| Life's busy on the block |
| 25/10/2005 |
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I can’t believe that October is almost over. I can’t believe I’m a third of the way through my year. And I can’t believe that Mr Matthew Hurst of Buckinghamshire Chilterns University had to email me to point out that it’d been a month since I’d blogged. I’m not alone, either. I wrote to the NEC to point out that we were all a bit behind and that perhaps Sian could give us a remedial session on blogging! I was joking of course; working in NUS is enough to give anyone a face like a slapped arse for half of the time, but for the other half I have managed to keep my (dubious) sense of humour in tact. Anyway, the simple truth is that I’ve been up to my eyeballs recently. People ask what the Block of 12 actually does, but I can say in all sincerity that between us we contribute a hell of a lot to NUS. There are quite a few ‘big’ issues that I want to bleat on about, but for now I think I’ll just stick to the work I’ve been doing, as I’m conscious that Regional Conferences are on the way and this will hopefully make me more accountable. In this Blog…
Freshers’ Flu arrives early… 14th – 17th September I hate Freshers’ Flu and for me it arrived early this year on the last day of the Young Political Leaders Tour I went on. I arrived back from Israel late on Tuesday 13th September, but rather than wallow in bed on Wednesday, I headed up to Sheffield for an Aldwych Group meeting, which I found both informative and useful. Particular items of interest were international students, higher education funding and consequences of the 7/7 attacks for student safety, combating Islamophobia and informing students about their rights in ‘stop and search’ situations. Sadly, however, it all proved a bit too much and I spent the rest of the week and much of the following week laid up in bed. This meant I had to miss the opening of APU’s (or should that be ARU?!) swanky new venue and BYC Conference (even though I had written a kick-ass workshop on poverty) NEC Extraordinary Meetings – Monday 19th September One on the report into the resignations at National Conference and one on the Education Priority Campaign. See my separate report. This was enough to send me into a relapse of illness. I was sufficiently reassured that I wasn’t being a wimp by my doctor. Labour Party Conference – Sunday 25th to Thursday 29th September From Sunday 25th to Thursday 29th October I attended the Labour Party Conference in Brighton. ‘How outrageous’, some might think. ‘I bet that kowtowing, Blairite boot-licker even tried to claim expenses from NUS’, others might say. Although not there as part of the official NUS delegation, I can’t really say I was there in a personal capacity as I spent a lot of time talking about NUS and what we are trying to achieve to anyone who would listen! I obviously attended the NUS/AUT/NATFHE fringe and went and supported Kat at the Coalition for Modern University fringe (where I managed to engage in my favourite pastime – bashing the elitist Russell Group!). Other than that, I attended some NUT fringes (notably the free fish and chips supper!) and also attended a lot of the fringes on youth issues to contribute to the work I’m doing on the youth green paper. That said, I would like to point out that I claimed no expenses from NUS for any of my time in Brighton, just in case the usual rumour mill starts. I don’t really go on much in my blog about some of the stuff I hear said about Labour Students, but I’ll just this opportunity to say that there’s a lot of bullshit put about by people for their own self-interested reasons (usually just before elections at conference!!!). People should always feel free to get in touch and put any questions they like to me, both about my own political principles and the role that I believe Labour Students does and should play in NUS. I’ve always been honest, I’ve always been open and I’ve always possessed the sheer bloody mindedness to row with some of my best mates about the Labour Party and to row with people in the Labour Party about the ways in which students feel let down by Labour. Sex, Lives and Politics One thing I am going to have a quick brag about is the Labour Students priority campaign being run in this year in association with the Terence Higgins Trust called Sex, Lives and Politics. With a sexual health epidemic facing the country and on the government’s radar since the publication of the Department of Health’s strategy to deal with it, Labour Students and the THT have joined forces to ensure that the government actually delivers on their promises and meet their obligation to provide the best sexual health services possible. Sex is obviously a matter of individual choice, however it’s vital that are educated about the issues and have the services available when they need them. The campaign got well underway at conference with a fringe event hosted by Labour Students and the Terence Higgins Trust, with a Q & A with Health Minister Caroline Flint MP, to whom we were able to put a number of key questions about the issues facing students. In particular, Labour Students are campaigning for a national sexual health campaign to educate students and young people about the issues, a national Chlamydia screening programme in place by 2007 and delivery of promises, most