@ChrisMayLA6 This doesn't need to be an art Vs science thing. Both have been underfunded for a long time. Jodrell bank has been existing on supplemental donations for a long time.

I wonder what the government thinks their job is? Our cultural and scientific exports to the world have been huge, but they show no desire to invest.

@ChrisMayLA6 What strikes me about this (appaling as it is) that Jodrell Bank and the telescope are iconic images of British scientific history. The telescope represents our long-term historic involvement in astronomy and science in general.

The possibility of losing it is about saying that we no longer have a place in scientific progress. We are ceding this to Europe and China. That is not good.

@ChrisMayLA6 The timing of the decision to defund looks suspicious. It was presumably agreeable to ministers and officials in a department that has since been abolished - and the two most senior ministers in it - #LizKendal and #patrickvallance - have left the government. This looks like the - equal and opposite - mirror image of a practice known as 'tombstone funding' whereby an organisation in the course of being abolished finds ways of making financial provisions for 'legacy projects.

@ChrisMayLA6 It's almost as if the Labour government has taken a page from the Trump/Musk playbook.

@ChrisMayLA6

like the arts defunding, this is deliberate, targetted harm.

by a group of people who want to know the cost of everything, but do not know the value of anything.