Exploding the bio-myth

It all started fairly innocently with a change of name from Sittingbourne Research Centre to the Kent Science Park, nothing too bad in that apart from frustrating many of the tenants on site who had to get all their stationery changed.

But this was merely the start of what has now surfaced as a long procession of innocuous little terms designed to camouflage quite dull and ordinary everyday things. For instance, when you’ve just been allocated a £1 million pounds of public money to create some office accommodation for small start up companies, you can’t really justify this without introducing some fancy name for it. So we were introduced to the terms bio-incubator and bio-accelerator, now you have to admit that sounds so much better doesn’t it, almost worth investing vast sums your money so that a privately run commercial company can return a profit on it.

Now call me cynical, but it always struck me as rather strange that a company, who we’re told, runs the only profitable Science Park in the country actually needs this kind of public investment to refurbish their property portfolio.

However, it doesn’t end there, as we have recently been introduced to bio-pipeline and bio-hatchery which leads me to believe they may have lost their bio-focus, and as it turns out, this is quite literally true. Bio-Focus, who now employs 140 people in the Cambridge area, obviously didn’t shared their bio-optimism as they departed for pastures new towards the end of last year.

Now if you’re starting to get a sense of deja vu, its probably because you too have been subjected to an estate agents banter at some time. Well it might be not be your average property, but that’s exactly what we have here, a property management company trying to sell us a line.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, they conceded at last weeks meeting on 1st September that “whether we are a science park or not doesn’t matter”. Really, and there was I thinking that was the whole justification for ripping up acres of countryside in order to satisfy their need for profit, oh sorry I mean, building a sustainable community for our future.