NUS blow £40k on anti-Lib Dem campaign – and guess who’s footing the bill?

Yes – more than your degree

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The NUS have spent an eye-watering £40,000 of your money on an aggressive billboard campaign against the Lib Dems for breaking their pledge on tuition fees.

The ads will appear in Manchester, London and Sheffield as part of the #LiarLiar campaign which features a knuckle tattoo with the words “Liar Liar” next to the Lib Dem logo.

Now they’ve been blasted for unfair political bias and money wasting on the £40,000 advertising campaign.

£40k?!?!?!?

The NUS website says: “We are fed up of the cycle of broken promises. At this general election, let’s show politicians that they can’t lie and get away with it. And that if we can keep our promises, they should to.”

VERSA discovered the figure on Thursday, which was the NUS then confirmed. They told us: “We estimate the cost at £40,000 but have not yet reached this figure.

“Incidentally this is still less than than the debt students will graduate with for the first time this summer.”

Now Oxford student Joseph Miles has now started the #trollNUS campaign, encouraging students to donate to the Lib Dems in protest.

He told The Tab: “I started it as a joke between myself and some fellow members of the Oxford Liberal Democrats,”  “I had become increasingly infuriated with the NUS plugging their #liarliar campaign on social media, particularly given their own democratic structures leave a lot to be desired.

“I certainly had no idea so many other people, a lot of whom I know are not Liberal Democrats, would be willing to get involved and even donate.”

In less than a day the event has gathered over a hundred attendees, many of whom have donated to the Lib Dems in protest.

#trollNUS

“This isn’t just a party political thing – though I am a Lib Dem myself. The reason I started this was as a protest against an NUS which increasingly pushes a Labour Students narrative.

“Plenty of Labour MPs broke the fees pledge, but the NUS is channelling £40,000 – or around the cost of a degree – to fund Labour candidates against Liberal Democrats in key marginals.

“I don’t accept the NUS’s use of our money in this way as legitimate, and I don’t think you should either.”

Students have been asking if they can get a refund from the NUS, unwilling to support the Union’s political stance. Student David Browne said: “This just goes to show yet again how the NUS has absolutely no interest in representing students and instead prefers to pretend the views of its remote leadership actively speak for us.

“After deciding to officially oppose UKIP it has gone one step further in its partisan grandstanding by spending our money on petty smears.”