• Attended and addressed Chichester Colleges ‘topping out ceremony’. Never been to one of these before. Basically the college has invested in a superb new student centre, which is currently being built. A topping out ceremony is held at the time the roof is about to be laid. You learn something new every day in this job! Chichester is a model of good practice when it comes to ‘learner voice’ and it was great to see it in action.

• Attended the launch of the Power Enquiry, whose chair is Helena Kennedy. If you are interested in civil participation and the decline in it, or citizenship more generally then do read this. I gave evidence on behalf of NUS a number of months ago and the report itself draws together so much and is incredibly insightful.

• This being the week of action I headed to Birmingham to speak at the rally organised by West Midlands Area NUS,

• I followed that by addressing an emergency general meeting at Keele on the AUT action. No matter where you stand on this dispute I think two things are important. 1. That any decision is made by the student body, not just an exec or sabbatical team. 2. That NUS should be given the opportunity to make its case for its position. To do anything else is to cut democracy. Both of these things happened at Keele, and the student’s final decision was to support the action.

• March 1st was the coalition 2010 lobby. I know that many people will have already blogged about the event, and I’ll leave you to read their comments. I’m so pleased through that we got the three HE spokespeople onto the same panel for the first time ever. Chairing the discussion was a challenge to say the least. The students that had attended from around the county did a great job challenging the politicians and lobbying their local and Uni MP’s to sign up to our EDM calling for the cap to remain. If you haven’t signed up to coalition 2010 yet then do so now via OfficerOnline.

• Catch up with Anthony Smythe from the AoC.

• Meeting with NATFHE re coalition 2010 and the Industrial Action.

• Friday morning was spent preparing for the Education Select Committee.

• Friday to Sunday night I spent at NUS Scotland Conference. Thanks to Mel and the Exec for the invite. Lots of different debates and workshops, congratulations to all those who got elected.

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