The day after I returned from holiday I went to London for the last National Council of the year. It was an eventful and unpleasant meeting with tempers and emotions running high particularly around the NUS get the vote out campaign and NEC participation in this. It was a strange event, many of the national councillors were also NEC elect, unfortunately candidates for the NEC that lost their elections, incumbent NEC that lost their elections and in addition to this it was just before the LGBT conference and we had the three candidates for the positions in the room, this combined made it very tense with lots of factors involved. It was not a particularly nice way to start back in NUS and I really hope that the new NEC can build bridges and not tear each other apart like that, its not good for anyone, any group nor the organisation and I plead with people to stop this, stop the nastiness, the snide comments, the “in” jokes that no-one else is a part of and try to work together even if we don’t agree (which we won’t) lets disagree civilly then leave it in the meeting. I never want to sit through a meeting like that again.

I went to the Leeds summer ball on the 3rd of June which was great, thank you for the invite! Over the weekend was the LGBT conference and James-J Walsh and Kat Louis were elected to lead the LGBT campaign for the year, congratulations to both of you I know you will be great.

The week of the 6th June I spent in London on a handover with James Lloyd (current National Secretary) I met with all the different staff I needed to meet with , attended a staff meeting and went to a regional officer meeting. The week of the 13th June I met with the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship who are interested in working with us further, went to the newly formed SE area NUS or SEANUS conference in Portsmouth and then on Friday visited the venue for the campaigns launch in September and met with Sian Davies about our priority campaign proposal.

The Friday evening was Hannah Essex’s leaving drinks which was a great night with NUS bods past, present and future there including her friends and colleagues from outside organisations she has built up relations with over the year for NUS.

The week of the 20th June was yet more handover and a management team away day with the new National Director. Kat and Martin also signed the lease for the new building in Camden which was a pretty momentous occasion. This was my last week as a block of twelve member and I was really starting to feel ready to start on my own.

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