So we were getting into June, and I had a slight problem. If I hadn’t have got elected, my plan was to get a job straight away. But I had got elected, and I wouldn’t start getting paid until the next month. The 20th of the next month to be precise. Normally, this might not have been a problem, but of course now Alex was here and the wonderful organisation that Lorna works for, the Learning and Skills Council, were just about to start paying her the statutory minimum maternity allowance of £102 per week. And that’s before tax and the deductions for her car were taken out. Our combined earnings wouldn’t cover the mortgage, let alone anything else. So, I had started looking for jobs. I’d got one already.

Just like Lorna sits in a department which merges colleges, I too would be working for the enemy, Devco, better known to most as Firkin. It meant that some of my prior commitments had it. I felt quite pissed off about missing another NPC meeting, but the simple fact was the Lion would pay me money for being there all weekend, NPC would not. But four or five shifts a week at minimum wage wouldn’t be enough, and I was looking for something else to go with it. The other problem was what was in my diary for June. Lots of stuff, lots of stuff I hadn’t realised I would have to go to when I stood, four days in Macclesfield for NUSSL board and committees and of course the trade fair, now rebranded as the ‘union show’.

To my astonishment, truly to my bedazzled amazement, when I had said I’d have to get a job back in May and wouldn’t be able to come to these events, directors of NUSSL had said “Well you have to come, the chair has to be there for committee handover and you kick off the union show, we’ll have to pay you.” Eh? What? Am I hearing correctly? I’m not sure I am. So for the three weeks before I officially started with NUS, I got paid and not by NUS who couldn’t afford it anyway, but by services, who most definitely can.

I type this blog on the laptop they provided, Bluetooth and all. There are so many things NUS can learn from NUSSL, but we will not learn unless the issues of political suspicion and financial peril are minimised. That’s not saying NUS should be commercially minded, it just needs to have the strength to embrace cultural change. For example, NUS have a full time staff member employed with a remit ethics and the environment. I’m sure students would love NUS to have that, but alas as always in my life at the moment, it’s about money.

So it’s only now that I am learning about things like beacon stores, best bar none, do it for the planet, raising the bar, the events network and a whole host of projects which NUSSL are taking on proactively. Yes proactively, how often to we hear those words in an NUS context? Trying to sort out a problem before it a becomes a problem.

I know there are more projects. I missed off the highly exciting EPOS project, better known as tills. You know, you just can’t get the same comedy reaction writing that than you can saying it. But as I said, there is much more going on and I am still learning, and my time in Macclesfield represents the steepest learning curve of this job. I don’t know if I sounded like an expert or a blagger when I did the speech to the incoming committees, listing all that NUSSL (sorry, it’s just much quicker to type that than ‘NUS Services’ every time) does, but I hope I’m becoming an expert as we go along. I did ask Martin “Which is worse? Me going to NUSSL Convention and maybe picking up some votes, or me getting elected, not having been to NUSSL Convention?

There was of course, as would be expected, one bit of an issue. The minutes of the last meeting had said that there would be no problem having McDonalds on the NUS Extra card. There were some of us who didn’t think that was how it had gone. It seems that at NUSSL, no matter how much you debate something, if, as what had happened, you had a load of negatives said by different people, then a load of positive things, then the positives win, unless the whole argument comes back that way, and there is terribly active opposition. Possibly also the weight of the person who had said “I think students would want McDonalds and ASDA on the card.” Had done a lot to make it seem like the official stamp of approval from NUS.

Well Martin was late for the board, his ‘first time’ he assures us. The night before he had amazingly been winning the poker despite being too drunk to know which cards he actually had. Anyway, that meant I had to chair for the start and, well, didn’t exactly have a sterling performance! Can we agree the minutes of the last meeting? Err no, we can’t. A full blown row ensued, thankfully interrupted by Martins arrival, where we had just about decided we would go over any problems when extra came up again in the agenda. What was resolved was frighteningly simple. There were several people worried about the implications of certain firms, but there are ethical and environmental procedures which take place at NUSSL. As long as these had been gone through, with a satisfactory outcome, everyone would be happy.

But of course that is the politically juicy bit of NUSSL. Everyone wants to know about extra, it’s so contentious. No-one wants to know about EPOS, the highly exciting tills system, but it’s regarded as industry standard that an EPOS system can put 5% on your sales, purely because you know exactly what you’ve sold when you’ve sold it and can therefore react far quicker to trends, even down to knowing just how much more snakebite you sell on an indie rock night or that, yes, you might have sold all of your newspapers, but which one did you sell out of first? Was it too early? Should you have ordered more? Well EPOS will tell you. That’s what Devco have!

