Going National

I must admit the whole national election experience was, well how can I put it politely…..extreme. I cannot say that the process is one that I imagine many people particularly relishing doing but one word to sum it up would be that it was an ‘experience’. I remember thinking ‘well that’s the hard/political bit out of the way’ but have since found that I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I very much doubt anyone really understand what goes on at NEC meetings or rather before them and I also very much doubt people would want to see it. While I am passionate about NUS, very passionate, I am also a person that cannot be doing with pointless petty politics and obstructiveness that makes our national union something that many people feel disenchanted with.

Coming straight from a Union as opposed to be introduced to the politics before becoming part of the management team I think gives me a certain amount of grounding in what officer think. A typical NEC meeting will consist of motions that will have been handed in late, dealt with in terms of numbers before the meeting, everyone texting each other and political factions sitting together in lines with no sense of shared purpose or teamwork whatsoever. I must admit on my first ever day as National Treasurer I was at training and the first thing that was said is that we will never be a team so we are going to concentrate on how you become an effective group! I found this unbelievable but true to form it was exactly right. The NEC is unwieldy, unstable and unfortunately in my opinion completely unrepresentative I am sorry to say. It is representative of Annual Conference but lets be honest since when has Annual Conference been representative of students?

If I am honest the political side of things at NEC meetings was something that I was not 100% ready for – mainly because I distance myself from it rather than embrace it but mainly because sitting behind my desk cracking on with how we can sort out a financial problem that will kill NUS in less than 7 years (it is that serious) is what I signed up for. I was sad to see that the rest of the NEC do not share the same worries and it is obvious from our financial position that they haven’t cared for some time.

What have I done so far?

Another thing I quickly learned is that the amount of time that is lost (notice I don’t mean wasted) travelling up and down the country to speak at AGM’s, help at Freshers fairs and going to meet with Union’s with individual issues doesn’t leave you with a huge amount of time to work on your own projects.

The two main priorities for me this year and I believe it is what is expected of me as Treasurer is to alleviate the financial deficit this financial year and perhaps more importantly look for options for sustaining our long term future. I find it impossible to describe the moment when you realise that the National Union will go bust by the time I am 30 and no one seems to know about it yet or has started to do anything about it (with the exception of the reform conferences)!

It certainly put the shits up me but it took me all of two seconds to decide what I was going to do – whatever it takes to sort it.

I am going to go through week by week what I have been upto so you can try and get a flavour of what it is NEC members do, why it is hard to get a lot of output and results for our members and most all be able to hold me to account for the work I am, or am not doing.

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