Up this morning to the usual routine of school and work. And a broken central heating boiler and no food in the fridge. Real life is great, innit?

Today's agenda, apart from work and trying to arrange a branch committee to discuss the pay offer also includes several meetings with members about sick reviews and disciplinaries. Talking to colleagues at conference it was clear that many NHS employers are adopting an increasingly tough approach to such issues, piling even more pressure on overworked and stressed workers.

I've received an email highlighting the inconsistency of the health conference voting to criticise last year's SGE decision not to make a recommendation on the pay offer and then endorsing the SGE motion this year resulting in a ballot being held with no recommendation.

I think it is a reflection of the fact that what conference wanted to do - hold a consultative ballot with a recommendation to reject - was not on the agenda. Ironically, had the SGE left done less well in the preliminary discussions, and the SGE had put the officers' proposed recommendation to conference, it would almost certainly have been rejected. I don't think either of the other two emergency positions had majority support either, though - the price of having to work out positions on a pay offer which had only just been announced - but it might well have been possible to get a majority for the motion already on the agenda declaring opposition in principle to multi-year deals below the rate of inflation.

With hindsight I think SOC were probably right to rule out the SGE's motion calling for a vote of conference. Although the SGE's intention - to give conference the chance to make a recommendation - was good, the rules for conference don't allow for votes on anything other than motions and procedural motions. Since this would have been neither, it could have had no status, except maybe as an indicative vote on which the SGE could have based a subsequent decision. Had we had a little more time to draft a competent motion then maybe we could have done better, and I think we could have put two motions to conference, one proposing recommending acceptance and one rejection. But we didn't and there's no going back now.