"The Light Of Science"

Well, yippee, someone has mentioned to Tony Blair that our science base is utterly screwed, that fewer and fewer students are doing science subjects and that we are in danger of becoming a science wasteland. So what did Tony say? Well, this as it happens.

It appears that the "Dear Leader" has had a wondrous, Damascene conversion to the ways of science. Strange considering how he seems to cosy up to the Vardy foundation when it comes to teaching Creationism in schools.

It's pathetic really. Bliar tells young kids that science, is "really great". So great that you went to Oxford and ran away from the sciences as fast as you could go. The fact is, there is little in terms of science leadership in the government. Even the stupidly-eared Charles Clarke (ex NUS president with a Maths degree from Cambridge) didn't seem to pop his head over the parapet to talk about this. How queer.

In the current education system its fairly obvious that science will suffer. Thankfully, I'm not the only one who thinks this In comparison to most other subjects, sciences are hard. You need a grounding of knowledge before you can do much useful. But in the current market-led, consumer focused university system, science doesn't give instant results and is seen as inflexible and useless by students. Result? No science students. Instead, they all wander off to do "softer" subjects (see this BBC story).

Worse, there is no real political will to change anything, because any alternative would be messy. So instead we get tired, empty, recycled platitudes from Bliar. Nice.