There is a debate going on about theraison d'etreof large-scale central facilities. They serve a multiple role and attract an increasing number of scientists, wheth & for a single specific experiment or as part of a long term research program. The current financial and political climate is not a favorable one for large scale investment and this naturally reflects on neutron scattering facilities. Hard-won expensive capital equipment can not be utilized to its full effectiveness because of reducing resources of both manpower and money. From the shop-floor of scientific endeavor this appears to be a result of appallingly short-sighted and arbitrary policies. Accordingly, the demand for beam time from the user community far out-strips the supply, a situation which is aggravated by the shut-down of ILL and the KFA reactor at Julich. Despite that, there is a surprisingly large amount of activity going on in the field of quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS).