.

So you have all been lovely, and thanks so much for checking back – we’ve always been super excited to see how many people check (2,237 views and 734 uniques on our best day alone, and 67,559 all-time hits!) and how many people comment (66 on our most controversial posts!), so thank you for supporting our little venture. It’s also been super fun (and ridiculous) to be featured in the Guardian Edinburgh and interviewed for STV, among others, so yay for that!

A few notable favorites from 2011:

Tipster of the year: Anon E Mouse. eusalicious loves you!

Cam’s fave commenter: Christian (and yes, that is a tacit endorsement for Informatics School Rep!)

Gabs’ fave commenter: Bildungsroman

Thanks generally to everyone who’s taken the blog in good humour, it’s been good fun and we hope it’s always come across in a friendly way.

So what next..? As our hits have crept up and up, one thing’s become clear: like it or not, there is a place for student union blogs. It’s fun, it makes people feel involved, and it’s a good insight for people who are a little bit interested but haven’t for whatever reason got a place on SRC. With 500 regular visitors, the vast majority of our readers are now non-hacks, which is lovely: we’re glad you’ve enjoyed it

So now there’s an opening for a new blog! Hopefully someone will decide to follow eusalicious and be generally kind to people: it’s not cool to be intimidating and rip people apart online. But there is also some demand for a blog to do more of the debate and accountability stuff that we haven’t had the freedom to do this year due to having so many friends involved, so maybe some more of that will happen in the future too. Exciting times…

That’s all folks! Lots of love,

Camilla and Gabi

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The last ever eusalicious poll, and it just had to be about snogging didn’t it? We do love a bit of hack romance.

So…. drumroll…

Which EUSA hack do you most want to snog?

Tied in third place in this final and very high-brow ‘licious poll:

Gabi Jones, Harriet Page, Hazel Louise Marzetti and Hugh Murdoch. What a bunch of hotties!

Hot!

Second place (again) (too soon?)…

…goes to James McAsh! He did look very snoggable on those posters. Mmmm.

Lovely!

And tied for the coveted title of most-snoggable EUSA hack….

Tom Crewther and Camilla Pierry

Hot! I promise I didn’t fix it, honest.

Poor Gabs is VERY sore that I’ve beaten her, but at least she’s got this fun internet stalker who keeps google-searching her to get to eusalicious. So it’s wins all round really. Unless they’ve actually been looking for that fried-food orgasm woman…

Lovely.

Other fun entries:

The EUSAlicious Ladies << Thanks guys! <3

Thomas… LOL jk

Let’s be honest, I’ve snogged them all…

None… too many STIs with you pretentious lot

Anon E Mouse

Bildungsroman

This poll is really weird and I don’t like it…

Nobody. Ever. Ever ever.

Charles Fishburn (one for the old hacks!)

… and many more.

What a fun final poll. A hot group of hacks this year I’m sure you’ll all agree!

So how did they do?

Obviously, Mike’s success – with such a clear margin – was something of a surprise, and must be allocated in part to the strength of the team behind Defend Edinburgh, who were out in force every day.

Overall, they won 15 of the 31 seats they stood candidates for, which is a pretty good success rate really:

Although they were much less successful with their Executive candidates, leaving the political direction of EUSA still overwhelmingly in the hands of Labour and moderate students:

So what impact will this have? Will we see more slates in future now? There is already talk of Labour Students, who won 12 of the 17 positions their members were standing for, becoming a more organised force in the future. The 9 Ordinary Member seats left vacant by RON will make the October Bye-Elections unusually competitive next year, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing Defend Edinburgh out in force again. Who will rise to beat them?

eusalicious hopes that independent candidates will always have the same chance as everyone else, but looking at NUS, you never know. What does the future hold? Labour Students slates? Organised Independents? Or will the excitement of the slate just blow over, leaving a wake of trendy posters as it’s only legacy?

Interesting times indeed for Edinburgh’s student movement. What do you think?

After a loooooooooooooooong 2 hour wait for the results, during which the poor sabbatical candidates looked like they were about to die, the count began!

We’ll skim over some of the less exciting results: COM was basically uncontested, RON won loads of Law Council positions, and various other people won uncontested Action Group/ Officer/ School Rep positions.

We had an early Convenership announcement with Welfare. Callum Leslie won after 3 rounds, beating Jaye Ware and Calum Hay. Callum has been an avid eusalicious reader and seems very keen, so good luck to him!

Finally, after about 3 hours of waiting, the first sabb results were announced. Michael Buble’s Cry Me A River started to play and everyone tensed up in their seats as incumbent Sam Hansford took to the stage to announce the results for VP Services. In the first round, we sadly had to say goodbye to Jo Smith who won 300 first preferences, with 5th place RON beating him with 353. Then in order, we bid adieu to RON, Kristen and Ashleigh. Then it was between Jacob Bllomfield and Philippa Faulkner. Philippa was bounds ahead from the very start and was duly elected! Well done her! And good job to all the fun VPS candidates for a fun, good-natured race. Philippa’s winner’s song was a classic choice, Eye Of The Tiger (another well done). She seemed very like ‘can’t believe this is happening’ during her speech, thanking her campaign team and asking the audience to make sure that she kept her promises!

