I agree with most of what you say Keith (indeed, apart from the last paragraph, I agree wholeheartedly).
I have some reservations about the genuine educational value of Foundation Degrees. There is a subtle distinction between education and training and I think that they are closer to the latter.
(The best way I've come across to define the difference is that if you had a daughter and she came back from school saying she'd done sex education you'd not be all that worried - if she said she'd done sex training, you'd be rather cross and worried).
Training is good and valid stuff - I've done a lot of it, from PPL to CPL, first aid training, even courses in Jiu Jitsu. Education is more abstract - it is about the development of mental faculty, reasoning ability, problem solving...
I personally feel that the jury is still out about FD graduates genuinely being able to hack the final year of a true BSc; it also made the time and effort to get something called a degree rather shorter than it ever was before - which I find troubling given that the time to get a degree in the UK was already shorter than almost any other country and caused other countries to regard our British educational system with some suspicion.
That said, I think that what the likes of yourselves have done with the FD is a very good thing - I just mostly have concerns about the FD being called a degree, and have done since it was introduced.
G