The warm weather seemed to be over but my summer had hardly begun...

August has been the biggest shake up in my life for nearly 4 years, I moved house, changed cities, went back to the parents, finished a job I enjoyed immensely, started a part time job and ran out of money! All this while on the NEC: engaging in inductions, summer training and trying to develop the campaigning work for the next year.

This month, in diary terms, has looked like this:

1st: STADIA - Student Reps and Democracy Network day

3rd: NEC Meeting

4th: Labour Students Regional Training (Birmingham)

7th Radio 4 Interview about Parents Buying Houses for their Children

7th & 8th: Working from Home getting stuff planned...

11th: Midlands and East Regional Meeting

12th: Labour Students Regional Training (London)

14th: NUT Scholarship Meeting (more on this to follow)

15th - 18th: Advocacy to Action Training

20th: Designing the Wheelie Bins for Birmingham Website

22nd: West Midlands Visit and Meeting at Birmingham Guild of Students;

25th: WMANUS Housing Event and Launch of Wheelie Bin Website (www.wheeliebins4bham.com)

26th & 27th: Metro Weekender working for the Beer Workers Company

28th: Working from Home (I finally made NUS Webmail work on my laptop!)

29th: NEC Media, Parliamentary and Research Training

30th: UNIPOL Housing Conference

My three highlights from this hectic month have been:

Advocacy to Action Summer Training

This was a real thrill, fun, challenging and deeply rewarding. As many of you will know Advocacy to Action is the NUS Training that develops officers to campaign, lobby and strategise about how to make genuine change for students. The diversity of officers spanned from Education and Welfare, Presidents, Site Officers, Student Support Officers to, in two cases, Community Officers. It is focused on the tools needed to tackle the institution, the issues students demand action on and the mind set an officer needs to relish the challenge. The course helped people specialise their knowledge depending on their priorities whether that be housing, international students, postgraduates or changing academic regulations. The officers have hopefully made lots of friends and allies as well built the networks to help them sustain their passion and aspirations for their terms of office.

I was asked to deliver a presentation about the campaigning work I had done in my union the year before, as Louise Sweeney had done on the other training. I really enjoyed it, got some positive feedback and still have people asking for a copy of the presentation, so here it is for you all to see: Download. Please email if you have any questions.

The different sessions were very challenging, I was involved in two, firstly the session about changing academic regulations, which I still believed the hardest job of any sabbatical but the most satisfying because with the change of a couple of words you can make a difference to thousands of students, and the session on Postgraduates, that I started for Simon Felton, General Secretary of the National Postgraduate Committee and old friend who was lost somewhere in Chester but soon arrived to take back over the session!

The Fibchester (although I don't think we called it that) session, was ever was the most fun. First I was a very helpful, very camp advice centre worker who worked for Veronica King (with my colleague Wes Streeting managing the satellite advice centre at the other side of the training campus) helping student officers develop their campaigns on student crime or keeping the very advice centre in which I worked open. The next day I was the Pro Vice Chancellor wearing a new tweed suit who was very scared of all these campaigns officers where talking about and a very helpful Chair of one of the university's committees. This all came to a head with some very tactical voting union council members but I have it on good authority that they were much better behaved than those Presidents on Active Political Leadership a week later!

Radio 4 Interview about Parents Buying Houses for their Children

I had an interesting interview with Radio 4 on the issue of Parents Buying Housing for their Children at university. The interview was short and to the point but gave us the opportunity make our position clear. I shared our concern with the social inequality of those who are in this situation. Many students are lucky to get this kind of support that helps them get a head start on the property ladder, keeps the debt levels down and means no more desperate housing hunting in the very cold January worried that you would end up with the moulding bedroom with rats at the end of the garden. It was important to stress the difficulties that can come with this added responsibility: let’s be honest it’s not nice being the landlord for your friends, or if it is your parents that wont repair the leak – it can be impossible! This can add stress, cost and conflict often with few places to get support for this added duty. Obviously the other side of the coin is those students left behind, not able to get this head start, left to pick the damp ridden houses left on the market. Who is looking out for them, protecting their interests and spiralling rent levels?

It was at this point I called on universities to continue providing public halls or residence, to take a role in regulating or accrediting the local private rented sector, for local councils to implement measurers in the Housing Act and the local community sector to help NUS establish co-op halls as an alternative.

WMANUS Housing Day & Launch of www.wheeliebins4bham.com

On the last Friday of the month I was invited to join WMANUS, their Birmingham CMs (with UCE - which in its self is exciting), West Midlands Policy and Veronica King, VPW, to their housing event. We had some thorough and honest discussions about PFI, private housing and students in the community. We were joined by someone from Birmingham City Council who we grilled on why we wanted an Accreditation Scheme for Birmingham and how they should stop flirting with the idea of additional licensing because they did not have it in their gift to deliver and it was not the answer to the problems people had, It also pitched the students against the community, which is absurd because they are the two groups living with too many cars on the road, damp and rats not the council officials. I think they got the point!

The real highlight for me was the opportunity to launch the campaign website for www.wheeliebins4bham.com . Please do take a look, it is very exciting and hopefully a vehicle for collaborations between the Birmingham Students' Unions', to work properly with trade unions and community groups and win for students and the local community.

If you have students from Birmingham please point them towards the site and help them win the campaign, if not why don't you go on the site and take some action yourself!

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I hope that has been an interesting insight about what I have done in the last month, there will be more to follow, especially about Academic Rep Systems but until them get in touch, send executive questions, invite me to your campuses on richard.angell@nus.org.uk or call on 07966 161 444.

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