Did eusalicious readers correctly guess the VPS race results? Shockingly accurate in terms of order, well done hacks…

The first biggish uncontested positions were Gabi Jones vs RON for Societies Convener and Josh Jones vs RON for Schools and Inductions Officer. Phewy for both of them were were successful against that grumpy old RON.

Both Matt McPherson’s campaign managers, Stuart Tooley and Hugh Murdoch won their elections for External and Academic Services conveners but Defend Edinburgh’s Mike Shaw won against Stephen Donnelly. Sophie McCallum beat RON to secure her place as Postgraduate Convener too!

The VPAA result was the first big shock of the night. From the results of our polls which we had obviously spied on pre-count, we thought the result would reflect the poll too!

As you can see here, I think most of us were expecting Andrew Burnie to walk it, but Mike Williamson won convincingly in the end. This was definitely the win of the night for Defend Edinburgh, and Mike thanked the group in his speech, especially Aoife Keenan and Kate Harris (sorry if there was someone else I’ve forgotten). We’re really gutted for Andrew, as he’s lovely and it’s obviously really hard to loose as the favourite, but Mike seems fab and we’re sure he’ll be a great VPAA.

The Defend Edinburgh vs Labour/EUSA hack types thing was heating up, with the positions being won falling in a pretty even way. No one could call the big one…

Nest was VPSA. You were very good at predicting this one too…

The results of this one were pretty much proportionally reflective of the poll we did here with Emma finally reaching the quota in the 3rd round. Unfortunately, Anna Forrest didn’t show up at the count, which lots of people commented on as being rather unsportsmanlike, but Emma thanked both candidates for a fun and fair race which was nice. Fantastic song choice with Simply The Best btw Ems! And Emma also said a big thank you to her campaign manager Josh Jones, who was genuinely ace and we hope will one day run for a sabb himself. A proper good egg that one.

As you can see, the tension was building….

First though, we had the election for Teaching and Learning Convener. Possibly one of the most exciting of the night! It ended up as a RIDICULOUSLY close run between NUS Scotland hack Claire Rackley and Defend Edinburgh’s Innes MacLeod, with Rackers winning by a whisker. Very nail-biting stuff, especially with the Presidential election LOOMING over us.

And then it was time. Liz Rawlings took to the stage and everyone went ‘ooooooooh’. Can’t even imagine how nervous the candidates must have been after such an agonisingly long wait. Here’s the results of our poll:

As you can see, the poll has Matt and McAsh as the clear frontrunners, Imola and Ian in the middle, with the three others bringing up the rear. So you were quite spot on in terms of the grouping; the EUSA hacks Matt and McAsh leading, with the ‘normal student’ candidates Imola and Ian getting about the same proportion (I think 600ish votes), and the others picking up the scraps (soz). Obviously though, you were wrong about the final result, because in the end Matt won by a clear margin of about 300 votes (but close given that 5000 students voted in this race).

Matt used his speech to offer the hand of friendship and unity to Defend Edinburgh which was widely applauded, with the exception of a few (notably Ledys Sanjuan, failed External Convener and NUS Delegate candidate, who rather unkindly heckled Matt during his speech. Not very nice or gracious). While this speech was like watching a big chunk of cheese on the stage, it was probably very necessary, so good on Matt. He also thanked the superhuman Stuart Tooley, who did a great job running his campaign and who has a very good track record now after his wins for Liz Rawlings and Stevie Wise last year (best get asking him to be your campaign manager for next year early guys, he’ll be scooped up quick!).

Despite a few surprises, this looks like a GREAT team. It will be very interesting to see how they all get on and reconcile their differences around education funding. Good luck guys!

Hugh was on fine form first thing, and did a bit of modelling for us…

Everyone was feeling rather jolly/ jaded:

Ben Trueman had a fun arrow (and did a bit of posing!):

Pac Man was looking fit:

Ooerr. Hugh was at it again:

Some tension broke out:

Harriet’s team have a massive H:

And it all got too much for eusalicious…

Lovely!

As spotted on Kristen Atkins’ website this morning:

What a fun deal!

There’s a lot riding on this election then..!

Anyway, it seems fitting that as our swansong poll is in-keeping with past polls, SOOOOO……

Which EUSA hack do YOU most want to snog?!

And what’s especially fun is that you can write whoever you want! We’re not suggesting any of these kisses, you just write away and we’ll reveal the results on Friday. Who knows, you might have actually kissed them by then! Unfortunately, our polling technology doesn’t let us put NOBODY in the multiple choice, so I’ve popped Robert the Moose and Potterrow in there, but hopefully you’ll steer clear of beastiality and objectiphilia and click ‘other’!