E. Nesbit and the Fabian Society - a topsy-turvy world

Extract from Five Children and It:

[The Psammead to Jane] ‘Just wish, will you, that you may never be able, any of you, to tell anyone a word about Me.’

‘Why?’ asked Jane.

‘Why, don’t you see, if you told grown-ups I should have no peace of my life. They’d get hold of me, and they wouldn’t wish silly things like you do, but real earnest things; and the scientific people would hit on some way of making things last after sunset, as likely as not; and they’d ask for a graduated income-tax, and old-age pensions and manhood suffrage, and free secondary education, and dull things like that; and get them, and keep them, and the whole world would be turned topsy-turvy. Do wish it! Quick!’

Anthea repeated the Psammead’s wish ...

(E. Nesbit, Five Children and It, Puffin Books 1959, pp.213-214)

Edith Nesbit wrote a number of highly popular children's books, under the name ‘E. Nesbit’. Five Children and It, first published in 1902, is about children who find a Sand-fairy, or Psammead (a small furry creature which is able to grant wishes) in a gravel pit.

Edith Nesbit was a founder-member of the Fabian Society, dedicated to social reforms in a generally socialist direction, so she may well have been in sympathy with the developments which the Psammead deplores as likely to turn the world topsy-turvy.

The Fabian Society took its name from a Roman general* noted for his delaying tactics, and its motto was ‘Festina Lente’ (hasten slowly). Its logo was a tortoise. The Fabian Society was soon superseded by other socialist societies with a more aggressive and collectivist approach, which eventually led to the Welfare State in 1945.

By now we have all the social reforms which the Psammead would have liked to avoid (and more), Western civilisation is on the verge of collapse, but almost no one would question the desirability of ‘free’ secondary education, of the vote depending only on reaching a certain age, or of graduated income tax, as well as of miscellaneous ‘benefits’.

The national health service had not yet been thought of in 1902, and Nesbit does not mention it in the extract quoted. But it was not difficult to predict that reforms of this kind, once they started to be made, could never be reversed (Margaret Thatcher’s ‘ratchet effect’) and would eventually ruin any society which adopted them.

* Fabius Maximus

Margaret Thatcher and the educationalists

[The Department of Education and Science] was a department with an entrenched culture and a settled agenda of its own which it pursued with little reference to ministers or the rest of Whitehall. The convention was that education was above politics: government’s job was to provide the money but otherwise leave the running of the education system to the professionals. Political control, such as it was, was exercised not by the DES but by the local educational authorities up and down the country; the real power lay with the professional community of teachers, administrators and educational academics, all of whom expected to be consulted – and listened to – before any change in the organisation or delivery of education was contemplated ...

Politically as well as temperamentally, Mrs Thatcher was antipathetic to the DES. She instinctively disliked its central project, the spread of comprehensive schools, and the whole self-consciously ‘progressive’ ideology that lay behind it. She disliked the shared egalitarian and collectivist philosophy of the educational establishment ... (John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher: The Grocer’s Daughter, 2000, Jonathan Cape, p.212)

No doubt Margaret Thatcher was inhibited in what she could do as Education Secretary and had to implement the intentions of Ted Heath’s government. And no doubt she was also inhibited with regard to the ideas she could express without fear of condemnation.

Expressing approval of grammar (selected) schools was as far as a public figure could go in supporting the idea that there were differences between individuals and that the object of education should not be to iron these out, but to provide opportunities that corresponded to individual aptitude and inclination.

The body of agents of the collective, referred to as being considered ‘above politics’ – the teachers, educational experts, etc. – were actually almost universally left-wing, and this had a strong correlation with their attitudes in practice to educational issues. Margaret Thatcher was in favour of young people being able to rise in the world by their own efforts and by using their abilities as effectively as possible.

The grammar schools were modified by their increasing dependence on the state and by the increasing dominance of egalitarian ideology.

My experience (as a student) of grammar schools and universities was about a decade later than that of Margaret Thatcher, and by that time it was clear that the idea of people rising in society by virtue of exceptional ability and purposefulness was no longer acceptable, even at grammar schools.

