17 Days Later

'I am an architect, they call me a butcher
I am a pioneer, they call me primitive
I am purity, they call me perverted'
Manic Street Preachers - Faster

And so beings my two-and-a-bit weeks overdue review of NUS Extraordinary Conference. When I was last at Conference representing Birmingham, the flaws of NUS were as evident as its strengths. Although you had impassioned speakers and important issues due to certain factions and compositing, things that we needed to discuss never even got to the table whilst really basic stuff like external trustees and adopting the European working definition of anti-semitism took an age. The governance review, the sole motion that was debated at Extraordinary, was evidently necessary. There is little good in sailing a sinking liner with good intentions, at the end of the day you still end up clinging to an iceberg thinking 'I could probably have prevented this somehow.' And much like the governance review the Guild is undergoing, it all got rather unpleasant.
I should take a moment to point out that I'm not going to go into the Guild Governance review in depth here, I'm chuffed with the outcome of last GC on the matter but I really don't think that there are many of us who can look around that room and say we haven't treated each other pretty nastily over what isn't actually that big a deal in the grand scheme.
Anyway, back to NUS. Sometimes with events such as these, and the reviews that come thereafter, you cannae help but wonder (Carrie McBradshaw moment over) if people are watching several different events. I'd tell you I saw a balanced, well chaired, if a little over-heated debate. I'd tell you I saw students discussing many issues, shaping a reasoned and sond future for NUS. There was also the show where people didn't seem to realise 
what a trustee board was or did, which was a bit less enthralling. There was also the show where the 
NEC got every speech, the chair was an unreasonable cow, the debate stifled and represenation
murdered faster thean a Caribou in a Coppola movie. I can't say I ever felt that, I felt a huge range of views were expressed and the vote was fair, there was pause, there was dignity and yes, there was shameless factionalism and politick. Well, whatever, this is student politics and that has to be taken as part and parcel of the whole thing. Holding hands under a rainbow all the way to the winter gardens would be lovely but unlikely (and a logistical nightmare besides).