Leandro De Itaquera

Former sixth-formers and foreign students can keep in touch with distant friends almost without effort: e-mail takes less time than composing a letter, can be saved permanently and - most importantly - saves impoverished students the cost of stamps.Newsgroups are another common use of the Internet "There is a tremendous spectrum of value. E-mail is the single most popular use of Warwick University's Internet facilities. Academic staff typically dispatch between five and 20 e-mail messages a day, and many describe it as "invaluable". Dr David Haddleton, of Warwick's chemistry department, says it opens up new opportunities for collaboration: "Without the Internet, I wouldn't be able to do my work. What should they use them for? Keith Halstead, director of computing services at the University of Warwick, ranks the three main uses as e- mail, newsgroups and the World Wide Web. It is October and abruptly, across the UK, the Internet is busier. If you live in a metropolitan area, you already know why - the universities are back, bringing the annual influx of "freshers". But this year's intake will probably be the first who already know what the Net is and are eager to take advantage of their (usually) free accounts.

May be ready for a renaissance under Keswick, formerly adviser to Kenneth Clarke.SCOTT HUGHES. Founder member Sir Alfred Sherman recently remarked: "If it still made an impact we would know about it."Triumphs: Claims to influence the present government's thinking on education. Originally set up with funds supplied by David Sainsbury.Triumphs: Lured David Willetts as a writer away from the Centre of Policy Studies.Centre for Policy StudiesHeaded by: Tessa Keswick.HQ: Rochester Row, London SW1.Founded: 1974, by Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph.Ideology: Did you say Thatcher? Established to work on free-market ideas, though since eclipsed by other organisations.Status: Apparently reduced; halcyon days were the late Seventies and early Eighties. Had strong links with the SDP before moving further Toryward; now extols the virtues of the social market economy.Status: Influential writing under the SMF umbrella from MP Frank Field and CBI boss Howard Davies. Chairman: Lord Skidelsky.HQ: Queen Anne's Gate, London SW1.Founded: 1989.Ideology: Now occupies central ground. Committed to exposing "political welfarists" who indulge in "milking funding agencies and in dissembling their ideological concerns under a variety of benevolent covers".Status: Overshadowed of late by the newly formed Health and Welfare Unit.Triumphs: Gave Sunday Telegraph writer Dr James Le Fanu his first break.Social Market FoundationNew head, after departure of Daniel Finkelstein, yet to be appointed.

Recently called for expansion of Assisted Places Scheme, which provides subsidised public schooling to children from low-income families.Status: Together with the IEA, probably the most influential.Triumphs: Its lengthy advocacy of education vouchers and privatisation has seen the light of day under John Major.Conservative 2000 FoundationHeaded by: John Redwood MP (directed by Hywel Williams, Redwood's former political adviser at the Welsh Office).HQ: Wilfred Street, near Buckingham Gate.Founded: 1995 - launched last month.Ideology: Officially, to serve as "the forum for the Conservative Party in the age of mass democracy", though generally regarded merely as a means of keeping Redwood in the public eye after his failed attempt to challenge Major's leadership.Status: Weak, even on the right - except among the thin band of Redwood fans.Triumphs: Recent high-profile trip to meet senior Republicans in Washington, among them man-of-the-moment Newt Gingrich.Social Affairs UnitHeaded by: Digby Anderson.HQ: Regent Street, London W1.Founded: 1980, as an offshoot of the IEA, by Anderson.Ideology: Ostensibly, to provide the social equivalent of its parent organisation's free-market thinking, though really just a one-man maverick outfit given to wild schemes. Believes residents should be shareholders in the community and town halls should be abolished. Recently attacked proposed changes to the divorce laws on the grounds that they constituted a threat to the social order.Status: Swanky seminars and receptions are well attended. Financed by millions made from battery chickens by Antony Fisher.Triumphs: Thought to have exerted a profound influence on monetarist thinking in Thatcherite governments.Adam Smith InstituteHeaded by: Dr Madsen Pirie and Dr Eamonn Butler.HQ: Great Smith Street, London SW1.Founded: 1978, by the above.Ideology: Vehemently opposed to state interference in anything. Apart from the Europe fault-line, there are few ideological divides; it is more a matter of style, tone and personality. The pool of new right-wing ideas is almost dry, and the tanks are scrambling for the last sip of muddy water.RIGHT-WING THINK-TANKSInstitute of Economic AffairsHeaded by: John Blundell.HQ: Lord North Street, London SW1.Founded: 1957, by Arthur Seldon and Lord Harris of High Cross.Ideology: The mother of Tory think-tanks, set up to expound Hayek-influenced ideas of free market economics. The projects and arguments of the Eighties have become orthodoxy now, so where are they to turn? The new thinking seems to be with Blair, Demos, the Institute of Public Policy Research and others.

However, it is sometimes good at the short, sharp, pithy idea: John Major was reading its Socks Manifesto when its director, Dr Madsen Pirie, was ushered in to Downing Street ("socks" because designed to shock his socks off). It is an abundant and eclectic rag-bag of the mad, bad, silly and sensible, including abolishing most government departments and the BBC while establishing a British space programme.There is frenetic anxiety behind this jockeying for ideological power. Mather finally quit in 1992 in a serious rift over Europe, when the old codgers sponsored the Bruges group and he set up his own successful tank, the European Policy Forum (turnover, pounds 500,000 a year) The IEA's heyday was the triumph of monetarism. It preached the inevitability of capitalism, but now there is no one much left to convince.The Adam Smith Institute's big ideas were privatisation and competitive tendering for government services. With its impassioned belief that the free market can solve everything, critics say it has marginalised itself by beating the "less government" drum so loud that it has not had enough to say about what government should actually do. The old Institute of Economic Affairs, founded in 1957 by Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, hired the clever and agreeable policy wonk, Graham Mather, now an MEP, in 1986 to take over as director - but then failed to resign themselves as promised.

At 33, he is charming, clever, universally liked and full of ideas. However, now he has gone, the SMF will make a rapid march back into the centre-ground, detaching itself from its Tory associations, trying to re-establish itself in the less partisan world of the much-envied Demos.Turbulence in think-tankery is nothing new. But its chairman, economist Professor (now Lord) Robert Skidelsky and director, Danny Finkelstein (ex-SDP Youf), marched promptly rightwards into the Tory party just before the 1992 election.Finkelstein, who has just departed to become director of the Conservative Research Department, is the archetypal successful policy wonk halfway up the greasy pole to mainstream politics. The Social Market Foundation, run with money from David Sainsbury, was supposed to keep alive the ideas of the Owenite wing of the SDP after its demise. One competitor said dismissively: "It's John Redwood's bid for the leadership next time round."In another part of the wood, one influential modern right-of-centre think-tank has stolen much of the CPS thunder. John Redwood's proclaimed aim of raising pounds 2m is regarded as wildly fanciful.