What a few months

First of all my apologies for not blogging since before Christmas, there is no other excuse other than the fact that I’ve been swept off my feet with busyness.

So what have I been up to?

January and February can pretty much be summed up in 5 words, NUS Extra and Coca Cola!

I’m going to blog separately about my views on the Coca Cola debate and its significance to the student movement. But suffice to say it was momentous, polarising and energy sapping debate, that I am actually proud to have played my part in.

I’ll talk about NUS Extra later, when I give my views on Annual Conference.

During these two months I pretty much spent my whole time, traipsing up and down the country talking to unions, attending NUSSL and NUS events and writing various briefings on Coca-Cola and NUS Extra. A pretty thankless task and as most of you will know, I was also running for election at NUS conference, so there were quite a few other things I could have been doing with my time here, but I think it was important that someone took a lead on these monumental issues and filled the vacuum that had surrounded them.

So on to March, and Annual Conference. This is the climax of the year for the student movement, where the tone is set, both through elections and policy for the forthcoming year. I have to admit this is probably the most tiring, emotionally draining and revealing week I have ever had.

The Conference opened and we were almost instantly thrown into the debate on NUS Extra. Now, for some people this was just a matter of turning up and looking as enthusiastic as possible. But, for me it was the culmination of almost two years work selling the concept, supporting the trial and leading the debate.

As I have said repeatedly, and explained in a previous blog the NUS Extra card is a massive project for NUS to undertake, but the rewards if it succeeds overshadow the risks associated with such a challenge. If this is pulled off successfully NUS will have a huge new income stream that will ensure we are able to fund all those activities and campaigns that we have had to reign back over recent years making sure that we are never on the back foot again, that we are leading the debate in education and will never have to stand back and see any Government try to destroy the education system again. So I was mightily pleased when conference overwhelmingly supported NUS Extra and voted to roll it out nationally from September 2006. I only hope those officers who were elected at the conference recognise the significance of this step, and are grateful to those who made it possible (Martin Ings and Ian King to name just two).

The Coca-Cola debate came on day three of conference and this, for me, was the culmination, not of 3 days work, but 3 months. I was tired of hearing the same arguments made over and over again, but my passion for getting the movement to do the right thing was undiminished. As I said earlier, I’m going blog separately about the ins and outs of this debate so I’ll leave it until then.

And of course there were elections. I was supporting Sian Davies for President, Stephen Brown for Secretary, Myself for Treasurer, Wes Steeting for Education, Ellie Russell for FE and Veronica King for Welfare.

I was gutted for Sian when she didn’t win the Presidency. Sian has been an awesome Disabled Students officer and has contributed so much to the movement over the past few years, she would have been a great leader for the movement, but it wasn’t to be. Conference elected Gemma who, whilst I didn’t support her, I know will do an excellent job. She has been a strong, pragmatic and fair national Secretary and I’m sure she will carry these characteristics through to her Presidency and will move NUS forward through the next crucial few months.

I’m so pleased that all the other candidates I supported won through. In hindsight I wish I could have done more to support each of them but I was tied up with NUS Extra, Coca Cola and my own election! I have no doubt that Stephen, Wes, VK and Ellie will be a formidable team next year, all I can say is God help the Government ;-).

And finally me! I ran for National Treasurer because I thought the membership deserved better than what it was getting, I felt the reform process was in danger of stuttering to a halt and I worried about the implementation of NUS Extra. I tried to put myself forward as a critic of the current systems and processes but with a positive agenda of my own to pursue. I think I will be most proud of being the ONLY candidate on the platform who had been unequivocally in support of the NUS Extra project, leading the debate from the very beginning and hadn’t jumped on the bandwagon when it became popular.

Conference disagreed with me for whatever reason and re-elected Joe. I’m not vitriolic about it and I wish him the very best of luck over the next 12 months, Joe’s brand of student politics is unique, but I have no doubt it has its place in the movement.

I didn’t run for election because I was interested in personal advancement, I care passionately about the student movement and NUS and just because I was rejected by conference it does not mean I intend to turn my back on it. I will continue to support NUS in all its endeavours and will always be willing to help in any way I can.

I’m afraid I cannot just leave it there though. One thing that struck me and left a really bad taste in mouth around the elections was the amount of misinformation and deception that whizzed around. I have run in more elections than I care to remember now and I have ALWAYS believed that campaigning should be positive and FACT based and free from bullying and intimidation. These elections were far from that.

The false debate that has been going on within NUS about Political versus Apolitcial candidates for election is ridiculous and those who have engaged in it should be ashamed of themselves. Good friends of mine were smeared for having no politics, but nobody has ever made an effort to define what “having politics” means. Kat Fletcher summed it up perfectly in her leaving speech when she said that some people who are smeared as ‘apolitical’ “have more politics in their little fingers than some of those who bang on about a political NUS”.

I don’t intend to give the purveyors of ignorance, bile and intimidation any more airspace by going into further details so I hope this is nipped in the bud quickly and in future honest, decent people, who just want to do the right thing are shown the respect they deserve.

There were lots of leaving speeches and sad farewells; some “old cows were put out to be pasteurised” (or something like that). Lots of good people will be moving on this year, but I think the NEC that has just been elected is immensely talented and I wish them all the best of luck for the future.

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