Day 1 - The Mast Sanity members held a low key gathering outside the venue and gave out some leaflets.

About an hour into the event one of the organisers came out (with a security gruard), very angry, to ask for the MS members to be moved by the Police.

He said "Our delegates have paid good money to come here and you are giving them the wrong message."

The Police refused to move the MS members on since the MS members were entitled to stand and give out leaflets.

One MS member said "It's still a free country!". The organiser then said We'll tell our delegates not to take any leaflets!

Free speech indeed! (Is he concerned the delegates may learn the truth? If he is so confident, why not let them take the leaflets?)

A little later the main organiser of HHL07 - Graham - came and spoke to one of the MS members. He was more concilatory and offered warm shelter and coffee if the MS members wanted any(!).

The MS member asked about the speakers, such as Repacholi, and was told that Eileen from Radiation Research Trust was speaking to delegates.

Graham was quizzed about Dr. George Carlo and Roger Coghill's offer to speak and their subsequent absence from the programme. He said that they were offered to speak but declined - although MS subsequently learned that both Dr. Carlo and Roger Coghill never heard back from their requests after July "We were supposed to hear from them [HHL07], according to the last correspondence, by the end of July." said one.

The organiser of this enormous conference, with 700 delegates, with Government and major corporate sponsorship wanted to stop a couple of people handing out an A4 one colour leaflet. What is he scared of?

[ N.B. We've decided to re-christen the event "Hand Held Earning 2007" since it is, without doubt, more about profit than a way of enhancing education]here.

Day 2 - The Mast Sanity members returned to hold a low key gathering outside the venue and give out some leaflets.

The vast majority of the 700 delegates received leaflets.

One overseas break-out speaker - Mark Kramer from University of Salzburg, Austria - recorded a pod cast interview of Mast Sanity's view on Hand Held Learning with one of the MS members. He pointed out that it was the wireless devices that were the problem NOT using hand held devices in Education as such - self-contained devices or connectable devices or future optical devices were OK.

Another speaker - Stuart Smith from the University of Manchester - confronted the MS members on the door with the 'old favourite' that microwaves from masts and wi-fi are the same as TV signals [which isn't correct since the power, frequency and wave form are all greatly different, with TV in the lower frequency range and a less jagged wave-form] - but his arguments became more desperate as the particularly knowledgable MS members countered him.

A delegate (from a Wolverhampton College?) was adamant that the Wi-fi he used in his college is very low power and not a problem [ignoring the mounting evidence to the contrary that the signal shape and long duration of exposure is as relevant as the physical power].

A delegate who had recently contracted a cancer linked to mobile phones had a long chat with another MS member. He was shocked to hear some of the evidence.

One of the organisers (Alex Roushias) said that MS could be accused of scare-mongering with the delegates. The MS members countered this since as concerned parents in many cases we have looked into the facts thoroughly and the evidence is real and that the delegates should wake up to the issues. He also claimed that the Panorama programme had been debunked, but we countered that those who tried to debunk it were non-experts and Industry lackeys and that the facts stood up for themselves with only a tiny amount of clarifications (e.g. distance of wi-fi measurements).

He also went on to say that we were misleading by using the term "microwave" to imply microwave ovens. We explained that this is precisely the part of the Electromagnetic Spectrum that is being used by Wi-fi and mobile phones etc. - in fact microwave ovens use the same (unregulated) frequency as Bluetooth and Wi-fi (b,g,n) of 2.4GHz. (On day 3 we mentioned to him that the Industry is itself [seriously] misleading everyone by referring to the same frequncies as "Radio Frequency" - implying Radio 2 and frequencies used for years - rather than the part of the Electromagnetic Spectrum that includes microwaves as well as the frequencies used for Radio stations.)

Eileen O'Connor and Mike Bell of the Radiation Research Trust (RRT) arrived just as the MS members were leaving. Eileen will be giving a speech to some delegates pointing out the dangers of wireless technologies such as wi-fi. She brought some RRT leaflets and took in some of the MS leaflets with her to go on her small RRT stand inside the Conference.

Day 3 started as a dank, foggy affair.

Most of the delegates had already taken the "Voice of Sanity" leaflet, but those who had not or who were now interested in what we had to say took them still.

The appearance of Eileen O'Connor, who had spoken in a small "breakout" session on Day , led to the MS members being able to give out the Radiation Research Trust leaflets as well. She told us that here talk had gone well and was generally well received. She was going to have a private meeting with the infamous Dr. Repacholi (below) later on.

Graham , one of the organisers, kindly offered the MS members some coffee, use of the loos etc. 2 MS members took him up on his offer - which went down nicely on a cool damp morning. (Thanks Graham - demos can be amicable).

There were a number of different reactions to MS's presence ranging from a delegate from Wolverhampton who thought we were undermining our message by being too much in evidence (an MS member pointed out that Repacholi's presence at the Conference required our presence in response). Some other IT department delegates spent a long time discussing how wireless safety concerns can be expressed to their bosses.

Another school delegate suggested some useful ideas for leaflets for future campaigns.

Speaker Stuart Smith from Manchester University spoke with MS members at length about wireless safety and how a 3rd-world (adult) student used a wireless link to take a course at Manchester. Yet he seemed happy for an MS member's child to be taken out from her school because it had wi-fi and her parents were unhappy about it. He indicated that only if only 3% of people were effected [by electro hyper sensitivity EHS] it was OK for the other 97% to carry on using wireless technologies. Another MS member mentioned "Universal Education" in the UK too - but presumably without the 3% who were made ill and those whose parents were concerned. An interesting view point(!). He said that MS should have sent a delegate inside and should join the Hand Held forums.

The slogans we didn't display outside but could have done "wi-fi why fry" etc.

For some of the reactions from the delegate to HHL07 and to our involvement you can see some of the delegates' blogs via this HHL page .