Medical Research Council bans Scientists from lobbying Parliament

What are we to make of the Medical Research Council ?

They are a body of whom I should, I suppose, have a soft spot. After all, they provided my salary until Margaret Thatcher decided we did not need Medical Research done in the UK, and ripped their budget to shreds, throwing me on the dole and from there into the military weapons design, development and manufacturing business.

This morning I read that they have discouraged scientists paid by them from lobbying parliament to SUPPORT the furtherance of science in this country.

Fearing some sort of 'backlash' they have instructed the heads of the largest bodies funded by them to make it known to all their staff that they "cannot support" any who decide to lobby their Member of Parliament to advise them of of their feelings over the scientific research they carry out, which pays their wages and at least attempts to keep this country where it once was, and where it should be, in the ingenuity and brains business - at the top.

But now they treaten "not to support" scientists who choose to exercise their legal right to talk to their MP at their MP's place of work. And that's another issue rather close to my heart too. For I am one of a thousand or so who took part in the most delightfully troublesome (for new Liebour's control freaks) mass lobby of Parliament, the largest ever seen, and the largest that will ever be seen again until we get a government who pay more than lip service to the rights enshrined in law for the electorate to come and make their feelings known to their MP.

I wonder what "not supporting" means ? well, when the MRC stopped "supporting" me it meant a trip to the dole queue.

So what is behind this ? Well I wonder. Their man at the top has made a name for himself in the very technologies this loby of parliament was intended to show support for.

So is it that the man at the top feels he can get further by a quiet word in the ear of those who matter, or is it that they wish to avoid challenging the rabid rantings of the nearest thing we have in this country to the yankee "religious right" ?

Certainly the Roman Catholic Church - who are almost as afraid of scientific progress as the moslems, have not been terribly truthful in their vociferous noises against the latest reserch moves. They rant at "hybrid embryo stem cell" research knowing full well the technique involves nothing more than placing fully adult cell nuclei into the denucleated cytoplasm of animal cells and therefore seeks to COMPLETELY REMOVE the need for human embryonic cells in that most contrversial - and most hopeful - area of research.

So could those who took up Galilleo's job now be getting back into bed with the Holy Inquisition ? I don't know, but I don't like the idea of those charged with progressing science through the interation of theory and experiment trying to deny the right to lobby one's MP as enshrined in law.