ONLY two people took part in a protest outside Colchester MP Bob Russell’s office.

Colchester Against the Cuts organised the peaceful picket during an advice bureau yesterday.

The protest follows a refusal by the Lib Dem MP to meet member Jed Miller over his opposition to tuition fee cuts because the bureau was not the right forum to discuss “political” issues.

A handful of police officers watched Mr Miller and a friend picket for two hours.

Mr Russell said it was pathetic and added: “It was not nice to have these characters outside my offices when residents were attending my advice bureau.

“It is the equivalent of people protesting outside a doctor’s surgery.”

Mr Miller, 19, of Compton Road, Colchester, said: “It was more of a symbolic protest to emphasise the fact that Bob Russell refused to see me.”