A researcher takes the time to prepare a 40-page proposal just to ask for some travel money and one laptop. This is just plain stupid (I’m not saying the researcher is stupid but the situation clearly is). His/her writing time plus my reviewing time (and that of at least one other reviewer) plus the coordinator time is clearly more worthy than the funding she can get at the end. Do we really have no better ways to waste our time? Should we just stop travelling? Should departments assign a minimum budget to each researcher?
Feel free to expand the list of stupid situations due to cuts in research funding!!
As I just read, things can still be worse, you could work on your project proposal for several months and then get your the call completely cancelled by the government: http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=2771