Bbc

There is a debate in the Commons this afternoon, urging the government to spare the BBC World Service from cuts. The resistance is being led by Richard Ottaway, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and author of a report condemning the Foreign Secretary’s decision to cut funding for the service.   Ottaway is likely to be well supported, as the Tory right is exercised by the effect that cuts are having on Britain’s standing in the world. John Whittingdale is on side, and there were plenty of backbenchers (among them, David T.C.

Is AV too complex? Ask John Humphrys, who unwittingly made the case against switching system today, in conversation with David Cameron on the Today programme. It became clear that Humphrys believed that everyone's second preference vote would be counted under AV — and Cameron pounced. Here's the transcript: DC: If you go to an AV system you start counting some people's votes more than once. And you end up, in the words of Churchill... JH: No you don't. It simply isn't true that you count votes more than once. DC: Yes, you count all the votes. You start eliminating candidates, and you count people's second preferences. JH: And I have a second preference, as well as you, as well as anyone else. So you don't count some people's votes more than others.

Crude politics has intruded on the Royal Wedding after all, and all courtesy of Peter Hain. The Shadow Welsh Secretary has complained — on Twitter, naturally — that the BBC's coverage of the event dwelt too long on David Cameron and Nick Clegg, and ignored Ed Miliband. "BBC airbrushing Labour like the Palace?" he asked leadingly. The Tory minister David Jones has since admonished him, "time, place, Peter." If Labour have much sense they'll play this down as efficiently as possible. Miliband, it is true, barely featured in the television coverage — but that's really beside the point. It is rarely smart politics to take on the Palace at any time. Yet on the day of the Royal Wedding it's just downright foolish.

You really couldn’t make this up: it wasn’t Michael Moore’s PPS who was on the World at One resigning but someone impersonating him. The actual PPS, Michael Crockart, is still trying to make up his mind. I suggest that he doesn’t try and call in to a radio show to announce his decision. (Who would have thought we have lived to see the day when Lib Dem PPSs have impersonators?)   One has to feel sorry for Radio 4 today. It had the whole Jeremy Hunt business this morning on the Today Programme and Start the Week, and now it’s other flagship news programme has been very publicly duped.   The Jeremy Hunt gaffe, though, is catching. People keep unintentionally calling the Culture Secretary that word.

The warnings from Auntie’s leading hacks have been heeded – the strike has been cancelled. There is no done deal and the government is still in the union’s crosshairs: the strike has been delayed to the 19th and 20th October, the day of the comprehensive spending review, pending further consultation. All this raises a few points. First, Ed Miliband scores by having urged the NUJ to drop its plans in favour of impartiality – very New Politics, now matter how opportunistic the initial impulse to further debase the moniker ‘Red Ed’. The BBC has, for the moment, denied its detractors a major publicity coup, not that I think that Jeremy Hunt and the Tories would be crass enough to claim that a strike was evidence of biased journalism.

Amongst BBC political staff, there’s mounting concern about the plans for a strike during Tory conference. One of them said to me at Labour conference that they just didn’t know what to do, they had been put in an impossible position by the decision to call the strike on such politically important days. These journalists fear that striking during Tory conference would undermine the corporation’s reputation for impartiality. So, a whole host of them wrote to their union rep asking him to make representations on their behalf.