Students out again!

I'm sure the government is hoping that the desperately cold weather will end the student actions - but it's not working so far. There's another day of action today, and they're out there in their thousands (though not in The Hegemon yet) and there are more occupations.

There is a big police presence around Westminster, scores of vans parked up the side streets on Whitehall including at least one carrying police horses.

A couple of hundred people gathered in Trafalgar Square, with a very vocal group gathered underneath Nelson's Column chanting "give us back our EMA" as well as some rather rude things about Nick Clegg.

The march set off down Whitehall as agreed, but half way down was a line of few hundred police. Demonstrators turned and ran back up towards Trafalgar Square, sprinting across Horse Guards Parade and generally scattering everywhere.

Police are now giving chase across Horse Guards Parade. The demonstration is much smaller than last time, but there's definitely two or three thousand here.

So the cops are - as usual - facilitating citizens' rights to freedom of assembly and protest. Follow the fun here. I'd like to see a mass snowball pelting of Gove and Clegg. The central clearing house for the protests is here: anticuts.com. Big students/sixth-formers occupation in Cambridge and lots of fun in Newcastle.

If you think UK students are a bit wet (though they seem to be leading the cops in a merry chase around London), have a look at Italy: mass rally in Rome and other cities, a cathedral occupied in Palermo and a motorway blocked near Bologna.

Top quality article on the future of humanities here.