This month feels like one of the longest and has been when I was the poorest!! I have used my time to try to round up the work I have started this term and get the NUT Societies Project so it can launch in 2007.

How I spent my December days:

1st: Working from home on Bursary Briefing, NUT Scholarship and Council Tax work;

2nd-3rd: Campaigning against the BNP (Burnley)

4th: Accommodation Costs Survey (London)

5th: Education and Welfare Residential & Midlands & East Regional Meeting (Nottingham)

6th: Meeting about Bursary Briefing (NUS HQ)

8th: NUT Student Event (Grantham)

9th-10th: Labour Students National Council (London)

12th: Welfare and Students Rights Zone (Leeds)

13th: NUT Principal Officers Meeting (NUT HQ, London)

17th: Radio Interviews on Graduate Careers

18th: NEC Meeting (ULU, London)

In the priority ballot I voted in the following order:

• Anti Semitism Inquiry
• FE Bill
• Supporting Students’ Unions to support Medical Students
• Faith on Campus
• Defend Freedom of Religion
• Sudan Divestment
• No to Trident Replacement
• The Carbon Academy
• Sweatshops Week of Action

19th: Christmas Staff Party (HQ)

20th: NUT Meeting (NUT HQ, London)

24th-26th: The few festive days with the family!

29th: I went to see Evita at the Theatre (I know it is not NUS related but I am still happy from seeing it!!!)

The three things to report are going to be:

1. Campaigning Against the BNP

At the beginning of December UNISON kindly sponsored an Anti BNP weekend that I was honoured to attend. It was all weekend in Burnley, talking to hundreds of voters in wards where the BNP hold seats by 15 or so votes; we engaged with people about immigration, policing and communities facilities.

Students and trade unionists coming together was a real positive force engaging people in a passionate way to turn away from the BNP’s politics of hate, racism and anti democratic policies.

This is something I have always done during my time in the student movement:

• re-establishing the Bugs Anti Racism Anti Fascism (ARAF) Campaign,
• reducing the BNP votes in the student seats every time they stood,
• protesting against their inclusion at Council meetings when the BNP candidate did not win the seat,
• as the victim of a horrid campaign of hate on their part against the Guild of Students for being so diverse and upholding secular principles (which is the only way of ensuring religious freedom on campus) and
• creating the position of ARAF Officer on the Exec so this vital work was never reduced as an organisational priority.

2. Education and Welfare Residential (Nottingham)

I went along to the Midlands and East (the region I am responsible for) Education and Welfare Residential (the only one so far to be residential on my request) that took place. I delivered a workshop on Bursaries which is some work Wes and I have been working (Briefing to be launched in the new year). For this I provided every officer with a copy of their Office of Fair Access (OFFA) Agreement (available at www.offa.org.uk), read each of them to facilitate a conversation on the best practise within them.

Download the PowerPoint Presentation here.

3. Welfare and Students Rights Zone

This was the first time we have been able to get together for ages mainly due to affiliation campaigns at UWE, Imperial and Aston. We were able to do a review of the term, the group agreed to some work on I’m proposing on the Letting Agents and Consumer Bill (see http://www.officeronline.co.uk/welfare/273608.aspx) and to continue to lobby on Council Tax (which I am leading on).

The main task of the Zone was to plan the forthcoming work of the “Free Prescriptions for Students” Campaign. Veronica has set up lots of meeting to lobby on this and me meeting Andy Burnham (the Minister responsible for prescriptions) at TUC Congress has resulted in a high level ministerial meeting in January. The main planning was on how we can make the campaign involving of you - the membership. We came up with a variety tactics, incentives for local unions to be supportive and a list of the research we need to have done. It is my view that our campaigns need to be localised within a national framework, backed up by research and facts and involving lobbying at every level. I hope all this comes through in the material you should see in the coming weeks and months. Veronica King is the campaign convenor and can be contacted on Veronica.King@nus.org.uk.

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I hope this has been a useful insight into what I have done over the last month. If you have further questions or any suggestions, please do get in touch. Remember you can send “Executive Questions”, a simple email to Richard.Angell@nus.org.uk or call on 07966 161 444.

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