At some of these universities, it is a common thing to have, for example, seminars or meetings for academics to come and hear from people who know how to angle, frame and write research proposals so that they will receive a favourable response from the people at the granting agencies—the councils, the peer reviewers and so on—and so that they will succeed in their attempt to get hold of research funding. In other words, it is not enough.... In an ideal world, you would get a researcher who says that they want to investigate X. They write down what they want to investigate and hand it in. That's not the way it works.
The way it works is, how am I going to get the grant? Who is there? What are their criteria? What's their background? Who's going to be evaluating me? Who can I get for a peer reviewer? I'm then going to craft it so that the thing works successfully. That is all caused by the carrot of the money.