Monday 14th November was a hacks dream (not mine particularly though) I went to NUS National Council, where despite my best efforts to make it work better, it all went wrong anyway. I’ll try again but its exceedingly frustrating. I’m not going to go into more detail now but before next council I’ll explain National Council to you in more depth. Someone also put in a censure against me for scheduling Regional Conferences during Ramadan, Jamal spoke against this and it was withdrawn. I left early to make sure I was back to London in time for UCL’s council at 5.30 where I was doing a presentation on NUS, our democracy, our campaigns and NUS Extra. I got a bit of a grilling but nothing like as bad as I thought I would! After that I went over to ULU council, after the resignation of Stuart the ULU president I thought I should go to offer the sabbs there some support and to see how the UL unions were feeling after this announcement.

Tuesday 15th I was in the office for much of the day, meeting with the strategy team (well Jo Salmon and the National Director – no one else showed!) where we looked once again at the report into the resignations and issues around JK’s resignation.

Wednesday I went up to Manchester for the NUS extra trial regions feedback session, the feedback was mixed and it is clear that there has been many teething problems with the pilot. The discounts were not what was expected by conference nor the region and there has been numerous logistical problems. What can’t be denied however is the income generated for Students’ Unions and the popularity of the card within the student population at many unions.

I do however feel personally very very strongly that there must be a membership/democracy card that is a prerequisite of buying the extra card, students must still feel members of their national union, they must still have a way to log onto the NUS website, they must still be able to come to annual conference using their NUS card as credentials. It is vital that this happens to avoid the accusations and claims of individual membership, it is essential this happens to stop NUS’s perception of being just a discount card getting worse and it is crucial for students who don’t want to buy the card or can’t afford it to have an affinity with their national union.

On the Friday I travelled to Scotland for NUS Scotland Council, I was staying in Edinburgh and having only been to Scotland once before I have no idea of the geography of Scotland. I need to apologise to delegates now for leaving mid afternoon, I had no idea that Perth was such a distance to Edinburgh (where I was flying home from) and I had booked my flight reasonably early as I had committed to a friends birthday weeks before. You lose enough friends doing this job through not being able to see them, cancelling on them and forgetting to call and text back that sometimes you can’t let people down. I also did not know where the sessions I was contributing to were on the order paper before hand so I do apologise again. You hopefully will have received an email answering the NUSUK questions that were asked and with a link to the NEC report and plan and the Democracy Guide that I sent to NUS Scotland to send out to delegates. One more thing to add….I am not made for the weather up there, it was freezing! Thank you for the invite Melanie, I’ll make sure I am more familiar with the geography and timings next time. If any one has any further questions do get in touch.

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