DrZoidberg
Contributor
I have a good Swedish friend who is a researcher at Oxford, and has been for over a decade now. He's moving back to Sweden. Sweden has been trying to get him to come back to build up a research institute for many years now. Only now did they finally manage to talk him into it. Why? Because of Brexit. I asked him why in detail and his reply was quite interesting. I thought it might interest you guys on this forum as well.
Because of Brexit Great Britain decided to just break all of the academic agreements and cooperations they were in with EU countries. Agreements and projects that have taken decades to form. They removed themselves from the Galileo satellite navigation system and launched their own, (Inmarsat). Well... that was dumb. It's the kind of project where cooperation is good for everybody. The more the better. There was no reason to break with the EU on this. But worst of all, the Inmarsat system is complete shit. It turned out that the UK didn't have the know-how to run their own satellites. Great Britain intelligently enough stayed in Euratom. That was the least dumb thing they've done. But now they're a member with zero influence. Only EU member states have a say in how that is run. Wasn't the point of Brexit that Great Britain wanted to retain more power over what goes on in the UK?
British scientists who have worked around the EU for decades, who now have families and deep connections to these other countries, what did they do in Brexit? Did they leave these countries and move back to the UK? No. they stayed in the the countries they were based. Joining whatever non-British European academic institution that made the most sense to them. While Non-Brits in the UK left the UK to move back home. Because future funding became insecure. Nobody knew what was going to happen in the future. Like my friend, a lot of these were established and famous and having these associated to your university is high prestige. Headhunters are always trying to get them. They need very little convincing to move right now. In effect there's now a sale on UK based researchers.
In an attempt to streamline government a bunch of technical functionaries associated with the EU were fired. The Johnson government rejoiced over having kicked out EU leaches. Well... it turned out that these weren't leaches. They were actually very useful and important for making the entire government apparatus working. No thought was given to how these functions were supposed to keep working after Brexit. So they didn't. These functionaries were critical to making research function across Europe, and within the UK. All broken in one swoop. My friend ended it was saying that there's a "myriad" other important processes (for research and business) that just stopped working with Brexit, that will take decades to fix. Until then this will make any research painful and complicated to do in the UK. Since there's nothing stopping UK researchers from just moving to EU countries, that's what they are doing now.
Add to that mismanaged and populistic Covid regulations during the Pandemic, causing massive disruptions to doing anything in the UK, let alone research. There's also macro issues. The Johnson government is corrupt and populistic. Economic policies have been stupid and we're heading at rocket speed into a recession. That doesn't bode well for any sector in the UK and if the country is broke, funding for research tends to dry up.
I hope this was interesting to you.
And if you challenge me on this, I have no way of defending this. These are not my opinions. They are my friends opinions. I haven't based this post on any data I have or conclusions I have reached myself.
Because of Brexit Great Britain decided to just break all of the academic agreements and cooperations they were in with EU countries. Agreements and projects that have taken decades to form. They removed themselves from the Galileo satellite navigation system and launched their own, (Inmarsat). Well... that was dumb. It's the kind of project where cooperation is good for everybody. The more the better. There was no reason to break with the EU on this. But worst of all, the Inmarsat system is complete shit. It turned out that the UK didn't have the know-how to run their own satellites. Great Britain intelligently enough stayed in Euratom. That was the least dumb thing they've done. But now they're a member with zero influence. Only EU member states have a say in how that is run. Wasn't the point of Brexit that Great Britain wanted to retain more power over what goes on in the UK?
British scientists who have worked around the EU for decades, who now have families and deep connections to these other countries, what did they do in Brexit? Did they leave these countries and move back to the UK? No. they stayed in the the countries they were based. Joining whatever non-British European academic institution that made the most sense to them. While Non-Brits in the UK left the UK to move back home. Because future funding became insecure. Nobody knew what was going to happen in the future. Like my friend, a lot of these were established and famous and having these associated to your university is high prestige. Headhunters are always trying to get them. They need very little convincing to move right now. In effect there's now a sale on UK based researchers.
In an attempt to streamline government a bunch of technical functionaries associated with the EU were fired. The Johnson government rejoiced over having kicked out EU leaches. Well... it turned out that these weren't leaches. They were actually very useful and important for making the entire government apparatus working. No thought was given to how these functions were supposed to keep working after Brexit. So they didn't. These functionaries were critical to making research function across Europe, and within the UK. All broken in one swoop. My friend ended it was saying that there's a "myriad" other important processes (for research and business) that just stopped working with Brexit, that will take decades to fix. Until then this will make any research painful and complicated to do in the UK. Since there's nothing stopping UK researchers from just moving to EU countries, that's what they are doing now.
Add to that mismanaged and populistic Covid regulations during the Pandemic, causing massive disruptions to doing anything in the UK, let alone research. There's also macro issues. The Johnson government is corrupt and populistic. Economic policies have been stupid and we're heading at rocket speed into a recession. That doesn't bode well for any sector in the UK and if the country is broke, funding for research tends to dry up.
I hope this was interesting to you.
And if you challenge me on this, I have no way of defending this. These are not my opinions. They are my friends opinions. I haven't based this post on any data I have or conclusions I have reached myself.
