I suspect I may become a serial blogger. I write a personal blog, but its contents are usually somewhat more mundane than I expect you’d be interested in. When I used to read NEC blogs last year, I was much more interested in some political or opinion piece, rather than just a list of the blogger’s whereabouts. That’s my intention with this blog; I kinda consider it a combination of a diary, a report, and a virtual soapbox. It’s mildly frustrating that there’s no mechanism for commentary, but I guess you could always read the blogs on my myspace and comment there, or email me.

Anyway, a friend pointed me towards a particular post on a popular messageboard. I was intrigued to discover that I’m tipped to stand for National Secretary (again), maybe VP: FE, and that I haven’t made my mind up whether to re-stand for the Block of Twelve. Perhaps unconventionally, I’ve decided to address one of these rumours up front, really early on in the (political/academic) year.

I can officially confirm that, as of August 2^nd 2006, I haven’t yet decided whether I will stand or restand for any NEC position at National Conference 2007. Perhaps it’s political naïvete, but I rather thought I might wait for a few months to decide, as making that choice before I’d even been on the Block seemed a bit…well, dishonest and a bit silly, really. What if I didn’t enjoy it? What if I wasn’t any good at it? What if my circumstances changed significantly?

So, with all those questions unanswered I decided to wait a while to decide. I’m still deciding. So far I’m enjoying it and I seem to be pretty good at it (although, of course, you guys will ultimately be the judge of that) but my circumstances are…well, not ideal (although getting better). Actually, that brings me to something I’ve wanted to talk about.

Let’s look at what being on the Block actually means -- specifically, what the expectations on us are and how it all fits together. Block members are expected to do ten days of NUS work per month; that’s two working weeks, or half a month. We even get 11.5 days of annual leave per year, although quite what that would mean, I’m unsure; it’s half of what full-timers get.

So, we’re expected to work about half as much as a full-timer. With me so far? That gives us about two and a half days per week free to do our own thing. Now, Block members get paid a monthly honorarium of £200 (which is taxed and has National Insurance removed from it before it reaches your account), and a non-taxable £70 mobile phone allowance per month. There’s also a travel budget to get you places.

The thing is, my rent is £233.33 per month (about £55 per week). I live in Birmingham, unlike a lot of the rest of the Block, who tend to migrate to London, meaning their rent is likely a lot higher than mine. Then there’s all those pesky expenses like water rates, gas and electricity, council tax and occasionally some food. I’m told some people even like to spend money on social activities!

The more astute of you will have noticed that the honorarium is unlikely to cover all those expenses. Sure, back in the day when students were able to claim unemployment benefits, Block members could basically work full-time for NUS, supplementing their benefits with the honorarium, and it was a fine and wonderful system then. Post-Thatcher, this isn’t an option, so what can you do?

Well, you could try to survive on benefits anyway; share a house with people of your political persuasion, claim Housing Benefit and work wherever possible to make up the additional money. Not a popular option but it works for some people. You could survive on your parents’ largesse. You could even get financial support from your political grouping (or even *gasp* faction), who could perhaps set you up with a sympathetic job.

If, however, like me you don’t want to survive on benefits, your parents (or parent in my case) don’t have the means to support you like that, and your political grouping’s finances couldn’t stretch to fund a full-time NUS organiser, then you’re on your own, looking for jobs. As far as I can tell, when it comes to jobs, there are two options: find a part-time job that will pay you enough to exist without benefits (from experience I can tell you that these are few and far between, and hotly contested) or work full-time and hope your employer will allow you to use annual leave and flexitime to do your NEC duties appropriately. Given that a lot of employers this year seem not to want politically-charged young people as employees (apparently potential troublemakers aren’t ideal employees. Who’d’ve thought it?) it narrows the field slightly.

July, as you’ve read, wasn’t a wonderful month financially; my temp agencies (all seven of them!) managed to produce a grand total of 6 hours of work for me for the whole month. I had to get a loan (to be repaid out of my honoraria) from NUS to cover my living expenses (in fairness, NUS were really supportive and understanding, but having graduated with a mountain of student debt I’m understandably not very keen to borrow any money from anyone!) for the month. This is a pattern that could easily repeat itself in the future (without the ability to get NUS to bail me out) and I truly hope that none of my fellow Block members find themselves in that sort of situation for any length of time.