notably cutting GUM clinic waiting times to 48 hours, which I know will go down with Welfare Officers who are forever referring students to GUM clinics only to discover the horrific waiting times! If you want more info about the campaign, just drop me an email! NEC Meeting – Monday 3rd October See my separate NEC report and my blog about JK’s resignation. WMANUS PGCE Taskforce Meeting – Wednesday 5th October On Wednesday I headed up to Birmingham for a meeting with the WMANUS PGCE Taskforce meeting. Although we were a bit light on numbers, we did agree a number of incredibly positive ways forward for this campaign and about how the WMANUS campaign can tie in with action nationally. Look out for more on this soon. Since the meeting was held in Aston, I headed upstairs to say hello to Gaz and see how they were doing post-freshers’ week! I then went over to BUGS where I accosted one of their computers and managed to get some work done! After that I headed back down to London and caught up with some ordinary students (shock horror!) in ULU bar, before meeting Rishi from LSE to go over some international students’ campaign stuff. FE Taskforce and Priority Campaign Meeting – Thursday 6th October Thursday was spent in NUS HQ in the swanky Camden offices! I attended an FE Taskforce meeting where we went over arrangements for forthcoming FE Essentials and Governor training. I can’t emphasise to FE officers enough how valuable this training is and I would strongly encourage you to attend! The afternoon was spent in the priority campaigns meeting. Daniel Randall sums things up quite nicely in his blog, but sufficed to say I left the meeting feeling that some real progress had been made, particularly now that the ‘briefings’ I proposed at the extraordinary NEC meeting have now taken the form of three national activist days to properly build for the campaign. The downside is that we’re now in a position where there won’t be any tangible campaigning this term, but some of the ideas Julian brought to the table for next term looked encouraging and we have a much better idea about where this is going now. TES National Learning & Skills Symposium – Wednesday 12th October I was really grateful to have been given the opportunity to attend the first Times Education Supplement symposium entitled ‘Vision 2010 and Beyond’, as part of the NUS delegation with Kat, Ellie, Julian and the FE advocates. The day was an attempt to bring together stakeholders from across the FE sector to debate its future with optimism and confidence. NUS is part of the Concorde group – a coalition of FE stakeholders, which has come together to provide a powerful lobbying influence over government policy. The day had some real highlights. FE policy is one of my personal interests so I got a lot out of it from a geeky point of view, but one terrific boost for NUS was Andrew Foster signalling his support for student representation at the heart of provision. His report will be published shortly and after all the work that has been done on the NUS front to respond to his Ten Big Questions, let’s keep our fingers crossed that we’re not disappointed again. Ongoing Project Work… The vast amount of my time recently has been spent on three main areas: 1) International Students’ Right to Appeal As I’ve ranted about previously, the Immigration Bill currently working its way through Parliament will have a detrimental impact on our international students if their right to appeal visa decisions is taken away. I have been building for the ULU Lobby of Parliament on Wednesday 19th October, mainly focussing on getting unions from outside London to send students and officers along, with ring rounds and a letter in the fortnightly mailing with Kat. The other event I’ve been building for is the International Students’ Campaign Briefing Day on Wednesday 26th October at Westminster University, which will cover a number of key legislative issues facing our students. For more info, contact Benson on benson.osawe@nus.org.uk as he has been doing all the work putting this day together. 2) NUT Scholarship I have been continuing to get the text done for my materials and campaign agenda and have written a submission for the NUS Report and Plan (which I’ve tried to keep brief as no one seems to read it!). 3) Youth Matters response I have been getting through drafting our response to the Green Paper. It’s a huge document and I’m not going to write much as it feels like all I’m doing at the moment is typing away about youth matters!!! And Finally… So that’s about it. I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve forgotten but that’s what happens when you leave your blog unattended! I’m on the East Side for regionals (South East, East Anglia, East Mids and North East) so see you there. Unless you’re on the West Side, in which case feel free to gimme a ring or drop me an email if there’s anything you want to talk to me/yell at me/cry at me about. Oh and finally the chocolate. The winners were: Bubble from SEANUS, Drew from Cambridge, Naomh from LGBT Committee, Helen from Wolves College and Hannah Essex from the real world (you sad, sad individual!!!). I’ll send it to you by Christmas. That’s all folks, Wes wes.streeting@nus.org.uk The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students. 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