Labour and Co-operative Member of
Parliament for Kemptown and Peacehaven

National Union of Students? or Factions!

by Lloyd on 05.04.08
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Well we have arrived back from the NUS Annual Conference. I will write later on I’m more detail about it all but the basics are that the Governance didn’t pass!

What review I hear you cry! Well that my be exactly the point. The NEC (or well the Labour and OI part of the NEC) pushed forward plans for reform of the Union. This was after united calls for a review of how the Union works. No one was challenging that the Union must change but a review took place costing allot of money and consulting with few students and maybe (its disputed) some officers in member unions.

Anyway, the result was changes that would have in reality made little difference, but in some area would have improved things and in others would have made them worse.

For constitutional changes to take place the conference must get 2/3 of the floor, and after a recount and some procedural wrangling it was confirmed that it didn’t get this.

The problem was that most of the time the changes weren’t even being discussed but on both sides bashing of each other and faction fighting. This really doesn’t help the national union. I am generally a supporter of many of the leadership of NUS but when they lost the vote they acted badly. Gemma the President stood up and gave a load of vitriol at loosing, it made her seam like a bad looser and I think made allot of people ashamed that they had even thought about voting for the changes if this was the kind of person behind it. I think that in this case it was a close call but the leadership let conference down!

Anyway, ill say more later on when I get some time.

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Labour and Co-operative Member of
Parliament for Kemptown and Peacehaven

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