NUS Conference was over. I’d got elected too. Surely time to sit back an relax. Surely not. I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but Helen Symons had specifically asked that Mature Students Conference didn’t happened on a weekend, something about an upcoming general election, so in the end we had got the Monday-Tuesday directly following national conference. There were a few things I’d put off getting finished sooner, well I knew I would have a whole 2 days before heading back up to Blackpool to meet with the committee and staff on Sunday night. Well at least I’d only gone back to Liverpool at my in-laws and not Cov. It was all going quite well, everything was more or less sorted and then my phone rang.

‘Miskell’ it said. ‘Miskell never rings me’ I said and immediately thought “Oh shit”. I’d half expected that what was about to happen to happen after what had happened that week. What I hadn’t expected to happen was for it to happen at 4pm on the Friday before the Monday when the conference happened. You still with me? Good. “Err Joe, you know next week, well Lola (Helen Symons NOLS nickname) has asked me to give you a ring, and to be honest, she’s not up to it, she’s spending a bit of time with her parents, and I don’t think she wants to be in that sort of NUS type environment so soon after what has happened.”. Not wishing to seem heartless, and realistically knowing whatever I said she wasn’t coming, I said ‘OK, I understand, I’ll sort it out’, and the moment the phone went dead on the one and only time Ben Miskell and I spoke on the phone (design not chance!), I rang Dave Winstanley, president at Liverpool Guild for Veronicas phone number.

You see Helens non-attendance would not just mean we were two sessions short, but also meant that my responsibilities had more than doubled overnight. I just checked to make sure the speaker she was in charge of getting was booked. Oh no, three sessions. To sort out by Monday. It’s now 4.37 on Friday.

OK maybe that was dramatic effect. With Veronica agreeing to come and say the only thing she could say; “I’m the new VP Welfare, I’ve been dropped in it completely, don’t expect too much today. I know a bit, but to be honest we haven’t got many mature students at our place, I want to learn from you, I need to learn from you.” And the ability of us the run the two sessions which were meant to be in parallel in series instead (what do you mean you don’t know what I’m on about, did you never study electronics???), we were only one short. The session was on the NUS Childcare charter. Who do I know with something to say about childcare who might be at mature students conference. Well Hmmm. (if you don’t get it, see the conference 05 blog). Sorted, I just have to be lead officer and the sole NEC member. Fine, I can do that.

Well I set off in plenty of time to make the Sunday night meeting, but there was one slight problem with the trains. There weren’t any. There was a bus to Preston station, and then a little wait for the train. The problem was that unlike anything sensible, the bus went up the A roads, not going via the M62 or M56 to the M6 (it was a direct no stops bus/train), that wouldn’t have been so bad normally I suppose, but no-one at Lime Street pointed out that Everton were not only at home that day, but the match would finish about ten minutes before we were meant to go past Goodison Park. It would have been quicker if I’d walked.

Although I’ve been to the Norbreck Castle before I’ve never stayed there. I’ve never realised how big it is. It could fit NUS Conference in, but it is in the middle of nowhere. Lucky for me, I got there before Tim Mallender, meaning I could ring him up and place another order from the take away.

The conference had a good turnout. Last year, the first attempt at a conference was abandoned due to the lack of registrants, the one that went ahead was small. This one had over twice as many as last year, a distinct success. And we only seemed to end up with one set of skivers. The Leicester college delegation were never seen past the opening plenary and meal times. Well it is Blackpool. How many people never show up at national for the same reason?

The conference went fine all things considering. Helen rapidly became the arch-villain of the piece, the same way Julian Nicholds had become at the Wolves emergency conference, when he spoke against the idea of a Mature Students Officer. Of course the other minor problem was what to do with Ange and Stew, or rather Darcy. And it was such a minor problem. We’ll just put a table at the back, you can sit there, Ok? OK.

As eluded to earlier Ange gave the presentation on the childcare charter. When I say presentation, what I mean is they split into groups and pulled out everything that was wrong with it and showed how it should be re-written. Everything else went well. I’ll know not to do an NUS round in the evening quiz again if all the committee are sat at the same table. That was definitely a tactical error.

The second day came and went so fast, the policies all passed, save one about supporting Luciana. The committee more or less stayed the same, Morag and Ange swapped their places and two new members were elected. We actually had seven people stand for five places. That is definitely progress.

The day after I got an odd text from Tim Roll-Pickering; “Have you got Helen Symons mobile number?” I gave it him and asked why. Well he, as a Tory (though he insists he’s a Conservative, not a Tory) was there gate crashing the Labour party manifesto launch, and well, all the NOLS on the NUS NEC were there, including Helen. I hadn’t been as pissed off as I should have been about her not turning up to MSC as I should have been. Until that point. Livid was the word, but it was the perfect demonstration to anyone who hadn’t realised, just where the loyalty will always be for any party member on the NEC. The bottom line is, you can’t continue in NUS forever, one of the main reasons for getting elected in the past has always been to use that precious couple of years to get noticed by the right people.

And so off to NUSSL, which apparently we have to call NUS Services now. There were a few little things I didn’t know about, like the fact that I’m chair of the company. Nice to be told these things. Yes you may have thought I had one of the highest hack rankings ever, but with NUSSL, besides the fact that’s where we get our beer, I don’t know much. Well, this was a crash course, but luckily there were quite a few NUSSL things coming up, all back to back. The over-riding first impression was of course to cry. Why can’t NUS be like this? One swift look at the accounts and things were worse. They’ve been steadily expanding their services over the last few years, putting money in the reserves and increasing turnover. You can’t really ask for any more than that.

Possibly the best thing that happened though was meeting Peter Wilson, now a staff member at NUSSL. Last thing I heard he was doing the cross channel ferry. He was my boss when I first got involved with Cov, but quite sensibly had left before everything went wrong under the erstwhile Presidency of Mr Calvin Smith, which left a predictable mess which I ended up having to sort out. I hadn’t seen him for 10 years, and to be honest I don’t think he remembers me.

Making people who take their own time out to get involved feel valued is not something NUS is good at, and there are lots of things we could learn from NUSSL. For example, on day one I was given a list of events I would have to go to for the next year. While the NUS Events department has more or less the same, what they don’t have is set dates for committee meetings. For the first time this year, we have had NEC dates ready already. So we are getting there, just maybe not quickly enough for some.

The final thing I did for April, and again at the start of May was answer the call for help from Queen Mary SU. The uni were planning to take over the commercial services, for no real reason. Although they had made overall loses the year before, this was totally down to unrealistic loan repayments to the uni which had since been renegotiated. It didn’t make any sense other than asset-stripping from the VCs point of view. And you know what? We won in the end, well done Laura and the team. Time for a holiday.

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