Local uni making 35 staff academic staff redundant, also saying loss of grants will have an effect

The roads this week seem to be quieter of delivery lgv,s,and courier vans,

All the trade depots ive been in this week seem devoid of spending customers.

and various large foreign owned companies have stated theyre putting on hold any investment in uk plc.

Discuss your tales of woe or tales of trade.

That was a bit quick to have lost grants suddenly. no?

Which uni may I ask? I don’t want to apply to somewhere like that for my msc.

Yes – investments delayed, projects/deals cancelled, hiring frozen or cancelled.

Thanks BSers

Smokescreen OP

TMH well if its all doom as we are lead to believe there will be tons of restructuring and relocation work, dislocation always creates opportunity. Private Equity pull backs I heard, no loss there and good luck with relocating to Europe I’d say. Banks firing not hiring before anyway. Lets see what the state of play is in 3 and 6 months.

There is no way Brexit has hit EU grants to Universities yet and if they did I an’t see specific staff already being in place and not working on other things. Smells like a good time to pass off bad news with someone else to blame.

There is no way Brexit has hit EU grants to Universities yet and if they did I an’t see specific staff already being in place and not working on other things. Smells like a good time to pass off bad news with someone else to blame.

+1

Good way to bury bad news at the moment.

I had a drunk scroat abuse me in Lidl car park in Pitsea on Monday, it wasn’t really suffering though cos he did a runner and dropped his tinny when I turned round to talk to him..

I have got appointments coming up with two socially phobic eastern europeans who live in a city with relatively low BME population, and that voted 62% out. I am anticipating that the part of my job getting them out of the house and into society may get a little bit tougher. 🙁
polish shopkeepers face stark rise in racial abuse after eu referendum

I work in construction as a consultant to clients. 1 major and 2 minor developers have pulled the plug on ALL their developments until such time as the markets look more stable and a clear route ahead is known. The major developer was spending hundreds and hundreds of millions

Nope, the world is still going round where I am, no drop in business what so ever, in fact, as expected the figures are rising day by day, month by month etc etc

Barrat Homes appear to have halted construction on several sites that we deliver blocks n bricks etc to….. Might be half Brexit half end of the month slow down.

and my uni posted with a status update that basically said…

business as usual for existing students UK and EU until the end of their course
business as usual for 2016/7 freshers UK and EU until the end of their course
business as usual for Erasmus (both ways)
business as usual for all staff of EU citizenship or UK staff posted overseas
business as usual for all work bidding for research funds and that international collaboration is top priority

one of the Russell Group unis.

My Brother works as a consultant for a Construction Company in Leeds. Have just won this week 2 large contracts in Spain for managing the build of two new large mixed housing and retail developments

Barrat Homes appear to have halted construction on several sites that we deliver blocks n bricks etc to….. Might be half Brexit half end of the month slow down.

^^yep^^. I live on a half built DWH development (Barrat’s “posh” lot. It’s not). The low loaders turned up yesterday to cart the plant away. Looks like we’ll be living in an abandoned development for some time to come.

Business relatively normal in the bike trade so far… Too early to tell though.

Until the anticipated price rises on 2017 products hit everyone that is! Basically, if you were gonna buy a new bike but have been dithering, but it now! There will never be a cheaper time in sad to say…

I have heard of a postdoc having their eu-funded job offer withdrawn. Only 2nd hand though, not 100% sure of its veracity.

Jamba, the issue is not the EU withdrawing funds now – of course they have not and cannot do that yet. The issue is that a university offering a 3y job, doesn’t now know that it will get the 3y funding, cos if we leave the EU in that time then the funding will stop (unless some other arrangement is put in place to cover the shortfall). It’s shit for those losing jobs but I can understand employers being unwilling to take on the risk.

It’s also been written about all over the place that UK-based scientists are getting effectively blacklisted from EU grant applications. The hit from that will be a year or so down the line, but is already getting baked-in day by day.

We got a very positive all staff email from our VC, but I’m still concerned, being working towards one EU grant for a couple of years and it was about to be signed any day.. Now I’m not sure. Should be coming out of a pot already committed to UK but the risk averse fund holders must be considering claw back implications.

I can well imagine uk institutions being black listed from consortia, why would you include the uk in a future bid until our role is determined. No point putting in efforts and then being told your consortium is ineligible.

I would expect the most successful UK scientists to be thinking twice about even applying for EU grants – who would want to embark on 5y of research, when the plug might get pulled half way through?

1bn a year is the figure I’ve seen, for what the UK gets in EU science money.

Project fear ladies and gentlemen

Well the commercial property market is still moving quite well, we have instructions coming in the same as before.

1bn divided by 350 million isn’t very much.
..

khani – Member
in Pitsea

my sympathies

No problem getting work at the moment (but everyone seems to want a piece of me for Drupal development at the moment anyway) but my decision to travel and live in Europe but still bill in GBP is hurting a bit!

Rachel

my sympathies

In fairness I only work there, (Pitsea, not Lidl) but yes, it’s a shithole..

My mate got asked for a works visa when he went for an interview with a small firm in deepest darkest Slovenia.

The roads around Port Talbot & Redcar are very quiet now since the out vote…..Oh wait…

Business as usual at the moment, I’m feeling that some organisations are using brexit as an excuse to make unpleasant decisions – even construction and banking that have been hammered in markets in the last week are looking rash making big decisions 1 week after the vote given that bar the last day or two the polls showed leave was winning.

I can’t help but think some of it is being pushed to prove how bad things will be before a retraction or compromise solution. Mark Carney’s speech today for example was poorly timed to say the least, the ‘markets’ sensing a deal on the cards return to pre-vote levels and the £ starts to recover – bam the BOE announces more QE and reduced growth forecasts; I don’t know sounds odd to me. Not sure we needed more news from BOE 7 days into a 3 month transition period.

I’m a committed Remain supporter.

Yes

We’re heavily exposed to money going out in USD and EUR but getting money in, in GBP

I work for a Dutch multi-national construction outfit. Developers have cancelled £150 million worth of UK projects so far this week.

a dent in our plans for sure, no job losses yet, but we need to make the turn-over.

Nothing expected that quickly.

I’m expecting prices of 2017 bikes to go up and we won’t be buying them until September/October. If fuel prices are affected, that will increase our costs, which we’ll have to pass on too. OTOH, if the Pound falls against the Euro/Dollar then we may see more foreign visitors which could result in an increase in business.

thecaptain – Member

It’s also been written about all over the place that UK-based scientists are getting effectively blacklisted from EU grant applications. The hit from that will be a year or so down the line, but is already getting baked-in day by day. Definitely expect to see some push-back in how our proposals are refereed, and correspondingly, funded. We do very well out of the EU funding, out-competing everyone in horizon2020 AFAIK. We’ve now told Europe to GTF, so I’d expect a commensurate ‘no, u’ response on anything going in in the short term.

It doesn’t even need to be anywhere near as blatant as that – science funding at the sharp end boils down to trying to rank and separate a lot of truly excellent people / ideas. The smallest weakness is enough to sink a proposal in such a competitive environment. Leaving the EU probably qualifies as a small weakness when asking for EU money, so we’re likely in for a grim stretch of science funding from that direction. Mix in a cratered economy overall from this fiasco and UK science is in for a rough ride.

A couple of stories I noticed in the press over the last couple of days:

Siemens Wind – continuing with the plant up in the north East but any future investment halted. PITA for me as I was in early talks for some research which would have been with them and a UK Uni.

JLR – confirmed they will be going ahead with the plant in Slovakia. Good on JLR as we HAVE to show the World and EU that we will be continuing to invest outside of the UK. But I also suspect it can be used to their advantage in terms of export/import.

Agree 100% Garry.

We (oil and gas engineering consultants) had 2 projects cancel on Friday as everything crashed.

Meant my notice which was to be extended to the end of the year now runs out next week.

Civil servants got an email saying to hold tight and keep on serving basically.

Thoughts of me returning to marine energy or onshore development looking gloomy now though

(another uni)

Back to the OP, it’s far too fast for us to have lost any funding, nothing moves that quick in this game, but it’ll happen if we carry on down this route, and before we exit. It’s not my field but I’d assume and hope we’re planning for it, dialling back commitments etc.

Short term it makes no immediate difference to me except that we’re spending all day every day dealing with current EU students who’re afraid for their future, current EU and overseas applicants who want to know if they should cancel their application, overseas applicants and parents who’re worried about the rise in hate crimes (not so much from people who’re already here, they know Scotland, we’re too busy fighting our arch enemies the Scots), overseas colleagues who already have to deal with the Home Office and are all screaming THERESA MAY FOR PM? GET TO ****. As are we. God knows what we can expect over the next few months from a Brexit-emboldened UNVI.

Longer term, who knows. Absolute best case scenario is a load of financial and relationship damage that we can probably afford but would really rather not. Doesn’t directly risk my job mind. Worst case scenarios… Well, I’m pretty confident we’ll be one of the universities that makes it.

I have an office furniture business. 3 projects cancelled or put on hold this week ….. Value to me around £70k so very frustrating / annoying. Caused totally by the companies concerned fearing or not knowing what the coming months will bring so hanging onto cash. Exactly the same story as last recession …… Recession starts here ?

I was looking at an academic job ad last night, and at the top it said the whole project was dependent on whether ERDF funding was available.