Unlike many of my counterparts, I didn’t actually do much travelling at all come January. Or indeed for that matter ringing round. With the nominations deadline for the NEC elections closing on the 27th, this month is typically one that sees a flurry of activity as NEC members visit as many unions as possible saying a lot of the time not much more than “Hiya, I’m XXX”, and of course melting their phone desperate to get as many supporters as possible onto their supporters list. Maybe spending a bit more time doing that does mean ending up with better election results. Maybe blogging once every five minutes in the run up to elections helps too. It may be the game, but there’s too much work to do. And Meetings Bloody Meetings was what took up more or less the entirety of January.

Priority Campaigns, Finance Committee, NUSSL Board, Year of Change, NUS Extra, Affiliation, the list goes on, but at least it wasn’t as long as Gemmas. And then going home, looking to beat the stress, but finding more there, both Lorna and myself always tired, and neither of us sure if we’d be in a job much longer as the never-ending saga of redundancies at the Learning and Skills Council rolled on in earnest.

There was of course one major jaunt out of the office in January, the NUSSL regional roadshow. It was the last week of January, and went from Glasgow to Leeds to Lufbra to Cardiff to London. A hectic week. Made even so slightly more troublesome by the fact I hadn’t finished my manifesto and not all my nominations had turned up at home. Lorna would send on the ones that came- but would they get there in time? I could get them sent to NUS HQ, but again it’s about timing. I’d decided to hand the nomination in by hand, as we were there for the last day, but what time would we finish and all that went through my head. Now to be sure, I’d have to ask people along the tour whilst being at all times flanked by my main competitors and their supporters.

Anyway, the NUSSL Regionals are in contrast to the NUS ones, a well oiled machine, organised to the smallest detail. A big part of that is that of course more or less the entire staff compliment for the company decamps for the entire week, but on top of that half of the point of the previous sets of board and committee meetings had been to prepare the presentations that would be given here. Of course, that was to do with the officers, so it was just like the old NUS way, many times knocked up the night before. As company chair, there’s a lot for me to do, as most of the thing is lead by the ‘Student Volunteers’ as NUSSL like to call the board and committee members. That means I end up with most of the stuff that doesn’t sit under one of the other remits, and of course NUS Extra.

It seems like almost the entire NUS Services staff comes along too for the NUSSL regionals, which is definitely a switch from NUS. Having said that, normally the NEC will be able to answer most of the questions on the NUS ones, but for NUSSL, bearing in mind you have commercial operational staff from unions attending, they need to be there. Maybe that is something that NUS could learn. Not necessarily to drag along the NUS Staff to these jaunts, but to open it up to union staff, support services staff, or more specifically SSLOs (or as the seem to be called now just SLOs) in FE. I mean, if there is no-one else and we are trying to help foster and build these unions, surely if anyone, I mean absolutely anyone turns up, it can only be a good thing? Yes?

Anyway, back to the tour itself. Well we started off at Strathclyde, and of course the first set of presentations highlighted what was wrong with the day. The only thing wrong was that the session with Ian King and Andy Grant was slightly mis-timed as they managed the best part of two hours on NUS/NUSSL collaboration and we had to lose a session as a result! That didn’t end up too bad, as that meant I only had to NUS Extra once, opposed to twice the rest of the week. And the bright spot for me was that this one presentation got the worst reception of the whole week. It wasn’t even bad, just really a couple of people who just weren’t convinced.

So the agenda was altered the next day for Leeds and that is what we stuck with for the rest of the week, and the rest of the week went well. I got a night at home one day (it is very useful sometimes living about two miles from Ian Kings front door), but besides the Sunday never actually went out on the posh restaurant tour. I’ve got to be honest, I like a good meal just the same as anyone, but the way NUSSL do it, just isn’t my cup of tea, just too expensive and too pretentious! Anyway, I had a manifesto to get finished, and to be perfectly honest I’d hit a bit of a brick wall. I just couldn’t come up with it. Too much else to think of I suppose.

But eventually it came, and finally we were on the last leg of the journey, Cardiff to London. Cardiff had been an odd one. One union had an officer saying how glad he was his union had passed policy against NUS Extra (which when I went and looked it up, they actually hadn’t), but the General Manager was confidently predicting over 10,000 sales and asking if they can help FE colleges distribute the card!

So there we were for the final day, which would also be the deadline for handing in manifestoes and nominations. There had been a slight problem with that in that on the day I went home, not all of the nominations I’d been promised were there. So I’d managed to pick up a few as I’d gone around the country, and Lorna had forwarded the ones which had arrived at home after Tuesday. But with the mess that is our postal system, they hadn’t arrived at HQ either. As it turned out, they arrived on the following Monday morning! So there was just time to pick up a couple more from the Londoners and everything would be sorted. I’ve never been one for massive supporters lists, I just think they take up a load of space on your manifesto that could be filled with something more useful, like what you actually plan to do. Plus they don’t always pay off, people waiver, people go on them with no intention of voting (or whipping their faction to vote) for a person, but purely as a distraction tactic to keep their options open and endear themselves to the other candidates supporters (I definitely benefited from this last year). Also as James Lloyd told me when he won National Secretary against Chris Piper, all Chris’s supporters list had done was provide Lloyde with a shopping list of people to ring and say “Hang on mate, what are you doing?”, and turn them around. So instead of getting the list, I just always concentrate on getting the 15 I need. The problem is, when not all of them turn up, you might end up in trouble.

The way the day was timetabled, I would have half an hour after doing the second session on NUS Extra to stroll up to HQ, fill in the rest of the form and go down the pub with everyone else, waiting for the full list to come out. In the end, everyone came to the first session, so I finished the second one early and had plenty of time to make the five o’clock deadline. On getting to HQ, well it was pandemonium. There were still last minute touches being done, with one of my opponents quickly getting their manifesto done, after not having realised they had to hand that in with the nomination. Then again, that’s what happens if you stand to become NUS National Treasurer, when what you really want is to be NUSSL Company Chair.

So 5 O’Clock finally came, and it was off down the pub for most. I stayed behind to see if I could get a bit of work done and then joined the gaggle of hacks. Actually, what is the collective word for a group of hacks? And argument maybe? Well maybe most of the time, but not tonight. Close of nominations day always has this rather surreal feeling to it, it’s like that often quoted Christmas Day in World War One when the Germans and the British put down their guns and had a game of football. All these people who have been slagging each other off for months, and will continue to do so up to, and usually beyond conference, just stop. For a couple of hours, everyone is mates. Well as much as they can be, and maybe there are more than a few bitten tongues and clenched teeth smiles as we all sit and wait for the full list of accepted candidates. When elections committee rock up with that bit of paper, it’s just a release and a relief for so many, the nomination hasn’t been ruled out, I am definitely standing, and then in a split second everyone is checking for the surprises, making sure their mates are in and saying things like “What faction is Rob McDonald in?”

Of course for me, I’m stood outside the pub at this point, ringing Tim Roll-Pickering and dictating the list to him, so it can go straight up on ednet and everyone can know who the runners and riders are. It did make me smile, as I went back in, that one factional organiser was ringing up one of his ‘kids’ to tell them who was standing against their candidates, the reply came “Yeah I know, it’s on ednet”; “What already?” Yes already. It may have its critics, but some things it is very good for, and with that, I could go home.

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