Yesterday, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, was in Oxford and I attended a meeting arranged between him, the Local Enterpise Partnership and other stakeholders. This enabled local businesses and organisations to discuss a variety of issues and concerns relating to them (sorry, no photo this time, the one above was taken on a previous occasion).
With the concentration of leading scientific and technical industries based in Oxfordshire, some of the discussion points related to national or even international issues, rather than local policies. It is always especially interesting to hear views from this perspective. As an example, concerns were raised about problems with the worldwide supply of helium, which has many industrial and scientific applications - for example the cooling of superconducting magnets such as those used in MRI scanners.
A recent Observer article on the topic can be found here. The problem is that there is only a finite supply of helium on Earth as this is released as a by-product of oil and gas drilling and it has been strategically stored and stock-piled by the US (the leading supplier) for many years. Although there are now other countries (e.g. Algeria, Russia) supplying helium, the US is still dominant and it is claimed that the stockpiling and pricing over a long period has led to wasteful usage of the gas (such as in party ballons). With increasing demand outstripping future supply, there are some estimates that we will run out of helium in about 25 years.
Clearly, this issue needs to be higher on the UK and international agenda. At an individual level, I would suggest we could all start by giving those helium-filled party balloons a miss... if we want to be sure of that essential MRI scan in the future.
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