• Question: Do you agree with UKIP's ideas?

    Asked by JAMIES to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane, Julian on 7 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by 282spaa47.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 7 Nov 2014:

      Ideas for what? I’m afraid a lot of politics rather bores me, I know its needed, but its not for me.

    • Photo: Jane MacArthur

      Jane MacArthur answered on 7 Nov 2014:

      From what I know of them, no I don’t. In particular I think they would be very damaging for the UK’s science research community and industry.
      I try to stay up to date and get involved with space and science policy, as I think it is very important for scientists to inform government with evidence based research, which largely take place via consultations with scientific professional bodies such as the Institute of Physics, Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry and many more. It is a shame there are very few scientists *in* government, we need more.

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 9 Nov 2014:

      I’m with Jane on this one. Being a part of the EU is really important for our research funding – we get a ton of our money this way! – and it means we get a say in how the cash is spent on science projects in the rest of Europe. It also makes it really easy for scientists to go and work in the other member countries, and work together on projects with our European neighbours 🙂 And yes – we definitely need more scientists in government!

    • Photo: Heather Campbell

      Heather Campbell answered on 9 Nov 2014:

      I agree with Jane and Helen, being a part of the European Astronomical community is vital for the large scale research projects which we are all involved in nowadays. For example the exciting European Space Agency (ESA) mission Rosetta, which is attempting to touchdown a lander on the comment 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday this week. And the ESA Gaia satellite mission I work on, which involves more than 450 scientists from over 20 different countries around Europe.

    • Photo: Hugh Osborn

      Hugh Osborn answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      As scientists, we rely on international collaboration and the free movement of people within the EU (almost half of the academics in my department are European). We also rely on funding on science for our jobs. UKIP would cut all that and have us live in the dark ages.

      No thanks.

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