On Monday 5th March, Nottingham City Council met to set its budget for 2012-13. Following the pattern set last year, the council has decided to moan about how nasty central government cuts are but pass them onto the people of Nottingham anyway. Angered by their spinelessness, Notts SOS and Nottingham City Unison held a protest in the Market Square from 12.30pm.

After the disruption at last year's budget meeting, Notts Police were out in force, supplemented by a couple of jumped-up traffic wardens guarding the Council House.

The demonstration was not huge. It was spread out which made estimating numbers difficult, but I counted around 50-60 people, although somebody else reckoned the figure was closer to 100 at one point.

Numbers were bolstered by folks from The Nottingham Post, BBC East Midlands and an array of student journos looking to report on the event for their coursework.

Speakers addressed the crowd through a muffled, but not powerful PA system.

There were a number of Unison speakers, including several who described their experiences providing frontline services which have already been cutback with more cuts to come. A speaker from Youth Fight for Jobs put the case for the reinstatement of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA). Somebody from Occupy Notts who restated their opposition to all service cuts and described the situation facing the camp now the council has served notice. A Notts SOS speaker put the cuts in Nottingham into the national context and argued that all cuts needed to be resisted.

A number of petitions collected by campaigning groups were to be handed to Councillor Alex Norris at the end of the protest, but he received a phone call just as this was to happen and went scurrying into the Council House, allegedly for a meeting. (To be fair, I understand he did ultimately present the petitions at the meeting, making some spineless excuse about why the council intended to ignore them.)

During last year's protest, councillors Graham Chapman, Hassan Ahmed, David Mellen came down to gladhand protesters. This year that didn't happen, although a few official-looking types in suits did hang around at the each of the protest.

With the Labour Group holding 50 out of 55 seats in the council, the meeting is a foregone conclusion. The spineless, self-serving lickspittles will vote through £20 million in service cuts, 159 job cuts and a 3.49% council tax hike. Nevertheless, protests like today's can (in a small way) help build a movement capable of seriously challenging the cuts (i.e. making councillors very uncomfortable).

To be sure, we've got a long way to go, but this is far from over. The city council has already said that a further £24m worth of cuts will be needed before spring 2015, even on current projections. If (as seems all too likely) things get worse, then that figure may very well go up.