninformed POV is not convincing me. If you back up your statements with data and pointers I'll pay more attention!

[1] http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cb083c53-3998-4f3a-...

What specifically do you have in mind? You've said I'm wrong but not given any examples.

I tend to not argue from the basis of how the EU is supposed to work, because it tends to put its long-range vision ahead of following specific rules. See how the deficit rules are working out: France is allowed to break the rules "because it's France" (Juncker's words).

To predict the behaviour of such an institution it's better to listen to what the leaders are saying and how they've acted before rather than trying to read the fine print.

E.g. "in practice, if the EU doesn't strike a deal with the UK (which it won't) then I think it will suffer more exits."

That is quite a bold statement that needs a lot of statements from people who can make these decisions to back it up. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Is it an extraordinary claim?

The people who run the Commission have been saying explicitly they don't even want to start talking about a free trade deal with the UK until after the UK is fully out. There's no reason for this, they could easily run the talks in parallel, but they have no desire to do so.

Now consider the extreme difficulty the EU faces in signing deals even when it wants to (will TTIP pass? won't it? I wouldn't bet on it either way), and adding these two things together makes any kind of TTIP or CETA like deal between EU and UK very unlikely.

Will the EU suffer more exits? Well, anti-EU politicians (or at least very eurosceptic politicians) have been rising throughout Europe for some time now and some countries are quite exposed to mandatory tariffs on UK trade (the Netherlands, France, Germany). Once the UK stabilises and the fact that trade barriers cut in both directions sink in, there will be a lot of people asking why the EU is dragging its feet over a deal.

To say there's no chance of further exits does not seem less extreme than saying there will be.

> The people who run the Commission have been saying explicitly they don't even want to start talking about a free trade deal with the UK until after the UK is fully out.

This is incorrect. They are saying there will be no negotiation until Article 50 invoked, after which there will be two years of negotiations before complete exit.

I'm afraid it is correct:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36682735

The EU's Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, says the UK cannot begin negotiating trade terms with the bloc until after it has left. "First you exit then you negotiate," she told BBC Newsnight.

Now how much power does Ms Malmstrom have over EU trade policy? I would assume quite a lot. It may be that she still ends up being wrong, but my statement was correct and your rebuttal was not.

> If it turns around and says "we will give those countries tariff-free access to our markets but not the UK" this will send a powerful message to all EU citizens that this is not an organisation with their best interests at heart.

I think that you wanted to say that "this is not an organisation with UK best interests at heart.

UK government has little sympathy in the rest of the EU

UK goods may be cheaper to buy than before, but there's many problems with this.

First, we're all significantly poorer. As individuals. Fuel, goods, foreign travel, etc. are all significantly more expensive.

Second, what goods? We don't actually export much stuff so the benefits of being able to sell stuff cheaper isn't terribly attractive. Even if this did stimulate e.g. UK manufacturing in the long term, we're starting from a poor position and...

Third, the stuff we do sell tends to be services or of the value-added variety -- all of which depends on imports, so much of any extra money we make will be swallowed up by increased costs.

Fourth, even if we did sell more stuff, the money we made from it would be worth 8% less.

Didn't the EU's approach to Greece already send a message that the EU doesn't have EU citizen's best interests at heart?

Greece is a country where the population were 'sacrificed' to bail out French and German bankers (if you look where the bailout funds actually went most never hit Greece)

That whole £8.5b won't be retained by the UK though if it's economy continues to struggle with trade issues between itself and its largest trading partner, the EU.

That's assuming tax revenue remains the same, which all economists agree will not be the case.

Whether or not Brexit will boost public finances is entirely down to how much of an impact it'll have on the UK economy. No one knows what the impact will be, but almost everyone agrees that it will be negative... though no one agrees to what extent.

So there's really two questions here: a) just how much more/less public money will be available? and, b) if there is more, how much of it will go to research?

