High and Dry

Last week there was yet-another article on the impact of the current financial climate on research - Debt crisis threatens UK science.  Again my apologies to those without access to Nature News, but in summary the article focuses on the UK government's promises to make deep cuts in public spending, which includes research and the article can be summed up with a quote from Robert May, a former chief scientific adviser to the government and researcher at the University of Oxford. 

This to me (especially as my work is fundamentally based around genes and genomes) is tragic.  But the same day that I read this article, more tragedy was to follow.  It happened that almost the same time as this article was published a group of former colleagues and friends (well, they are still me friends) witnessed this first hand. One of my former groups had a funding review and, through no fault of their own, have not been successful.  Funded by a charity the group was supposed to have the review last May, but a few short weeks before the visit the charity decided that they weren't going to come and they would just extend the money for year...which was a bad omen to start with.  At the end of last year a new project proposal was submitted and the visit was last week, despite some excellent presentations and good research ideas the charity have said that they won't fund anything from the project.  So that leaves at least for people that I know without a source of funding for their positions, as of September.  Is this symptomatic of the debt crisis?  Has anyone else had similar experiences?  What should my friends be doing to rescue their situation?