But surely the funding is just a midge's fart in the grand scheme of things? I suppose the image of a united Europe is gone, if it means nothing to them?

Paris, I see silly season is here again.

We will miss you :-(

Large Hadron Collider to Midge Ure in one step. Well done that man.

...to piss off people which might suddenly have the ability to throw traversable wormhole mouths at your parliament.

"Yes, an unfortunate accident. Very tragic, the cause being due to the misalignment of the detector magnets. Now, about those funding proposals..."

If Lord Wooster were to do the same, even in comparison to the protests about shutting down other endeavours (such as Jodrell Bank and various astronomy facilities), the outcry would be considerable, and a lot of boffins would go and work for various non-UK institutions in order to maintain their positions. The consequences wouldn't be great for UK research - certainly, stupid supercars with strap on rockets wouldn't exactly fill the void.

I imagine that a number of Austrians will be working for other institutions come the next budgetary year.

Funny how we never hear sustained complaints of "brain drain" when science funding gets further cut, but put income tax back to mid-1980s levels and its all over the papers that our "finest minds" are taking their private jets off to Bermuda.

Someone should probably note that this decision has been reversed

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/39128