State of the union

Placards jab the air above 50,000 anxious public-sector workers descending on the capital to protest against government-imposed cuts to jobs, pay and benefits. To the media’s delight, one group of particularly vocal demonstrators stages a sit-in among the columns and pillars of an iconic building.The scenes may sound familiar, but this is not London. This demonstration took place 3,971 miles away across the Atlantic in Madison, Wisconsin. And it was the state house, or capitol, that protestors overran, rather than Fortnum & Mason, a month before the UK’s equivalent, March for the Alternative, back in March.