In Newcastle today to meet Gaye Hutchinson who is taking over the college department which leads on links with the TUC Organising Academy.

We were supposed to meet yesterday, but this was the date chosen by NATFHE for their second day of strike action against the college, so for pretty obvious reasons we asked for the meeting to be rescheduled. You can read a Northern TUC press statement on the dispute here.

The train service between Liverpool and Newcastle is pretty poor (4 hours each way or thereabouts), so I ended up getting back home too late for the Barbeque being held at my kids school - and had to settle for a burger standing in the wind at York station (hardly a fair substitute) instead! Can't beat this job for pure glamour sometimes...