I’ve been quite lucky in the last two weeks; I got the Student Organiser job with Community, and so I’m heading down to London for three months to recruit betting shop workers and map the student work scene in the capital. I’m also through to the candidate pool for the TUC’s Organising Academy, so I’m ready to be selected by sponsoring unions for a year’s placement learning the ways of trade unions. I’ve said I’m not willing to relocate from Birmingham for that, so I will return to my Midlands base. I’ve lived in the city for seven years and in the West Midlands all my life, and I love it here. My politics were formed here and it’s where I want to see them flourish, my entire social life is here, and it’s where I can train my kung fu at the finest gym in the country, the Temple Martial Arts Centre.

But what does that mean? It means that I’ll be working full time. Hopefully my employers-to-be will be sensitive to my NUS responsibilities and I’ll be able to use some flexibility to ensure I do everything. Worst case scenario, I thrash all my annual leave to do regional and national conferences, NEC meetings and the like.

To go back to the start, what does that mean for the Block? Well, another friend of mine who knows a lot about NUS always says that the Block sets you up to either fail or starve; if you do as much NUS work as you’re supposed to, you’ll never earn enough money to support yourself. If you have a job and earn enough to support yourself, the chances are you’ll not be able to do as much NUS work as you’re supposed to. Perhaps it’s different for current sabbaticals (but most of the sabbs I know already work an unhealthy number of hours) and students (although I’d worry about grades in that situation), but my fear is that unless you’ve got a lot of net worth, rich parents or political benefactors then the Block is a precarious place to be.

People seem very fond of the Block. They say it protects our political diversity. To be honest, the Block is certainly politically very diverse in one sense (various religious, revolutionary, former revolutionary and other political groups seem to make their homes here), but I can confirm that about two-thirds of the Block are Labour party members, with a Green, a Respect member and some people who aren’t members of political parties (but likely have sympathies to various different alignments) making up the remainder. I may not agree with their politics, but where are the Lib Dems and the Tories? If my politics are represented (and more of those another time!) when the party of which I’m a member has no Westminster representation, how on earth do the two parties which between them make up 40% of this country’s MPs not get a look in? Especially when one of those is (anecdotally) the favourite party of students?

Anyway, that’s another train of thought entirely. My point was therefore that people aren’t going to vote to get rid of the Block of Twelve, scrapping it as an unfair institution. Instead, what else could we do to make it easier for Block members to deliver on their manifestoes (don’t get me wrong, NUS is offering us all a lot of support in terms of getting things done, but the problems I outlined above still exist) and still live above subsistence level?

To me, the obvious answer would be to put our money where our mouth is; valuing that political “diversity” by paying for it. If Block members are supposed to do 50% of the work of a full-timer, let’s pay them 50% of the salary of a full-timer. That way it stops divided loyalties, even giving members more ability to hold us to account for not turning up to events because, hell, it’s not like we’re gonna need a full-time job in those circumstances.

However, I don’t have the power to make that happen. The budgets for 06/07 are now set, so whatever happens won’t benefit me (unless I decide to stand and you decide to elect me back onto the Block next year, I guess), but the people who can make that change are the people reading this. Maybe the money could come from NUS Extra, much as I wasn’t exactly keen on it. Maybe the money could come from sponsorship from different Trades Unions. Maybe it could come from the new affiliation fee formula. I don’t know.

But I do know that until something changes NUS is never going to be as effective as it could be. I plan to spend this year on the Block helping do everything to make it as good as it can be at the moment, but my job or my finances may well prevent me from doing as much as I’d like – and the same will likely be true of many of my colleagues. For that, I can only apologise.

I started this blog off by talking about elections, and I’ll finish it that way. I still haven’t made up my mind about next year’s elections. I don’t intend to any time soon, and neither should you. Give all of us – incumbents and new contenders – an opportunity to show you what we’re made of, how well we deliver what we promised you. Let us show you our skills, our abilities, and our mettle. Make your decision on our merits, not on hearsay, rumour or based on whether we promise you a cuddly toy or not. I love democracy like you wouldn’t believe, but the democracy I love is a healthy and transparent one that goes right to the grass-roots and engages people on issues they care about.

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