As many of you are doubt aware, each year the Union of Jewish Students runs a trip to Israel for "young political leaders" in the student movement. This year, I was invited to go, so I got a passport, took annual leave and headed off to Jerusalem. You can find out more about what got up to and what I thought by going to my personal blog

On getting back from Israel, my first job was to go through over two hundred emails (and that was after the spam attacks and adverts for viagra), and the second was to go into Nelson Mandela House for the last time to clear out the last of the s*** in my office. On an aside, I'm actally quite impressed with the job I did in clearing all the stuff in my office out - I've managed to go from one large bookshelf, several heaps of paperwork, a couple of boxes and whole desk to just 3 archive boxes - all of which is neatly filed on my desk.

But I digress. Thursday was spent clearing out the rubbish, carrying boxes and crates from all over the building to the ground floor, loading boxes and boxes and even more boxes into the parcel force van, and generally helping out and getting savaged by various cardboard boxes (worst thing about moving = paper cut hell!).

Back to reality with a bump on Monday for the two NEC emergency meetings, one to discuss the results of the independent investigation into the resignations of Luciana Berger, Mitch Simmons and Johnny Warren at annual conference in March. I won't go into it here (for the details click here) but needless to say, it was a long, long meeting. The NEC accepted the report and I just hope we can actually put everything behind us and move on - though I suspect we'll soon be having a massive argument about defining anti-Semitism, so who knows....

The second emergency NEC meeting that afternoon was to discuss (i.e. overturn) the decison made at the last NEC meeting to hold a National Demonstration this year as part of the ongoing fight for free education. For those of you who don't know, policy was passed at Women's Conference in March 2005 which stated: To mandate the National Women’s Officer to campaign for NUS to hold a first term national demonstration in London with “Tax the rich to fund education” as one of its main slogans.

I told Women's Committee at the start of the year that I was doubtful this would go through - and even when it was passed at the last NEC meeting, I was extremely sceptical and suspected it wouldn't last long. However, if it's any kind of a silver lining, we have passed policy to hold a demo in October 2006 once universities start charging top up fees...

But, for the record, I voted for a demo this year each time the vote was held (even the votes on whether to have a vote -- don't ask.)

And so to Tuesday, when I finally headed over to the new offices in Camden. They are really easy to find (if you know me, you'll know what a relief this is!!) - though I am slightly alarmed by the fact that between Camden tube station and the offices, I walked past Dixons, Game and Waterstones.... There goes my salary each month!

The offices themselves are actually quite nice. Being in an open-plan environment is just weird and I think it will take ages to get used to, but on the whole I think it's a lot more positive than the rabbit warren on Holloway Road.

Just in case you've missed every email or letter with our new address, here are our details once more:

To find out more about the NUS Women's Campaign, contact me on jo.salmon@nus.org.uk or the Women's Unit on women@nus.org.uk. Our website for women students is www.nusonline.co.uk/women and the site for Women's Officers is www.officeronline.co.uk/women

Til next time,
Jo xx

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