Both the headmistress of the Woodford County High (a grammar school) and Dame Janet Vaughan, the Principal of Somerville College, were clearly against this idea. The former stated explicitly that if someone were able to take exams at an earlier age than usual, or to work simultaneously towards exams in more subjects than usual, these things would be unfair advantages and they should not be allowed.

Dame Janet took the view that if a person encountered any difficulties in achieving their career objectives, they should give up. Since, according to her, innate ability did not exist, their ambitions could not be based on anything objective, and they should be told to settle for something more modest.

My unfunded independent university, which could be publishing analyses of the complex issues involved in the area of education, has been effectively censored and suppressed for decades. Meanwhile, misleading and tendentious material on the topic has continued to flood out from socially recognised sources.

I hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed research department. I make this appeal to all universities, corporations and individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

Margaret Thatcher memorial fund proposal

I propose that a fund be set up in memory of the late Baroness Thatcher, provisionally entitled the Margaret Thatcher Memorial Fund for Academic Exiles.

The fund would be dedicated to giving financial support to those high-IQ individuals whose academic opportunities were damaged by the hostility of members of the education system such as schoolteachers, local education authorities and college principals.

In view of her own experiences, I am sure Margaret Thatcher herself would have been delighted that a fund in her name was helping such individuals by providing them with financial support, to enable them to carry out work which might assist them in regaining the academic positions and status of which they have been unjustly deprived as a result of opposition from the educational and academic establishments.

Margaret Thatcher believed that grammar schools were necessary to help people from backgrounds like hers to “compete with children from privileged homes” [1]. As well as being handicapped by the lack of a private education, she appears to have suffered from social and ideological bias against her at university. Her background, demeanour and political outlook may all have contributed to her being dismissed or despised by people who were well set up in life.

She was, for example, said to have been turned down for a job at Imperial Chemical Industries because she was regarded as “headstrong, obstinate and self-opinionated” [2]. But these may be just the superficial characteristics that go with having the drive and ability necessary to make major intellectual advances.

1. speech to the Conservative Party Conference, 14 October 1977
2. quoted in K. Sathyanarayana, The Power of Humor at the Workplace, 2007

Thomas Jefferson – liberty, security and freemasonry

There is a quotation ascribed in various forms to Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States of America (although it may in fact have originated with Benjamin Franklin). This runs something like this: A country, or a person, that is prepared to sacrifice a little liberty for greater security will lose both and deserves to have neither.

One may well question this on various grounds; how do you define either liberty or security, and what could be meant by deserving something? However, its essential meaning is clear, and is plainly illustrated by modern society. Once state intervention has been allowed to arise, there is no longer such a thing as individual liberty.

The income support handed out by the state is known euphemistically as ‘social security’. Security in this sense and individual liberty are incompatible. You may have one or the other, but you cannot have both.

Thomas Jefferson was one of the Founding Fathers of the USA, some of whom appear to have been Freemasons.

It has been suggested that freemasonry may be a descendant, via medieval military orders such as the Knights Templar, of Gnostic ideas.

Gnostic Christianity, particularly in its secret and persecuted forms, such as Catharism, appears to have had anti-social (or at least asocial) and pro-individualistic ideas. It certainly seems to have been considerably different from the exoteric forms of Christianity as a mass religion with which we are familiar at the present day.

It is possible that Gnostic ideas have had more influence, through the action of esoteric societies such as the Masons, on the development of civilisation than is generally realised.

We appeal for £1m as initial funding for a social science department in my unrecognised and unsupported independent university. This would enable it to publish preliminary analyses of areas in the history of ideas that are currently being ignored because they do not fit with the prevailing ideology.

Margaret Thatcher and Oxford’s radical leftists

Further on the topic of the late Lady Thatcher and the former Principal of Somerville College, Dame Janet Vaughan, this is an extract from Margaret Thatcher: The Grocer’s Daughter by John Campbell:

To Janet Vaughan, proud of Somerville’s left-wing reputation, Miss Roberts was an embarrassment, a cuckoo in her progressive nest.

Campbell quotes Ann Dally, an ex-Somervillian, about Thatcher:

In wartime Oxford, most students were left-wing, especially at Somerville ... We used to laugh at Margaret Roberts when she knocked at our doors and tried to sell us tickets for the Conservative Club ball or a similar event. She seemed so solemn and assured about it and we were intolerant of other people’s certainties ... She fascinated me. I used to talk to her a great deal; she was an oddity. Why? She was a Conservative. She stood out. Somerville had always been a radical establishment and there weren’t many Conservatives about.

