Gavin Williamson’s plan to strengthen free speech in higher education sent Twitter into a frenzy yesterday after it was announced that universities would become liable for upholding freedom of expression and preventing “the silencing of voices” on campus. The proposals even include financial penalties for breaching the new measures…
Predictably, the National Union of Students (NUS) was incensed, firing out a barrage of tweets claiming “there is no free speech crisis at UK universities” and “students’ unions… have constantly been committed to upholding and promoting free speech at their institutions”. Yet just last year Bristol University’s student union quoted an abrupt and prohibitive £500 security fee to students attempting to host a talk by Mark Regev, the Israeli ambassador. And last March, Amber Rudd was publicly uninvited from speaking at Oxford University just thirty minutes before her scheduled arrival. The government knows that intolerant attitudes at university eventually seep through into the real world…
Yesterday the National Union of Students elected a new president: Zamzam Ibrahim, who unlike her predecessor has been to university. Zamzam graduated three years ago, and has been a full time professional student politician since then. The opinions she has expressed on social media in the past are quite exhilarating…
She is ambitious:
“We would have an Islamic takeover!”
She is a traditional conservative on whether men and women can be friends:
“I’ve had this debate with many friends! Maybe in some cases but Islamically it’s incorrect for girls to be friends with a guy anyway!.. So I’m gonna say NO not the kind of friendship they can have with the same gender there is always boundaries.”
On what she would do if she were President:
“I’d oppress white people just to give them a taste of what they put us through! #LMFAO.”
Ibrahim, who supports votes at 16, now claims that the comments made when she was 16 were just the “adolescent comments of a young girl.” Pick one, ZamZam…
The National Union of Students, like any socialist regime, is borrowing yet more money to avoid bankruptcy. In November Guido revealed that NUS Group made a massive loss of £5.4 million last year and was on course to go bankrupt by April…
The NUS has undertaken sweeping measures to try to avoid going bankrupt. This week the organisation told its affiliated Students’ Unions
“In order to ensure NUS’ solvency, timing is of the essence. For example, the budget had to be agreed and available for presentation to the bank on 22 January, so we could pursue our application for a loan to avoid insolvency in April 2019.”
But it doesn’t stop there, a letter leaked to Guido reveals that the NUS Finance Committee has also approved that they will, seemingly as a condition for the new loan, be “putting up our London HQ for sale/rent.” Additionally, after suspending elections, the NUS is will be making some 54 paid staff members redundant. The NUS confirmed that “NUS Group will now employ roughly half the number of staff it did this time last year.” The leftist students running the organisation are learning the lesson that profligate spending leads to both savage cuts AND more borrowing…
The National Union of Students has written to all candidates for positions within the organisation to tell them that all elections have been suspended, pending a review of which positions will be cut. Guido understands that as a result of the £3 million deficit, a host of full time officers of the organisation are set to be cut and the NEC will be ‘gutted’. The NUS is learning that the only way they can save themselves from bankruptcy is with sweeping austerity measures and living within their means…
In his letter, the NUS Returning Officer states that “these are extraordinary times; NUS Is clearly facing a number of Serious financial challenges which at worst could result in insolvency.” He also confirms that “It is clear that there is likely to be significant cuts to NUS’ operating budget for 2019/20.”
After leading vehement and violent protests against deficit induced Government cuts in the coalition years, are finally learning cold hard financial realities. All is not well in student paradise…
Read the full communication below:
Plymouth University Students’ Union have officially voted to leave the NUS in what could be the first of many taking action to escape that sinking ship. A major theme of the disaffiliation campaign was how the NUS is hurtling towards bankruptcy with a £3 million deficit. That certainly won’t be helped by losing Plymouth’s annual £60,000 membership fee…
Guido hears that the policy of Sam Gyimah going out to talk to individual Students’ Unions directly has also played a big part in this. SUs being able to go to the Minister directly makes them wonder what the point of the NUS middleman is at all…
Since 2016 the NUS has lost Hull, Newcastle, Loughborough, Essex, Surrey, and now Plymouth. This amounts to collective affiliation fees of around £300,000, and much more additional income beyond, through NUS provided services and supplies. Students’ Unions are escaping before their fees are hiked up even higher…
The National Union of Students held crisis talks last night as internal documents reveal the organisation is set to go bankrupt within five months. Their £500,000 overdraft facility provided by the Co-Op expired on 5th November and is “this is not being renewed”. In the context of a damning internal review of short-term cash flow, the NUS held a “Strategic Conference” where suggestions raised included making up to a third of staff redundant, putting restrictions on travel and subsistence, and doing away with full time student officers.
Available cash in hand for the NUS is projected to fall to -£39,000 in April, and fall to the full three million leaked to Guido by June 2019. The wider NUS Group has an annual deficit of more than £5 million.
Student officers have responded to the proposed fiscal restraints by mounting anti-austerity campaigns to prevent cuts, or any reduction in scope of the organisation, and have begun referring to the organisation’s £3 million deficit as “alleged.” They genuinely think that proposed austerity is a political choice, not a financial reality. Remind you of anybody..?
UPDATE: Guido has obtained the full internal review of short term cash flow forecasting. Read its damning conclusions here:
