2 weeks of workshops taking its toll!

I was at IMDEA for this workshop on energy in networks, then at this one at Microsoft on Network Economics, then another one at UKERNA on SuperJANET 6 research requirements planning at the very nice Royal Society Chichelery Hall Kavli center then there's this one at the Isaac Newton Institute on networkmeasurements, and one on new internet architectures and incentives rn by the Eiffel thinktank, then one at Telefonica I+D on a vision for 2020 networking, then this one run by the Trilogy Project on resource pooling

Boy, now I need a vacation:)

here we go again with government interference

without waiting for Lord Brown of Madingley's report, the new government make proncouncements about UK Universities - the BBC is reporting David Willett's saying he needs 700M savings and the coalition's evidence-free arguments that
a) we (the uk universities) are in a financial mess
and
b) that we have to find ways to be cheaper and more flexible.

Well we don't actually. We are quite cheap (which is because we have to serve the UK government) compared to a lot of EU and US universities AND we are evidentially quite flexible and quite good (compred to most EU universities) - the government should check the figures on health and education in the UK and compare them with similar quality systems in the world. We attract a lot of overseas students of very high quality preceisely because we strike both a bargain, and a high standard. We don';t have to serve the UK - we could just turn into private institutions for rich kids from here and overeas. Or we could be rubbish. But we are not inflexible or expensive.

Frankly, I'd held out a bit of hope that this new government would actually base its policy on facts, but it looks like I was hopelessly naive and sentimental.

What a shame