The brink

There's a certain fin de siecle feeling to BBC Television Centre at the moment. I understand there's still a red plastic bucket under the u-bend of urinal No 3 in the gentlemen's facilities on the ground floor of Stage VI. And that the stately processional corridor offers posters saying "Vision Forum Coming Soon - 21/22 September".  And the bloke with the red jumper and anorak on the back of his enormous chair still runs the transport desk in the evenings at the Stage Door.

But there's a more worrying and very real tension - around how to resolve the impasse between the BBC and the NUJ over pension changes. In the current edition of the staff magazine Ariel, the space normally reserved for obituaries has been taken over by Helen Boaden, Director of News.  Under the headline "Boaden appeals to staff not to test public patience over pensions", she writes "I know that for many people in BBC News it is a very big deal indeed to even consider crossing a picket line, and I would never urge anyone to go against their conscience.  But at a time of austerity we need to be very careful about testing the patience of the public who ultimately pay for the BBC and for our pension contributions".

The first NUJ strike on the issue is set for 5 and 6 November; designed, one suspects, to disrupt a weekend for senior management more than anything else. But there's not an obvious route out of the dispute; the BBC side can't be seen to pump more money into the deal at the expense of programmes, while the Coalition and Fleet Street look on.  There were rumours of ACAS conversations tonight, but someone certainly needs to help the NUJ, marched to the top of the hill by Jeremy Dear, find a reasonable route back down without too much loss of face.