No one knows the answers to either question, not even the government.

edit: a very quick back-of-envelope calculation based on the forecast tax receipts for 2014-2015 of 648.1bn[1]: 8.5bn makes up a whopping 1.31% of tax receipts. Unless I'm mistaken, tax receipts correlate strongly with the strength of the economy, so any more than a ~1.3% decline in the economy as a consequence of Brexit, would consume the "savings".

[1]: http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf

"That's assuming tax revenue remains the same"

And it's assuming that a new government is inclined to take the money and give it to the kinds of projects that the EU used to give it to - I can think of a lot of reasons why that might not happen.

A lot of EU funding went to stupid stuff.

"But is this really such a bad thing? The difference will that instead of the EU, the UK itself will decide which of its research projects it wants to fund."

Speaking purely for myself, as a UK resident, I believe that the UK government will be significantly more populist and far more short-term in its thinking, and I expect to see research massively cut (with associated long-term damage) in favour of tax cuts and pandering. So in one man's view, this is such a bad thing.

I believe this is wrong for two reasons.

Some projects are only viable at a super-national level, either because of cost or resources (such as access to specialised technical centres in other countries or a wider level of expertise). Brexit doesn't stop the UK contributing to such projects but it does make it significantly more difficult by withdrawing from the established structures in place.

The other reason is that much of the net cost to the EU involves paying for the common legal and political platform that makes international trade much easier. It may superficially seem that the UK will save money but in practice it is highly likely (and according to a strong consensus of international experts) that removing access to these structures will have a strongly negative impact on the UK's trade. This is likely to be very bad for UK science.

EU research funding is also a huge incentive for collaborative research between research groups in various European countries, pooling talents from all over Europe.

Research needs international collaboration, and UK funding only would make it more difficult.

In my experience, EU funding is often used to force research groups across Europe to 'collaborate'. Well at least on paper, since it's so much easier or even required to get funding if you propose 'pooling talent' and other buzz terms.

Just as a sanity check: there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit.

Btw, here in Switzerland the sky didn't fall either after the people voted to 'leave' (the free EU labor market). After all the doomsday talk, Swiss labs can still apply to EU grants. The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs.

Calm down people. Nothing gets eaten as hot as it gets cooked. Its of mutual benefit for almost everyone in Europe to continue free trade with Britain.

I think you painted a very rosy picture of the EU/Switzerland situation when it comes to research, which has nothing to do with the reality.

Here in Germany we have locally funded research, research on the state level, research on the Bundesrepublik level, international research cooperations and EU research. All at the same time. No one forces scientists to 'collaborate'.

> there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit.

Countries in Europe want to see it coordinated and research pooled. Every government does that on a local level for its research budgets. The EU does that on a larger scale. Switzerland is a tiny country. CERN would not exist without outside money and collaborative research.

Actually, for Switzerland, Swiss labs cannot apply to all EU research grants now. And I think it's a temporary agreement, which may well be scraped quite soon, if Switzerland really implements the controls on immigration. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/03/eu-swiss-singl... EPFL did not seem and does not seem so happy about the situation.

> The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs.

Switzerland labs are actually performing very well, and get more money from the EU research budget than what Switzerland gives to the EU budget (net gain of CHF 219 millions according to http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/aktuell/medien/00483/00586/index.ht... )

International collaboration is beneficial: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/05/debunking-the-m...

Yes, you can collaborate without a specific grant, but in my experience, it makes the collaboration easier.

Living in Switzerland, working in Science. It's been bad, but compensated for now. But soon its going to get worse. The referendum on mass migration results has not been fully implemented, so the EU has only refused to ratify one treaty (H2020).

Once the Swiss government actually implements the anti mass migration and breaks the core of the bilateral, a lot more treaties will go on both sides. This has not happened yet, and you can feel the worry on the political, economic and academic top. The quiet before the storm is almost over. Switserland, was not even part of the single market (customs for goods is still a thing here).