There is a strong taboo against any suggestion that those who are running other people’s lives can be adversely motivated towards them on account of their personality. In the case of Margaret Thatcher, vague speculations are entertained that Dame Janet’s discouragements may have influenced her direction in life. But even if so, they are not regarded as damaging, since she was ultimately outstandingly successful as a politician.

In the case of those whose prospects in life might be regarded as damaged by Dame Janet’s discouragement, the possibility is not even entertained that Dame Janet should be regarded as in any way responsible.

There are many more ex-Somervillians who have plainly failed to get into the sort of career they wanted or needed to have than there are who have become Prime Minister.

Dame Janet is described as socialist. Indeed, she was what at the time was called a Fellow Traveller, and was in sympathy with much of what went on in communist countries. This included the rejection of innate ability.

It is not usually supposed that differences of political opinion between educator and student can have an impact on the academic work and success, or otherwise, of the student. However, it is unrealistic to think that the attitudes of those involved in someone’s education may not be significantly favourable or, alternatively, damaging, even if it is not clear why their reactions to a particular person should be negative. (In Margaret Roberts’s case, the reactions were partly due to politics. In my own case, the hostility was not obviously linked to any differences in world view between Dame Janet and myself.)

It can never have been easy for a person to rise to a different social class by exercising exceptional ability. Those already in the higher social class would be threatened by the potentially intrusive outsider. Those who managed to get to Oxford from state schools, such as Margaret Thatcher and myself, aroused antagonism and a wish to prove to the newcomers that they were not so clever as they might think.

Dame Janet’s attitudes were mirrored by those of the Somerville dons, when I was there.

An undergraduate at Somerville who had obtained a scholarship in classics despite her unfavourable state school background, and who was particularly proficient in writing Greek poetry, was told by one of her tutors when she had a Latin epigram published in a prestigious Oxford magazine, ‘It's the first thing you have done since you came up that justifies your scholarship.’ Subsequently, she was told that her tutors did not think she was good enough for an academic career, although they thought she should be able to hold down a non-academic job.

Dame Janet seemed to look down on those from a less exalted background than her own, but tended not to be antagonistic to students from an upper-class background, nor to those of a socialist inclination. However, even being a thorough-going socialist from an upper-class background was not necessarily enough to protect a student from arousing her hostility if the student was also ambitious, especially if they had ambitions to become an academic.

We appeal for £1m as initial funding to enable the relevant departments of my unrecognised and unsupported independent university to publish more adequate analyses of the many unexamined issues in the fields of education and academia. It is high time that an airing was given to many issues which contribute to the ongoing deterioration of modern society.

Trying to compete us out of existence?

I was disgusted, although of course in a familiar way, to hear recently that someone is receiving a grant (from the Perrott-Warwick Fund, administered by Trinity College, Cambridge) to work on an area of research that was initiated by myself and Dr Charles McCreery, which led to no opportunity for us to develop our research in those or any other areas, nor to any career advancement that could lead to opportunity now or in the future.

I was also disgusted to learn of the existence of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, a department within the University of Oxford, while we continue to be prevented from producing constructive work in several areas which should come under that heading.

From a very early stage in my holding of the Perrott-Warrick Studentship, organisations began to be set up in Oxford, none of which had been heard of before, but which succeeded in the objective of ostensibly mirroring any work which I might propose doing, so that financial support, media attention (which we needed, to get supporters) and potential associates were diverted from my incipient organisation.

A rule that the Perrott-Warrick Studentship could not be held by the same person twice was instituted while I was in contact with the Society for Psychical Research. I supposed that this was in order to prevent me from holding the Studentship for a second time, a supposition based on the consistency with which possible other sources of funding were cut off.

Even if it is the case that such a rule still applies, so that Dr McCreery and myself could not hold it for a second time, there are people here now, and have been other people in the past, who would be able to carry on our research in these areas, and who have, like us, no present sources of income.

Dame Janet Vaughan, the ‘old dragon’ of Somerville

There follows an extract from a review in the Daily Mail by Quentin Letts of the book The Real Iron Lady: Working With Mrs Thatcher by Gillian Shephard.

