It’s a legitimate question. There were a variety of ways you could have found out before reading this site:

• By “rumour”.
• Being a trusted mate of someone on the NEC.
• Better still, being a trusted mate of the “inner core” of full time and lay officers that make the key decisions.

However most of us don’t have mates on the NEC and even fewer of us have mates amongst the senior full time officers. So in that situation you can:

• Go to the PCS homepage but don’t expect to find a report under a headline such as “NEC re-elects itself with only three votes against” or “NEC suspends national and group elections and congratulates itself on its bold decision”.
• Instead, look at the far left hand column, under the standing column title of “Latest Updates”.
• In this column look for the headline/link“ Government steps up political attack on PCS”, (Yes we know that’s not the clearest way of alerting you to the decision that the NEC has voted to stay in office but we are confident that the leadership really wants to get the information out quickly).
• Underneath this headline/link, see the clarifying note, “Bold financial decisions are being taken by the NEC to ensure the union’s stability”.
• You will immediately realise that by” bold financial decisions” the leadership obviously means (1) flog our chief capital asset (HQ) so we can meet our running costs and (2) suspend national and group elections.
• Realising the gravity of the situation you will then immediately click on the link and go to the relevant report.
• Read about 100 words and you will then get to the announcement that the NEC has suspended elections to make PCS stronger and better in the face of Tory attacks (which the leadership obviously weren’t expecting).
• Eventually you will also learn why suspending democracy is a bold financial decision and you will realise that the leadership is in fact congratulating itself – for making such a bold financial decision.
• So all’s well that ends well – but let’s hope that George Osborne and the Coalition do not decide that cancelling elections really is a bold way of dealing with financial problems.

Let members have a vote!!