Switzerland also had the advantage of buying an insane amount of euro's and is tightly bound to the success of the eurozone. The UK central bank does not have such a stockpile of euro's and is much weaker in that regards.

Switzerland, is not a good example for the UK.

> The UK is a net payer to the EU

This is true in all areas except research funding. That's because researchers can take part in EU-funded projects (e.g. Horizon 2020) where the funding was awarded to a multi-national project team and so doesn't form part of the UK entitlement.

Agreed, and think what it will mean for non-STEM research funding.

and that £350m a week that is supposedly sent to the EU is more like £140m

IIRC, £350m/wk is the gross amount, £140m/wk is the net.

So the EU payments were taxed? By whom?

That's net of money paid to the UK by the EU. Like the aforementioned Welsh CS funding.

Yup, and only naively accounts for the cash flow. It doesn't consider any of the downstream benefits of the single market, free movement, or coherent continental legislation which together will completely swamp the measly £140m/week net cash contribution we make.

The UK isn't a protectionist state, they'll do what they can to ensure global free trade. Firstly, to keep access to the EU's 'single market', and secondly to attempt agile free trade with other countries around the world.

It'll be interesting to look in 10 years and see who is more protectionist and less open.

But of course that means staying in the EEA for the moment at least; which means freedom of movement, EU regulations, but now with much reduced influence... CETA for example took 5.5 years to negotiate and of course it still needs to be ratified.

On the other hand if the UK leaves the EU and the EEA then under EU rules it will need to wait until it fully leaves before it can negotiate a CETA style trade agreement. In the mean time one could assume that UK / EU trade would follow WTO norms.

[EDIT] fixed typo

Freedom of movement is actually a fairly good thing, though.

> EU regulations, but now without (sic) much reduced influence

You are misinformed, please read '1. "No Say"' of 'The Case For The EEA Option' [0]:

  The next level of argument surrounding “no say” is that
  despite not having a vote in EU institutions, EEA countries
  have some ability to protect their own interests from EU law.
  They retain a “right of reservation” - a veto - as set out in
  Article 102 of the EEA agreement and thus have the right
  to opt out of new EU legislation. This is a right that the
  UK as an EU member does not have.

That is just a single point against the 'no say' argument. There is a lot more discussed within that article, including how influence is generally exerted "upstream".

> Under EU rules it will need to wait until it fully leaves before it can negotiate a CETA style trade agreement.

Yet preliminary talks over global trade are already happening.

Trade agreements can be agreed faster than the length of time it takes to agree big complex EU-style agreements anyway [1].

[0] http://www.adamsmith.org/evolution-not-revolution

[1] http://www.adamsmith.org/free-trade-agile-trade/

> Freedom of movement is actually a fairly good thing, though.

It's one of the parts of the EU I like better, but isn't it one of the things the people voting Leave most disliked? Leaving the EU only to still have unrestricted immigration from eastern Europe seems like an outcome UKIP would consider a hollow victory.

> Freedom of movement is actually a fairly good thing, though.

I fully agree, however it was an extremely large part of the "leave" campaign.

You're talking about a government that recently made computer programming class a mandatory part of the high school curriculum. Your leap from "UK exits the EU" to "there will no longer be funding for computer science research" is based purely on your own emotions, not rational analysis. Like so much else I hear from pro-EU people these days.

The current funding is going away and there has not yet been an announcement of its replacement. The government has however spent years implementing "austerity" and attempting to cut public spending. It's very optimistic to think that any more money will be forthcoming.

Importantly the government has announced more austerity after the referendum.

Yeah, you did not understand what he wrote. He specially mentions his program in North Wales which relies on EU funding.

You can't deny there will be less funding, given the amount of funding we receive from the EU. Though hopefully the new PM will prioritise investment in research and hopefully given the strong technology sector in the UK CompSci will get a reasonable share of it. But that's still to be seen and given May's attitude toward technology experts and level of knowledge during the discussions around the Snoopers Charter I'm sceptical of her understanding and appreciation of the importance of the technology sector.

