Hi Martin I was one of the million or so who marched against the Iraq war. The evidence was plain that we were being hoodwinked by the USA, why Blair could not see through it defeats me. But I won't be marching against the student fee plan. I am appalled at the way every sector threatened by cuts yells and screams "cut them, not us! We are special!". If only some could have the integrity to say "yes cut us, we can take it". Well, I will stand and say we can. Our output is (largely) privileged people who can afford the cost of the education they received. As we see in the USA, there are ways (needs blind assessment etc.) for fee-based education to reach out fairly to the poor. And why should the privileged have the source of their privilege funded by the unprivileged? The argument that its an attack on humanities is totally spurious, as any financial analysis shows. So come on, HE sector, have the guts to say we can take it *and* support widening participation properly.

Hi Martin Tech issue, when I ran the collateral damage slideshare presentation, the slides were out of sync. Didn't really matter, and not sure if it could be my browser at fault... Comment on substance. You remark at one point that the course you joined which was posted on the internet, asked people to join and then asked "strangers" for contributions was a new idea. Well, in some ways it similar to lecturing practice in some Universities 200 years ago (maybe more). I think then lecturers asked for contributions from the audience: popular lecturers were well off…. Elsewhere, asking for contributions is common in Second Life to support the creative sims built there by residents and resident groups. Martin