C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre

Britain's students have certainly put the trade union movement on the spot. Their mass protests against the tuition fees increase have refreshed the political parts a hundred debates, conferences and resolutions could not reach.

We know the vast rise in tuition fees is only the down payment on the Con-Dem package of cuts, charges and job losses to make us pay for the bankers' crisis. The magnificent students' movement urgently needs to find a wider echo if the government is to be stopped.

(Len McCluskey in The Guardian).

As retail outlets across the country tidy up in the aftermath of yesterday's protests, the corporate world has been caught flat-footed. Business leaders have been surprised by the sudden uprising and are struggling to find a coherent voice. Sir Philip Green, the normally outspoken boss of Topshop, at the centre of the protests, was not prepared to talk publicly. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which boasts of being "the voice of business", was surprisingly mute, with none of its current leaders willing to speak on the campaigns by UK Uncut, trade unions and charities.

From another Guardian article headlined "Big business goes on the defensive as tax protesters win the propaganda war".

There are clearly a lot of angry, organised, focused people out there who aren't just going to stand passively by as a cabinet of millionaires wreck what's left of British society just so that the City boys can nationalise their losses without having to endure significant reform or even mild inconvenience.

What a pity Ed Milliband isn't one of them. It would be a step in the right direction if he could find a window in his Filofax for taking a stand.

"I was quite tempted to go out and talk to them [protesters]," he said. "I applaud young people who peacefully demonstrate. I said I was going to talk to them at some point, I was tempted to go out and talk to them." Asked why he had not, he explained: "I think I was doing something else at the time, actually."

From that BBC interview with Ed Milliband last month, when he conspicuously failed to take charge. He really needs to do a lot better, and quickly, or we're all stuffed.