The EU doesn't "fund" anything, the UK funds the EU by paying in more than it gets back out. It's literally the UK's own money being recycled through Brussels, except with extra rules and exchange rate risks thrown in.

Whether or not research funding is cut is an entirely open question right now. Maybe it will be: the EU has effectively been overriding the austerity policies everyone else in the economy has had to deal with, and academias has benefited from that. But as no policies have been announced yet, nobody can know what will happen.

We all know this. The UK has been funding a bureaucracy in the EU that in turn funds projects in impoverished areas of the UK (amongst others). It will need to replace that bureaucracy; the transaction and planning costs on everything on the drawing board to in progress right now, will not be cheap, quite apart from the direct funding costs. The replacement bureaucracy probably won't be cheaper either, since it will have less efficiencies of scale and less institutional experience.

In short, "nobody can know what will happen" is expensive; it directly implies that the immediate short term will be costly.

That's not how EU funding works. It distributes funds with many rules attached, but implementing those rules is the job of local government bureaucracies not the EU.

The EU regional development funds are notoriously wasteful, I wouldn't ascribe any value to scale or institutional experience.

> The EU regional development funds are notoriously wasteful

Can you give references? Preferably not only one anecdotical example, and with comparisons with state development funds (especially from the UK).

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-33360841

http://www.politico.eu/article/eu-wasted-money-on-new-airpor...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11985763...

I don't know of any comparisons with state-run development funds in the UK, if you find one let me know, but post-Gordon Brown the UK tends to focus less on big spending projects to try and economically boost the regions, hence the grumbling about how London gets the lions share of investment funding.

The EU likes to dole out a lot of money to businesses for investment purposes, which is suspiciously close to central planning. I doubt national-level central planners do a radically better job though.

as no policies have been announced yet, nobody can know what will happen

Yes, and this is the short-term disaster of Brexit: much investment goes on hold until we know what will happen.

It might be better in the long run, but we have no idea what the long run will look like at the moment because there was no Brexit manifesto and a serious conflict between the "EEA" Brexit and the anti-immigrant Brexit.

Eh? Academia has definitely been hit hard by austerity like the rest of the public sector. There have been basically no pay rises since the Tories came in.

If you think "basically no pay rises" is what austerity means then I think you just proved my point for me ...

edit: To clarify (given the telling off below), the rest of the public sector in the UK has seen massive budget cuts with 20, 30, 40% loss not being uncommon in some departments, or in the BEST case (like the NHS) large workload increases with extremely small or no budget increases. It's hard for me to imagine how anyone could be unaware of that given the amount of coverage of it over the last 8 years.

So when someone says "no pay rises" is the same thing as being hit hard by austerity, that shows a remarkable level of disconnection from what's going on elsewhere.

There's no need for this kind of remark, all you're doing is posturing to preserve your ego instead of actually trying to understand. This is not communicating in good faith. Please try to do better.

Can you give me an example of a public sector job that has taken a 40% pay cut? I'm really interested to know.

We are seeing a cut in funding because until we exit and redistribute that money the EU will in the meantime not fund UK scientists or UK based projects.

As I said given May's history with the technology industries it seems unlikely.

I am pro EU AND pro Brexit, the latter from rational analysis. It will be a net win for me. My company does export telco services to the UK. After the UK leaving the EU the VAT will not apply any longer, so basically I net 20% more after taxes that go straight out of the pocket of the UK government into mine (btw: there is no competitor right now and none in sight...). Even if the UK is imposing the 4% max tariff I would net a 16% plus.

"...the research will start to dry up and the interesting researchers will leave with it. Take away the research and what's left is a department of third-rate lecturers. That's not an inspiring way to learn."

Do researchers in Wales teach much anyway? I know that, in the USA, researchers teach as little as possible.

