The week of the 24th October was the Reading Affiliation vote, thanks to all NEC that contributed their time and effort and thanks to the Sabbs for being behind a yes vote too, Reading students voted 85% to stay in their National Union. I had a complete nightmare on the day I was meant to be going with tubes and trains AGAIN so by the time I would have got there the ballot boxes would have been closed, thanks to Joe Rukin for doing the work of two!

Tuesday the NEC Strategy team met to discuss the recommendations of the report into the resignations of our NUS committee members and also to address the lack of policies and procedures that would protect our NEC from harassment in light of James Knights resignation. We decided to go away and look at external organizations practices and report back to next meeting, we also very wisely decided that whatever we thought should be written up, it probably shouldn’t be written up by us due to our lack of experience in this area! Tuesday night I went home to Bristol as I was due in Bath and Bath Spa the next day so thought I’d go home for some TLC and then borrow my mum’s car for a couple of days so I could avoid the train!

At Bath we went over the priority campaign and how they could implement it in their union, I also did a half hour TV/radio interview for their student media and got positively grilled by the interviewer who had, how shall I describe them…. very right wing views! He didn’t agree with the 50% target of widening access, he thought education is being dumbed down to allow widening participation, he agreed with top-up fees and means testing and pretty much everything I disagree with he seemed to champion. It was extremely frustrating and it always shocks me when a student has these views, I think it’s a by product of working for NUS that you kind of get used to the fact that everyone hates fees and therefore assume it in the rest of society, particularly from students.

I also went over the Bath Spa in the afternoon, talked through some union issues and the Participate campaign and then watched a bit of the Rugby before heading home.

Thursday I went to UWE and Bristol to answer some interesting questions about NUS badging up with the DfES on the Information campaign, NUS affiliation, NUS Extra and involvement.

Friday was the NUS/ULU student media day and it was fabulous too, we had amongst others Andy Bell, deputy editor of panorama and David Seymour, Political Editor of the Mirror come to share their experience and knowledge with student journalists from across England. There is one more to go in Birmingham, I hope that it is as much of a success!

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