With many English Student Unions refusing to send anyone along, and with young people blatantly less likely to go to Cardiff than to London, its no real surprise that so few turned out. This should be contrasted to the 31,000 that turned out in London last year. In fact, one student from Sheffield admitted to not knowing about the demo 4 days beforehand (by coincidence, a member of Sheffield Samba). It turns out that NUS estimated 3000 turned out, but other methods of counting reveal lower numbers, as factions (of which NUS has around 20 to 30) found themselves with far too many leaflets even for one each!

With a slightly bizarre route, and with overgenerous timings for the whole day, the march ended in a rally which was addressed by a mottley group of speakers, with Paul Makney of the Lecturers Union NATFHE standing out as usual.

As a result of this, one would hope that NUS exec officers would be able to see the mistake and try again nearer the General Election, and this time in London. However, given some whisperings that the whole event was set up to fail deliberately (Hey guys! Thursday at 10pm, hardly the right time for students who get pissed on Wednesday night, now is it?) we might have to live in hope. Should such a further demo be called, it will be interesting to see how many make up their expectations according to this arguably failed attempt.