To want to kick both David Cameron and Nick Clegg in the shins!

[TheCalmingManatee]

I honestly feel like getting on a train, marching up to number ten, barging in and kicking them in the shin!!!

I am desperately trying to get a job, i am in the process of trying to secure a fellowship which will get me back on my career ladder. It would also allow me to do some real, useful biomedical research that will make a real difference to the condition i would be researching, it has the potential to save lives. The trust i am applying too are really impressed with my draft proposal and feel that on top of it being a good project, I will make a good fellow. This is people telling me that i will be a good scientist after i thought i was going to have to turn my back on my career for good.

BUT my application has had to be put on hold because of difficulties that the trust are having securing funding for Biomedical Research. :( What it comes down to, there is just no money and companies/organisations are not able/interested in funding medical research. There is no investment in the sciences in this country - it was bad before this crock of shit government came into power and starting making swathing cuts left right and centre. Leaving research as a very unsound investment.

I have seen friends made redundant because the major pharma companies are taking their money elsewhere, I have seen academics walk away from their research careers because they have to have job security and there simply isn't any - without academic research, the pharma companies will have no backbone on which to base their clinical research.

On a personal level, i am probably going to give up on science, i don't have any choice, I am too long out of the game to step back in even at a tech level. I worked myself senseless to get a degree and then PhD and i feel that it was all for nothing. Its not because im crap, i have an email in my inbox telling me that i have the potential to be a good fellow on a prestigious fellowship, i have a professor of biology who is keen for me to work with him, but he has no money in his lab, like many of his collegues and peers up and down the country, they have ideas and ongoing projects that are being shelve because there is simply no investment. These projects are not flights of fancy, there is ground breaking, life saving research that is just being filed in the back of filing cabinets because there is no money!

Me? well i just don't know - I know i need to keep positive and keep applying for jobs but im either over qualified and no one will take me seriously, or i don't have the experience to compete in such a competitive market.

So, thanks Dave, thanks Nick - thanks for nothing!!!

I know its not really the govenrments fault directly that I can't get a job, but i am sick of blaming myself and feeling like shit. I want to contribute, i want to make a difference, i want to pay tax ffs - but i can't and im

Well you take Cameron & Clegg and I'll go at Owen Paterson with an angry badger. They have no idea about science, no idea of supporting it as part of the British economy, seem oblivious to the brain drain to Europe & elsewhere, and aren't even able to accept the advice of scientists employed by them to carry out research. Grrr.

Sorry you're so disheartened, something always comes up eventually, especially if you make it known you're looking for work. Is there something low key you can do for now and just keep an eye out?

If you could kick Gove a bit while you're there, a lot of people would appreciate it.

YABU. You should aim your kick higher.

Hmm, maybe instead of culling badgers we could round them up and just release them in to the House of Commons.

Jammy im doing some volunteer work (or at least just getting back to it) in my field (sort of) but its not likely to lead anywhere and i get stressed because it takes up alot of my time, time thati should be using to look for work - im long term unemployed and felt like this fellowship was my last chance.

HairExtensions - i know that, but i have anger issues and didn't want to come across as overly aggresive

TheCalming, a serious question. Is medical research sensibly funded here and internationally? I've got a cousin, a professor at a US university, who seems to be conducting identical oncology research to a project being funded here. All he cares about is finishing first. Is it efficient to fund teams all over the world to carry out the same research?
I'm wholly on side with you about funding science - just interested to know how sensible the systems are.

I agree with HairExtensions.

My husband is a brilliant scientist, a leader in his field and qualified up to his ears. The British taxpayers funded 20+ years of education and training for him but the shortsightedness of the government means that another country now reaps the benefit of that investment. Madness.

Calming, really hope something comes up for you. I'm also doing the volunteering-in-the-hope-of-resurrecting-my-career-post-children thing. Don't loose heart! And yes, kick higher.

grovel to be fair, i am not overly familiar with funding applications and how it is allocated. There are lots of bodies to approach for funding but the amount of funding that is being allocated is drastically reduced. I would think that it would be highly unlikely that you would receive funding for a project that is being replicated elsewhere. It could be that people are working on the same thing, but with a different approach, it depends what the proposed outcome would be i should think.

Calming, thanks.

YANBU can I come

The thing that gets to me is that they do all this, make all these cuts etc and then spin it to make it look like the jobless are feckless, lazy scroungers who refuse to look for work.

Bastards.

You're kicking the wrong people. I've seen a lot of governments come and go in my aged years and 'twas ever thus.

Labour spend spend spend and get us into dire shit........Conservatives come along and try and get us back on track and........people don't like it so they vote Labour and the whole thing starts again.

Maybe we would have money for research if Gordon Brown hadn't sold our gold reserves for a mere pittance?

Yet I've never felt the need to set badgers on a politician before GreyWiffle.

I rather think Labour had to spend a fair bit to clear up the mess left by the previous Conservative Government. NHS anyone?

Why do people keep banging on about gold reserves??

I am not saying the labour party are any less to blame, but it was the conservatives who were government when pfizer upped and took their billions elsewhere because of the constraints put on research by THIS GOVERNMENT!

What peole fail to understand is, if you have no money, yes of course you have to cut down what you spend and that way, you will manage - i know this because this is how i have to run my house just now. Now this works very well, its common sense isn't it? Well yes, if all you ever want to do is scrape by - is that what we want for our children - to live in a time of austerity - but its OK, because we are "all in it together"!!! Unless this government wakes the fuck up and stops smothering the economy with its blanket of cuts we are screwed. My DP is a bloody fantastic carpetner/builder - people often say to him, "with your talents Mr Calming, you should be rolling in money" But he can't make full use of his talents because we are running such a tight ship that we can't invest in the business, we do, where we can, but we can't run large jobs (and therefore provide work to people and boost the economy) because we can't fund them, we can't advertise - there is no investment. That is where the analogy stops, the UK is not a one man band building company - its a co-operative, or at least it should be. I don't know very much about politics at all and i daresay someone will come along who does and put me straight but right now i can see this country going to shit. Yes, there i a world recession but not investing in industry and development is a huge mistake.

Then THEN they come along with some hairbrain scheme of slackening planning restrictions and not making construction companies build a % of affordable housing. To boost the construction industry??? Errr, that wont work because no one will be able to AFFORD the bloody houses that are being built. Another knee jerk policy by the chuckle brothers!

It would be funny if peoples lives weren't being ruined!