I can’t now remember the number of times I have tried to start writing this blog on various bits of paper travelling around the country. And now at last, we have it. Well sort of. February is always one if the most interesting months in NUS, as nominations close for national conference, and it permeates into everything else going. The perfect example was the meeting which finally chose MORI to undertake market research for NUS. It was hard to find someone sat there who wasn’t standing for something sat around the table at NUSSL HQ. Surprisingly, for this time of year no-one else had their yearbook, so everyone wanted mine. Thinking about it, I should have been asking for at least one vote per phone number. After all, who is voting for whom and how they can change that is all everyone seems to be talking about, apart from some extra speculation about who is standing.

The evening was interesting, with the ridiculous idea of trying to find somewhere for a sit down meal in Manchester by committee. This only meant that an extra hour was wasted, a disaster for Martin Ings and myself who only wanted to find somewhere to watch the Arse play ManUre. We got the last 20 odd minutes, so I can’t complain too much, especially as I ended up with Martin introducing me to ‘Word Up’ on the itbox, a game not a million miles away from scrabble. After several attempts, we finally ended up winners, but the best bit was the final word that got us to the points total and our £1 payout; ‘Hacks’.

I had failed to learn from the last time I was in a hostel with NUS, in that I ended up in a room with Lloyde again. I threw almost everything on the floor at him during the night to try and stop him snoring; in fact when I had run out of random debris, I started unpacking my bag so as I would have more missiles to launch. Martin had his walkman on all night, but it still wasn’t enough to drown out the noise from Lloyde, the two train lines and the flock of geese sleeping by the canal under the window.

The next day I had been allocated- I say allocated, I was the only NEC member stupid enough to say I was free for a school talk in East Grinstead. Not exactly near Manchester, so another early start. Made a bit later by the fact somehow- or by someone- the time on my phone had been put back an hour. An extra hour lie-in might have been welcome, if any of us had got any sleep, but it just served to make Martin and myself late. Of course, I was far later down to a train breaking down in front of mine which is always fun, especially when your train then has to stop and pick up everyone who was on the other one.

The end of the week marked of course one of the most surreal dates in the NUS calendar, close of nominations day. I say surreal, as for a couple of hours after the five o’clock deadline passes you have the one time all year where all factions (well not quite all of them) are sat round a big table in a pub (this year the Quays, thank God not Nambucca) talking and waiting to see what the final list of candidates will be. No-one seemed to believe me that the Socialist Party would be re-entering the fray for the first time in years, but the big shock when the list came out was the absence of the Tories and SWSS from the block of twelve list. While it turned out that the omission of Suzie Wylie was an error from elections committee, the absence of Conservative Future was a self-inflicted cock-up. Every candidate must have ten nominators, and can submit 15, but the key is no-one can nominate more than one person for the same post. Well some of the CF nominations had got lost somehow and as a result ‘the spares’ had been submitted. Sadly for them, that meant that both candidates had the same nominators, and despite them saying they would withdraw one of their candidates from the election, the ever officious elections committee disqualified them both.

The next week was of course the week I never thought I would make it through, a week of regional conferences, the week before Lorna was due to deliver our baby, my mind was elsewhere. It was always my worry that the baby would decide probably Wednesday, when I was the furthest away from home, would be a good day, but like most first babies, being late just like its’ parents would be the things to do. The week with the Westside posse went down without much incident. It was great to see seven FEs represented in my home region, West Midlands, thanks to the efforts of Sarah Griffiths and WMANUS, a better advert for having and area you will never see. There was a lot of debate all week over NUS extra, most so in London where the majority seemed to be against, looking at our side of the country, the project seemed to be on a knife edge, with nothing but opposition in London, especially when the possibility of union-busting Walmart (aka ASDA) going on was mentioned, but the word from the other it looked like it would sail through. Only conference would tell I suppose.

The last thing I did for February, well that I can remember at least was attend a rather bizarre NEC meeting. The main point of it was to discuss the estimates, which besides the fact I was standing for National Treasurer, I thought I should take an interest in due to the messed-up nature of our finances. And there were several things I could not understand, but the debate on the estimates didn’t end up happening, so was pushed onto an emergency NEC for March 9th.

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/joerukin/271465.aspx