Janet Vaughan, principal of Mrs T’s Oxford college [Somerville], is several times unveiled as a frightful Lefty snoot – she thought young Margaret Roberts no more than ‘a perfectly adequate chemist’ – but can we not have some description of the old dragon? Did Mrs T ever mention her? Did Vaughan’s dismissiveness fuel the great journey from Grantham to Downing Street? (22 March 2013)

Margaret Thatcher was at Somerville about a decade before I was, so Dame Janet was in situ at the time of the onset of the Welfare State. This shows how well worked out the egalitarian ideology of the Welfare State already was, although at that time seldom made explicit. For example, I do not think that anyone at that time would have said explicitly that there was no such thing as innate ability, or no such thing as genetically determined individual differences.

The appointment of Janet Vaughan as Principal of Somerville sheds a strange light on the underlying intentions of the establishment.

They could hardly have regarded such an appointment as unimportant, or been unaware of what Janet Vaughan’s attitudes were likely to be. Somerville was one of a small number of developing women’s colleges which could be expected to attract the cleverest and most ambitious young women from all over the world, a number of whom would return to their native country to become influential in its government. Dame Janet was strongly communistic in outlook, and communism is opposed to precocious ability. Furthermore, there is every reason to think that Dame Janet herself had an IQ which was well below that of the majority of the undergraduates in her college. It is therefore not surprising that she blocked the way of many of them.

State education might have been expected to provide opportunity for exceptional ability, whatever its original circumstances, but in fact egalitarianism was to mean that there was no such thing as an exceptional individual.

When undergraduates at Somerville encountered difficulties, Dame Janet would deny them permission to take the exams for which they were working and also tell them that they should content themselves with less exalted careers.

I knew of one undergraduate who went regularly to a college of further education in the centre of Oxford to work for an external Honours degree in physics from London University, having been told by Dame Janet that at Oxford she would only be allowed to sit the examination for a Pass degree (a degree without Honours).

Margaret Thatcher was told by Dame Janet that she was nothing more than ‘a perfectly adequate chemist’. I was told by her that I was ‘a competent mathematician, and wasn’t that enough for me?’ I wonder how many others, with IQs far above that of Janet Vaughan herself, were told similar things.

And, denying support for a research scholarship to a Somerville graduate I knew who had a high IQ and was really keen to do research, Dame Janet said – perhaps with the implication that the graduate should not mind about it – that ‘research is dull’. The so-called research which she (Dame Janet) did herself certainly was.

Suing your headmaster

It is a feature of modern society that it is impossible to express a need. If society has ruined your education and thrown you out without a usable qualification, this gives you no claim on anyone. The fact that you are suffering, for lack of the sort of high-flying academic career you should have had all along, gives you no claim. The only way to get anyone to take any notice is to assert that someone in the system did something wrong.

The local authority was wrong to persecute my father. But, of course, you cannot prove this. They are delighted to tell you that nothing can be proved. And then they say (as I was told by a Shadow Minister of Education) that you would have to sue for reparation from the actual individual who made a false statement or unjustifiable decision. This is not, I believe, legally correct; the person or persons involved were acting as servants of the local authority, and it is the local authority that should be sued, even if the individuals concerned are dead.

Bu you cannot claim that you were wrongfully treated in terms of your IQ, because IQ is supposed not to exist. And you cannot claim that you were forced to accept arrangements that were in no way in line with your own perception of your needs, because ‘education’ authorities do not have to provide what any child wants. ‘The child has no valid volition’, as someone with long experience of working in the ‘education’ system once said to me.

And then I know that if I tried to sue anyone I would only be risking money – money which I so badly need to work towards setting up my own institutional environment – and the judge would no doubt be in sympathy with the modern ideology.

A colleague of mine was in a similar position to mine, even if less extreme and less obvious. It should have been possible for her to sue her headmaster for his unjustifiable treatment of her. Her parents should have opposed him and demanded her reinstatement in the top stream, given her obvious ability. Or, better, taken her away from so bad a school and helped her to prepare for the scholarship exam at home.

