h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I feel that the writer of this piece is simply regurgitating one of the standard apathetic responses that surface every time student poltics is discussed. These are that the NUS (UK) is either (i) full of careerists, (ii) riven with the unrepresentative hard left or (iii) both. Research sheds rather a different light on the matter.

The NUS is a Union that tries to represent its members interests, with discounts (a feature of many trade unions now - look at cheap insurance for teachers), by providing services from athletics societies to student support lines on campus, by representing individual students to their university should they ask and, with just 1.5% of its income, running a national political pressure campaign.

This involves engaging with politicians, producing reports commissioned by the Department for Education and Employment, talking the language of compromise that negotiators like to hear, and trying to head off any militant street protests by arranging organised demos so that radicals can let off steam.

This is how any good pressure group should be run; the NUS is trying its best and having some success. This is in contrast to the "glory days" of the 1960s: when one analyses the actions then, it's obvious that they had very little effect on policymakers.

I'm not a Union "hack", though I do have friends in our student union and outside of it. However, I have bothered to do the necessary research before sounding off on the matter, unlike so many other writers.