Scrap the Bureaucratic Mess Around Research Funding

What's the point of having some of the brightest minds in the world if we're just going to strangle them with red tape and paperwork, I mean have you seen the application process for research grants, it's like they want to discourage people from even trying.

I think we should just give a big chunk of money to the top universities and let them decide how to allocate it, I know it sounds simplistic but it's got to be better than the current system where some faceless committee decides what's worthy of funding and what's not. This way the people who actually know what they're talking about get to make the decisions, not some politician who's just looking to score points with their constituents.