In the event, it was an indictment of the ‘education’ system that she approached the end of it with no suitable opportunities open to her, and was forced to join forces with me in the establishment of an independent academic organisation. She could have no idea that the modern ideology would lead to her family discriminating against her financially, so that they gave her less support than families are in the habit of giving to those who follow socially recognised careers.

In fact what she was doing was no less respectable (even if less respected) than any normal academic career in a university. More respectable, in fact, because standards have declined severely, and a great deal of what goes on in recognised universities is rubbish.

I understand that her headmaster had no heirs. He should have left everything to her in reparation. If her parents had put her case to him forcibly enough, as they should have done, he might have actually done this. In fact, since her parents made no protest or complaint, he felt under no pressure to make amends.

My unfunded independent university, which could be publishing analyses of the complex issues involved in the area of education, has been effectively censored and suppressed for decades. Meanwhile, misleading and tendentious material on the topic has continued to flood out from socially recognised sources.

I hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed research department. I make this appeal to all universities, corporations and individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

New pensions arrangements: ‘pro-family’, anti-intellectual

The population of existing pensioners is one which has an average IQ above that of the population as a whole, and therefore, as the modern ideology works, is one from which resources are to be transferred to populations with lower average IQs (a process known as ‘redistribution’).

Previously, suggestions were made by which all pensioners could pay some new tax on capital or income, but for the present these suggestions have lapsed, and the only new tax on existing pensioners is to be the ‘Granny Tax’ – a tax on their earnings, if they have any, which was not previously payable above a certain age.

Additional resources are being distributed to populations of pensionable age with lower average IQs, even if it is not clear where these resources are coming from. Extra resources are to be paid to pensioners in the future, but none are to be received by the existing population of pensioners.

The new proposals for taxing the elderly will adversely affect those, like myself, who need to employ people, for purposes of building up an independent academic institution or otherwise. In particular, employees over a certain age are currently free from paying national insurance contributions, which greatly reduces the bureaucracy involved in employing them, and it has been proposed that this exemption be removed.

Losers: Existing pensioners

The most aggrieved at the new rules will be ten million existing pensioners who currently get less than the proposed flat-rate pension. Only those retiring after the single-tier pension is introduced on April 6, 2017 will qualify for the new £155 a week payout. If you get less today, you will keep getting less.

This will create an apartheid. For example, a man who turns 65 on April 5, 2017, and who has worked all his life is likely to get about £118 state pension payout. But had the same person been born the following day, their state pension would be £37 a week more. Over 25 years of retirement he will have missed out on £48,100.

To compound matters, anyone who hits state pension age (currently roughly 61 and five months for women and 65 for men) between April 6 this year and April 5, 2017, will have a double blow. Not only will they fail to get the higher pension, but they will be victims of the so-called Granny Tax. This will strip them of the higher tax-free allowances that over 65s currently get.

Winners: Women and carers

Those who will gain the most in the state pension overhaul will be people who have long periods out of employment, such as stay-at-home mothers. This is because your entitlement to a state pension is [currently] accrued by paying National Insurance contributions [...]

Stay-at-home mother Kate Wilkinson, 36, is in line to benefit from the state pension shake-up. Under current rules, parents who take breaks from work frequently miss out on the full payout when they retire [...]

Mrs Wilkinson says: ‘These changes are fantastic because at the moment it feels unfair – as if you’re being punished for wanting to bring up your children. It is great to get that extra support and get a bit back for being a stay-at-home mum.’

(Extracts taken from Daily Mail, 16 January 2013)

Existing pensioners have qualified for their pensions by paying a full number of contributions, whether out of a percentage of their earnings or, if they were not earning, by making voluntary contributions. Thus this population has demonstrated above-average functionality over a long period.

Non-means-tested pensions are to be paid only to a population which is much less highly selected, including those who have been unemployed for long periods and have not taken the trouble to pay voluntary contributions.

So redistribution is again to take place, by distributing more resources to a population with a lower average IQ, without any additional resources being allocated to the population of pensioners with a higher average IQ.

The proposed legislation is said to be ‘incredibly pro-family’. What it is also, though this is not mentioned, is antagonistic to outcast intellectuals, still struggling at pensionable age to recover from their ruined ‘education’. But not ‘incredibly’ so, only anti them in the accustomed way.

