Bonfire of the Quangos: Funding up in Flames?

I always thought that bonfires were meant to create light rather than darkness, but reading commentators yesterday after the government's announcement of the 'bonfire of the quangos', it feels like this one is throwing out nothing but gloom. Research Fortnight has reported that health and environment quangos are particularly badly hit. One that will affect us at Kent is the Defra's Darwin Advisory Committee, which distributes funding for the Darwin Initiative. Kent's done particularly well with these over the last few years, as it fits squarely with the work being done in the Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology, which often focuses on biodiversity in the developing world.
The detail is all still to be confirmed, but the announcement, together with the speculation that has followed, has done nothing to lift the pessimism that's rife in research funding at the moment.