Schools should get back to the proper job of teaching students. Research is best done by private institutions with their own funding. Government education funding should be used for education proper, not fluffing a featherbed for Nobel laureates.

Private, endowment and British funds can make up for the EU. Getting out from under EU regulations and negotiating as a free agent is a better deal for most Brits.

[ edit: must have touched a nerve. +1 to -4 in an instant. ]

> Private, endowment […] funds can make up for the EU

Ah, yes. Private charities providing public services, the driving force behind the rise of communism in the 19th century.

> Getting out from under EU regulations and negotiating as a free agent is a better deal for most Brits.

People keep saying that, but why? Britain is now in a much worse negotiation position than before.

Could you specify some of the "EU regulations" that we should be getting out from under?

Well, for example all the bad stuff TTIP will bring the rest of Europe? Everybody here is pissed about TTIP. Now the Brits vote to get into a position to do something about such undemocratic bs and suddenly they are the bad guys? I see the pro-EU marketing campaign in which all the smart, rich and famous people that you should want to be like, say pro EU things, is working well. Even among the intellectual HN crowd.

All this anti UK sentiment is caused by fear mongering from the pro-EU lobby. The Brits are our friends, but just like the Russians, they don't dance to the tune of the power hungry EU bureaucrats and the propaganda machine is suddenly aimed in their direction.

People keep talking about how the UK will be able to negotiate its own market access deals after brexit. What that means in practice is that if TTIP goes ahead it will be the only route to US trade deals.

Also TTIP is the kind of think I can see a Conservative government signing up to immediately. The UK is far more "free market" than the rest of Europe.

> if TTIP goes ahead it will be the only route to US trade deals.

That's just not true [0] [1].

There's been a lot of movement relating to countries being open to global free trade [2].

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/06/29/...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/11/brexit-is-a...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/business-min...

> Well, for example all the bad stuff TTIP will bring the rest of Europe? Everybody here is pissed about TTIP. Now the Brits vote to get into a position to do something about such undemocratic bs and suddenly they are the bad guys?

As far as I understand it the UK was a very strong driving force behind TTIP.. Getting us into this mess and then leaving before the consequences start to affect you, isn't very nice to say the least.

All this anti UK sentiment is caused by fear mongering from the pro-EU lobby.

And the xenophobic posturing of the Leave side is not to blame?

Oh, just workers rights, human rights, safety regulations, that sort of thing...

Not sure if sarcasm, but:

- Human rights are governed by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which is a separate organization and treaty than the EU. It's unlikely the UK will leave the Council of Europe too.

- Safety regulations on products are part of the single market treaties, just as free movement of people is. If the UK wants to remain in the EEA (e.g. through membership of the EFTA), it will still have to accept those.

Actually, the incoming prime minister wants to get out of the ECHR: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/25/uk-must-leav...

And this coming from a politician that, for most of the Brexit campaign, kept on the sidelines because she was undecided about which side to choose? From a minister that introduced the Snooper's Charter, massively expanding the scope of their intelligence services? Yeah, those pesky human rights could well interfere with her method of governing.

But her statement really shows her (willful) ignorance:

"The ECHR can bind the hands of parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals – and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russia’s when it comes to human rights"

As the home office minister, she should know damn well that the ECHR has no teeth except for EU regulation. Leave the EU, and there is no enforcement mechanism left for ECHR rulings. Not to mention the inconsistency of her own statement: how come the ECHR binds the hands of the UK government, but not Russia's? (The answer is above: it's EU regulation, not ECHR that bound her hands).

If private endowment wanted to fund those researchers - they would have already done so, since they respond to market forces and not on charity towards North Wales.

The reason why the EU was providing funding was because market forces were unwilling to.

I don't doubt there are funds in the UK, but so far it's been far more common to rely on the EU for projects that require a longer or more nebulous time horizon, with little or no payback.

You only need to look at startup funding:

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/06/24/2167618/the-risk-to-uk...

And you realize there will be repercussions for funding and endowments too.

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