I clearly recall the discussions that led to the Faraday Discovery Fellowships being created. The argument was that there was a cadre of truly exceptional researchers, often a postdoc or two into their early/mid career, who - with the right level of independence - could pivot into exciting new research directions. But the landscape of fellowships that could support such people was very thin – particularly with UK participation in the European Research Council then in doubt. What the UK needed was a new platform to support the most exceptionally talented individuals transition into research independence: a very generous fellowship that could run over a longer time period, with high flexibility, high risk tolerance, and low bureaucracy. Such a thing would need to be deliberately 'elite' – but in order to avoid capture by processes that would naturally select for a longer track record, the plan was to tighten the funding criteria very meticulously around those at the early-to-mid point of their career. A number of very senior and highly accomplished scientists raised the same issue of low support for early-to-mid career researchers in 2020, with the Royal Society putting it in their submission to the Spending Review in 2021. Such "Faraday Discovery Fellowships" could usefully fill the gap we were all pointing to. With this level of establishment support now in place, the idea of creating new and prestigious Discovery Fellowships for the most unusually talented researchers was worked into various government documents – from the 2020 R&D Roadmap through to George Freeman's Pioneer alternative to Horizon Europe. Eventually, the opportunity arose to actually do it. In 2023, we had a significant underspend to deal with arising from delays to Horizon association. We had already proven, with the RAEng Green Futures Fellowship, that fellowships could be designed quickly and funded via an endowment to the national academies. Here was a clear opportunity to repeat the trick for discovery science - we could resurface the issues, give everything a scrub, endow the RS, and let the magic happen. I do not doubt that the awardees from the first and second rounds of FDF are brilliant scientists. Two of them even have the FRS to prove it! But these are established individuals with their own groups, managing large teams and PI to large grants already! These people have already achieved independence! Many of them are, by the definition of most other research funders, senior and established in their career! It is bitterly disappointing. We took our one chance to solve the problem that we all agreed we faced, and we chose not to do it. It may only be £250 million (!), but it represents a very severe policy failure, and should be a source of great shame and regret to all of us who worked so hard on this over many years.