The day after board, we had the inaugural day for the committees. That was good, but odd. The first day I’d been at NUSSL, I’d decided to ask for the accounts, and look through all the other stuff I had to find out more about NUSSL. Of course what I had found out was that NUSSL had been expanding, taking on staff and new projects, getting more revenue and maybe even making sure it spent a bit more if it kept down the profit and avoided corporation tax. The accounts simply reflected the operation, but it would have been daft not to check. Especially as I was being told I would be chair of the board of directors. But now, I could attend the committees.

I found out quite a lot all day, definitely a learning experience. The at night though, we had one of the more simple, and cheap, but highly effective social/teambuilding events that NUS just don’t bother with. We went bowling. Licensed trade looked like they were running away with it, but then the ‘Bored’ started getting it together. They finished just before us, and we were in touch to the end. I had the chance to win it. A spare in my ninth, I could do it with enough down in my first hit. Well tough. It didn’t happen. Antony Blackshaw however came up with the goods. One point was in it. Peter Wilson was not happy.

Of course it wasn’t long before I came back for another NUSSL event. The big one, the Union Show. Of course there was a slight problem. Martin had told me “We’ve got this meeting about the Charities Bill, it’s ongoing for next year, so I think it’s best you go.” I couldn’t argue, but as much as that, he was also saying “If you think I’m missing the trade fair you’ve got another think coming.” I hadn’t realised that.

I should have done though when we arrived. I was filling my badge in, full of pride ‘National Treasurer Elect’, while he was filing in ‘NUS Services Company Chair’. His rationale was simple, “I’ll get more freebies that way”. You can’t argue with logic like that. The same way UI couldn’t argue with me going to the Home Office. I did try and point out that I was ‘Taking one for the team’ and could be looked after during the fair. Unsurprisingly, no-one was looking for space in their goodie bag to be taken up with someone else’s goodies.

The first day was odd. Martin had warned me about having to do speeches with no warning, and this was one of those occasions. I suppose doing a speech for me isn’t a problem, it’s doing a speech when I have no idea what I’m taking about that could be an issue.

Well luckily that’s what I’d spent a great deal of Thursday before was covering those bases. While I may have seemed slightly blagging it on that day, I’m sure I actually looked like I meant it this time. Though I’m not sure how my handover to Fergal Sharkey “And to prove a good speaker isn’t hard to find….” Would have rated on the cheese gradient. At least it was a NUSSL event and there were people old enough to get the exceptional poor attempt at a joke to realise that’s what it was, opposed to most of the sabbs just thinking “Fergal who?”

I didn’t spend the whole night at the piss-up as I had to be off to London in the morning. Another beautifully contrived rail journey meant I was 40 minutes late for the pre-meeting, but five minutes earlier and I would have been the first of the four of us there. Now I saw why Tim had arranged a two hour pre-meet. We all had our tales of travelling woe.

The meeting was remarkable, after coming in through an air lock –not quite the ‘pod’ off Spooks (though they did have them for staff) we went to meet in something like the circle room from Absolute Power. And by the end it seemed that that’s what we had, absolute power. Too many years of talking to politicians about education have led me to believe you can’t get anywhere about Whitehall with a reasoned argument, sound solid facts and sensible principles. Well that’s all that we had and after several hours, we’d got agreement on not only everything we’d discussed in the pre-meet, but also a couple of things we added during the meeting. Proper result. The commission seem to be worrying far more about many of the other places they’ll start regulating, a big concern for big style with taking over the Welsh Universities though……

So I arrived back in Telford after another meeting in London thrown in for good measure, well after it was worth getting there. That late in fact I just went to bed. In the morning Martin got up and decided he needed a hand. A hand? He needed a slap! Besides what he had stuffed into his rucksack, he had 8 plastic bags crammed with goodies and roped me into carrying them to the minibus.

When we got to the convention centre we tried to get as much done by the way of handover as possible. There hadn’t been much to be honest. And there wouldn’t be. He was off on Friday, then we had meetings all over the place. He wasn’t going to come on the team building day at Weston Park (I’d thought the third day was Ents Convention!) as it was ‘for next years lot’. The fact I could see the veins on his head pounding from the hangover contained within might have had something to do with it though.

So off to Weston Park, home of the V-Festival, for a day of driving customised jeeps, Laser Clay Pigeon shooting and life-sized table football. I did say there was quite a big cultural difference between NUS and NUSSL didn’t I? Anyway, the grey team or ‘Team Silver’ as we soon decided to call ourselves, well we won. By one point again. Hmm, the new company chair wins twice, by one? Hmm? Peter, in the second placed team again was the first to shout fix!

But nothing that NUSSL could throw at me would make me want to cry as much as Endsleigh could. Just one step inside the opulent landscaped surroundings and I had one thought ‘Bloody Oil Crisis’. (That’s the one in the 1970’s not the one we’ll be having soon). NUS Travel had gone bust as a result of the Oil Crisis, and as a result, Endsleigh had been sold to cover the debts. Well it’s fair to say it’s grown a bit since then. If NUS had never lost Endsleigh, the union we would have would probably bear no resemblance to the one we have today.

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