This week was a bit of a struggle, with the remnants of a pretty nasty cold that everyone seems to have doing the normal things you have to do on the NEC (bed late, up early, travelling round) was more difficult than normal and this week was set to be jammed packed. On Monday 7th November I travelled up to Keele University for Disability Sports Day which was part of the Participate Priority Campaign and the SWD priority campaign Activate, it was a really great informative day, with a good range of workshops covering all the issues around Disability Sport, the most interesting part for me was hearing the stories and experiences of some students with disabilities who engage in sporting activities. Unfortunately I was feeling worse by the minute so opted to go home before I infected everyone else with flu germs.

On Tuesday 8th we had an NEC meeting in which the NEC inputted into the review of the regions and development department, debated the support of the AUT calls for 1/3 of the income from top-up fees to go directly into lecturers pay, discussed a project proposal about international student union twinning, heard how the international students budget has been spent already, got an in depth management update and didn’t get round to discussing any motions submitted. Obviously this was frustrating for many of the NEC that had taken the time to write and submit policy motions, but sometimes it is vital for the NEC to know what is going on at all levels of the organisation. We are now having a separate NEC meeting that will be for discussing motions only to make sure we get through them all.

Wednesday was half a day in the office, meeting about conference and meeting with business development and marketing and then I went to the lobby of parliament about the terrorism bill. I was surprised to see so few people there when it was clearly such a controversial issue that was being played out in the national media.

November 10th I spent a day interviewing for the new NUS Solicitor, due to start in January. Then in the evening I travelled down to Exmouth with Julian, Wes, Daniel Randall and Stephen Brown so we could go to the demo against the closure of Rolle College the next day. The demo was fantastic and the organisation superb so congratulations Katie! To the shame of the VC and the Board of Governors the decision was taken to close the college campus down, despite support from students, trade unions, local residents and the wider student movement. It was an emotional day for all involved and when the verdict was delivered to a room packed full of students, it sparked a walk out in disgust. It has been extremely tough for all the officers at Plymouth Uni and they have put up such a great fight. See below for some pictures of the day.

I then travelled straight to Newport for Wales Winter Council on Saturday, where we saw the new President of NUS Wales elected in a bye-election. Congratulations to Dylan Williams! Some policy was discussed, exec reports received and some officers elected to the Wales National Executive Committee. Kat, Ellie and I then had to leave to rush off to London for the NUS/Daily Mirror Student Journalism awards, we had all of 15 mins to glam up when we got there before the evening began. I had to open the event, and present two awards with Kate Lawler (host for the evening and winner of BB3!). I had a great evening, well done to all of the winners and runners up and thank you to the Mirror for putting on a great evening, with an excessive amount of free booze. I did not have a good head in the morning. Click here to see some photos from the evening www.mirrorprints.co.uk

Sunday morning with a cracking hangover I met with the NUS steering committee to have some training and to discuss the problems with last conference and how we can avoid them this time round. We also looked at the recommendations from the report onto the resignations of our NUS committee members that related to steering committee and how we could implement them. We discussed the new e-submission of motions and the next steering meeting where we have the initial composite of motions submitted. I really hope that the democracy guide and all the work we have done promoting the motions submitting procedure works and that more unions than last year submit motions to annual conference.

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