As a union we need to acknowledge the hard work put in by elected officers. By my count there are 55 Union Council Officers, 142 JCR officers, about 600 Society Exec members and about 210 AU Club Exec members, when you include groups like Bailrigg, Nightline, Rag and LU Cinema that's roughly 1000 executive positions. If each involved student held only one position that would mean 1 in 12 students were executive officers of some sort.

Even given the fact that most involved students hold 2 or 3 positions, that's still a huge part of the student population putting in the effort to make Lancaster a better place for all students. LUSU needs to work with all these groups and people and support them, while they get on with providing the services they do to our students. No part is more important than another, and many of the core activities that LUSU aims to provide are actually done by students on LUSU's behalf. LUSU's role is to support this with encouragement, advice, acknowledgement for a job well done and ofcourse funding. After all, this is why we have a union and why the university gives it about £ 442,000 each year. LUSU should be a facilitator and supporter, not try and be everyones boss.

For the last year and a bit I've sat on the board of directors of a regulator. The regulator for higher education as it happens. The key thing that come sup time and time again is the need to cut the burden of regulation. This is soemthing LUSU needs to start doing. There is too much regulation and too much of our time and money is spent on it. Much of this work could be done equally well through enhancement, i.e. through systems that are designed to help student leaders develop their skills, rather than simply telling them off for doing something wrong. We need to support our student leaders, not manage and control them.