Why do I subject myself to the horror that is BBC science reporting?
In this article about funding Kopernikus (you know, earth observation) says:
Then, the UK contributed just £11m for the entire first segment, or phase, of Kopernikus (the new name for GMES). This amounted to 4.5% of UK gross domestic product (GDP); industry had expected Britain to participate at around 17%.
Anyone with a gram of common sense could instantly see that this 11 million being 4.5% of GDP is just total nonsense. I’m sure there’s something going on that involves those numbers, but it’s not that. Probably Kopernikus has some sort of funding scale set according to a country’s GDP, but I couldn’t find out what it is, and this article certainly doesn’t make it clear.
Fucking arts graduates.
[2008-10-03: Corrected "countries" to "country's". Fucking maths graduates.]
2008-10-03 at 10:09:28
They’ve changed it to: “This amounted to just 4.5% of the share of the cost of the programme based on the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP); whereas industry expected Britain to pull its full economic weight and participate at around 17%”
2008-10-03 at 10:18:35
@ewx: Thanks for the update. I wonder if I did that?
2008-10-03 at 13:46:32
That’s obviously still bogus. What they mean, I think, is this: “This amounted to just 4.5% of the cost of the programme, whereas industry expected Britain to participate at around 17%, which would be a fair share based on each country’s gross domestic product (GDP).”
2008-10-03 at 14:00:23
@NickB: Indeed. I had just run out of energy.