Jodrell Bank shocker

Couldn't believe my ears this morning, driving back from taking Nikki to work. Jodrell Bank, Britain's iconic radio telescope, is under threat of closure after the Science and Technology Facilities Council cut funding for the Merlin array. Merlin, a linked network of 7 radio telescopes across the UK, has an effective aperture of 217km and a resolution slightly higher than that of the Hubble Space Telescope.

So even though it was 50 years old last year, it's no slouch in the rapidly moving world of radio astronomy. Now all this is at risk because of funding problems. And how much money are we talking about? Must be significant, right? I mean if the government is trying to save money, it must be SERIOUS money. Think of all the billions they're pouring into pointless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Come on, how much money will they save by sacrificing the most well-known and instantly recognisable piece of scientific equipment in the entire country?

£2.5million.

Yep, you read that right. Two and a half million quid. There's probably as much as that rattling around in the expenses funds of our politicians, but you'll never know - they don't have to submit receipts.

What makes this even more ironic is that Jodrell Bank has just been completely refurbished, and the Merlin network itself upgraded in a project to install fibre-optic cables that has only recently finished, and would have allowed the array to process vastly more data than it could before. Closing the array down now means all that money - still PUBLIC money of course - will be wasted before any benefit has been gained.

When I worked in Kidsgrove I could look out from my desk across the fields to Jodrell Bank. When the dish of the Lovell telescope was in the right orientation it would catch the sun and gleam at me through the haze. An other-worldly reminder of the world-leading research that went on there every day. If we're to lose this awe-inspiring talisman then it's a sad day indeed, and another nail in the coffin of British science and engineering.