The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources.

I hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed research department, to all universities, and to corporations or individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

Causes of absenteeism in a bootlace factory

text of a letter

You said that you found our questionnaire on out-of-the-body experiences (OBEs) ‘inspirational’. Please do not imagine that I myself found it so, when Charles McCreery and I did the projects on OBEs. The projects were just the best method I had available at the time of working towards a university appointment and a professorship as soon as possible.

You may object that it was a very bad method of trying to work towards it, but my position was determined by the impossibility of getting support from my college (Somerville) for any way of getting back into a career path, for example by taking another degree in any of a wide variety of subjects as quickly as possible.

So I was lucky to find that there was a way of getting a postgraduate grant from Trinity College, Cambridge, which did not depend on support from my college, in an area of research that was new to me.

It is true that I saw the possibility of further research by me on OBEs (unbiased by the prevailing ideology) on a much larger scale as leading eventually to significant theoretical advances on important and totally ignored issues. However, doing work on the restricted scale that was possible in bad circumstances was of no greater interest to me than would have been research, on the same scale and in the same circumstances, on ‘Causes of absenteeism in a bootlace factory’.

Research of extreme theoretical importance remains possible in this area, but this is only going to happen in a future which we need to be given help in working towards. The potential importance of the research is probably the reason for OBEs having been so totally ignored before I started to make my appeals for them. It is probably also the reason why Charles and I have been deprived of any source of finance to carry on further work, while money has been lavished (relatively speaking) on people who already have academic status and salary and who can be relied upon only to do research which will not risk challenging the prevailing ideology.

Although I was, and still am, represented as having some peculiar ‘interest’ in hallucinatory experiences, it was in fact the case that my only motive for doing small-scale work in bad circumstances was to increase my claim on academic career progression with the implied improvement of circumstances.

The theoretical importance of an area of research does not make it any more rewarding (or less damaging) to do boring and tedious work in that area, without even the hotel environment and other circumstances provided by a university career that could make life worth living.

After doing the research for which I got a BLitt, and eventually a DPhil, which I had hoped would give me an entrée to some academic career path, leading as soon as possible to a professorship, I found I was actually as devoid of opportunity as before.

I was not supposed to mind if I was as outcast and destitute as before, after attempting to establish a position for myself by doing research in previously unrecognised fields. Only those who already had academic status and salary would be permitted to do work in the new fields. I and any associates I had would be left without status or income; the years of hard labour having resulted in no reward, being as totally abortive as had been the decades of work in schools and universities which had been supposed to give one access to a university career.

So society threw me out again, as badly off as if I had never been to school or college at all, admittedly now with contacts among the establishment population who could have supported me but who unfortunately had made a universal decision not to do so.

An outlaw is defined as ‘a person who has broken the law, especially who remains at large’. I remained at large, having committed sedition; hence I was an outlaw. I was neither a drugged zombie nor a wage slave, so all the more beyond the pale.

Dr McCreery, in spite of the DPhil gained by his supervised research on OBEs, found himself unable to obtain funding for further research, or an academic appointment well-paid enough to relieve the pressures of survival sufficiently for him even to make progress with writing a book based on his DPhil work. Such a book would include more discussion of individual cases and future possibilities for research than had been possible in the thesis.

We are still appealing for financial support to make possible at least this level of productivity. Dr McCreery could now proceed with the editing and publication of this and other books if he were provided with funding of at least £100,000 per annum.

As the new fields of research developed, in universities in North America and elsewhere, we hoped that Dr McCreery might also become eligible for research grants and appointments. But with no financial support at all, he could only lose ground to academics with status and salary, who were able to publish books and papers at a much greater rate, so that they became the leading ‘experts’ in the field, although their work was far less analytical and free from prejudice than his had been.

People like to talk as though, provided you stay physically alive, you are competing on equal terms with salaried academics enjoying the facilities provided by their universities.

The figure of £100,000 per annum to finance Dr McCreery’s work has to be seen in the context of his having to pay for all the facilities, staff etc. which are provided for those having university appointments. Some years ago we worked out that the average Oxford University research department was spending about £100,000 a year to support each of its research workers. There has been inflation since then, so £100,000 is probably an underestimate and much more could be done with £200,000 per annum.