I spent from Sunday evening until Thursday in Preston for one of our summer training courses, Active Political Leadership. I actually had one of the best weeks I have had in office so far, I met some fantastic officers, spent some time with some of the NEC, had a real opportunity to talk to officers about NUS, our campaigns and the change process we are going through. Kat and I ran the traditional NUS quiz, we went out and watched the delegates singing Kareaoke, if you want pictures I believe Emma from Kent has some fab ones!

The course is great and involves an output exercise where tutor groups have to form executives and deal with numerous situations in a pretend year in office. This is when the NEC get to test out their acting skills! Kat and Pav made sterling performances as Vice Chancellors, Sian and I played nasty journalists, Flick enacted a great VC secretary and an AUT rep and I think I deserved an Oscar for my portrayal of a sleazy saleswoman for Unity housing, others may beg to differ however!

I have to mention here for Paul from Keele, Chris from Hull and Micky from York and the rest of their gang, that there were several catchphrases that developed from the course that have lived on in the NEC, “flagging” (for when you are very tired) and “joined up thinking” (with accompanying hand actions) to name a couple that were prevalent in one tutor group!!

The Friday was spent in HQ in a priority campaigns planning meeting where we are developing the ideas passed at NEC in time for the launch. There were a few disagreements but I think we are getting there at last. I did manage to get onto my emails briefly and realised I would have to come in on Sunday to get some important things done before I went off again on another training course next week. I had to update the NEC on the inquiry into anti-Semitism allegations, finalise the speakers for the campaigns launch, respond to emails that needed an urgent answer and proof-read a couple of documents.

At 4pm I had to leave to go to meet MORI about the stakeholder review to find out more on the timetable and to work out how we can involve regional conferences in November. It was a very productive meeting and I think we are now in a situation where the research can start moving again after being neglected for some time. It looks like this will be published at the end of November and we can then start reforming NUS to what our stakeholders want, I am very much looking forward to seeing this process through. I think this could shape our 5 year plan and we could start strategically planning as an organisation, re-sourcing the areas the membership need and want us to, to make us more effective and to curb the tide of disaffiliation. I do believe however that this has to be an ongoing process to get to where we need to be but this research will form the foundation of future change.

Kat and Sian had their housewarming party on the Saturday night which was a very drunken affair! I ended up BBQing and was surprisingly good at it! The funniest moment was when a drunken Stephen Brown fell into the BBQ also very amusing was when he lost his flip flop in the pool!

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