I appreciate the support for lecturers, Thomas. Nobody takes strike action lightly but the problem is there is little viable alternative. That figure of lecturers losing £10k per year on retirement is widely reported but it doesn't capture the full horror of what is being proposed. What we are talking about is pensions being halved or more - mine currently is predicted to be worth about £28k on retirement but will reduce to about £12k under the new proposals. That's a 60 per cent cut and I am a Professor with almost twenty years' service. Future prospects are worse for junior staff. What will really hurt students is an education system where staff are leaving or cannot be recruited or within which morale is so bad it cannot but act to harm the student experience. There's now emerging evidence that what has been proposed is not only unfair, it is also unnecessary - the risk appears to assume, for example, that the Universities would all go bankrupt simultaneously, which is a nonsense. Nobody can predict the future but make a few tweaks to the modelling assumptions and what appears as a deficit becomes a surplus. Indeed, the scheme is doing well: that one of the reasons its managers have received large pay rises! So, whilst I appreciate your concerns about the impact on students (and share them) really it's the senior members of Universities UK that have created a situation that is harming the students. I'd like to suggest that the innocents here are both the lecturers and the students, and that both - as well as the future viability of the sector more generally - deserve better,