The BBC News website has some sizzlers on offer today, and it's not even the weekend.
Are summer sandals killing your feet ?
The cost of being single – and how friends are teaming up to beat it
Vegetables to get smaller and more expensive due to hot weather, farmers warn
And from around the new, improved Nations digital offering:
Built in 1909, The Maida Vale Roller Skating Palace and Club was said to be largest indoor-roller-skating rink in Europe, with a capacity of 2,900, an orchestra balcony, viewing galleries and a 'refreshment lounge'. It was the idea of American entrepreneur Louis Napoleon Schoenfeld, who had moved to the UK in 1899; he commissioned British commercial architects Lionel G Detmar and Theodore Gregg. .
The BBC announced plans for new music studios at Stratford in June 2018, and talked about moving there in "2022/23".
A number of readers have already suggested I "write up" Rod Liddle. I've never been sure where I stood on his very extreme 'strengths and weaknesses'. His ability to confuse and confound will continue after a very untimely death.
Let's add some odd notes to the record. Keith Flett, a contemporary in Middlesborough, thinks his teenage interest in the SWP was really to get gigs for his punk group Dangerbird under the Rock Against Racism umbrella. At the other end of his life, his death has been mourned by Nigel Farage, Darren Grimes, Dan Wootton, Kevin O'Sullivan and Ross Kemp.
He was certainly a different voice when he arrived at the BBC after three years at the South Wales Echo, and three years working for the Labour Party, whilst also taking a degree (a wank degree?) in social psychology at the LSE. His accent, bearing the London twangs of Sidcup, embedded til nine years old, mangled with years in Nunthorpe, was different, and, depending on the meeting, profanities were abundant. I have to say, in his early years, not much of his iconoclasm made it to air on programmes like The World This Weekend. When I shared a brief time with him on Today, as another assistant editor, he was attracted to any newspaper story headlined "Village of Fear", and like another Mad Rod before him (Rod Pounsett) drove hard to get the people at the heart of stories to, at least, a phone interview. Often, these stories were in The Daily Mail.
Management wanted to 'develop' Rod. They sent him to edit The World Tonight, which passed without alarum, before letting him run Today. The programme was well staffed, and Rod began to enjoy "off-the wall" appointments at reporter and junior producer level. He also began to enjoy the slight celebrity the role brought. The problem was that you couldn't see a further promotion ahead; the change of career to columnist and controversialist might even been concocted by friends in management.
As he launched into this part of his 'journey', let's remember there were regular appearances on "Call My Bluff", relaunched with Fiona Bruce; a forgotten Sunday morning yoof politics show with Kate Silverton on BBC2; and many panel show appearances on Radio 4. One suspects his circle of chums drove him to believe there was more money in expressing deliberately contrarian views in newspaper columns. He was certainly better at it.
Age, red wine and cigarettes puffed Rod up from a John Cooper Clarke into a Frankie Howerd. In recent years he returned to the North East, shared recipes for pease pudding, and walked and walked with his dog. Trips to London, in hotels, for News International's shilling, were loucher. His chosen party, the 'continuity' SDP, allegedly conservative-left, made pacts with Reform UK.
It was hard to tell whether and when he meant what he wrote. Often, with extreme leery Benny Hill-ery, he just made your jaw drop. In later years he repeated the belief that Clause 28 was 'right', that the abortion debate should still be a live issue, and that the BBC was consistently beastly to Israel. He was nostalgic for life as a teenager in Nunthorpe, and wanted some form of return to the values of those times; or did he ?
Huw 'Dylan' Edwards has shared a long poem on his Substack site, in Welsh and English. 1015 words in Welsh, 1213 in English.
It's on this year's theme set by the National Eisteddfod for the Bardic Poetry Crown - Achnabod, translated variously as 'Recognition' or 'Knowing'. Huw heads his Substack posting "Knowing Me, Knowing You, Ahaa"
Following tradition, Huw has given himself a pseudonym, Gelyn, which Huw translates as 'Enemy'. 'Foe' would be an alternative. But has he actually entered in the competition ?
Two years ago, following a unanimous vote at the Eisteddfod Court meeting, the Board of Trustees terminated Huw Edwards' membership of the Eisteddfod and expelled him from Gorsedd Cymru, an honour bestowed in 2022. The rules of the poetry competition demand that the judges make their decision without knowing the identity of the entrants, though the organisers do. We'll know the winner at 4pm this afternoon. Has Huw made the journey to Llantwd ?
One hopes there's some creative thinking going on at the Treasury. If the licence fee is a 'busted flush', they'll need to come up with a viable alternative, that can be supported and sold.
Whatever options appear in the White Paper, most of the papers will condemn them as a 'tv tax'. The OBR already count funds raised through the licence fee as a tax, so the problem is not a huge change in the burden of taxation, it's the difference between a fixed impost and "progressive taxation" as called for this week by Rebecca Long Bailey.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has previously rejected the idea of adding it to Council Tax, but the BBC still thinks it's a good idea. It's possible Lisa's been briefed on Burnham's Deepest Thoughts, and that Labour may risk real changes to the current system of supporting the work of local councils, the police and fire services. I think, if Council Tax stays as it is, there's a risk of "BBC Avoidance" tying up magistrates' courts event more than with the licence fee; there could well be a politically-driven, newspaper supported campaign to leave the BBC precept out of people's payments, at least to tie up collection resources.
As ever, I will mention my view that something could be raised on the back of the means of delivery; in this case a levy on broadband providers. They are not 'licenced' by Ofcom, but subject to a General Authorisation. The Government currently 'gives' to the broadband companies by supporting Project Gigabit to the tune of £5bn up to 2032, but also takes away from the providers by charging business rates on some of their infrastructure. They all claim hardship, but a levy collected via their bills would at least have some relationship with media consumption in the future.
I know it's hot, late and August, but I feel there could be more analysis on the BBC website of the Manchester mayoral election results. OK so only 500,000 voted, but that's still 250 times the size of an average opinion poll....
A tweet from the BBC's Ione Wells (St Pauls, Marlborough and Keble, Oxford) "Some news: I’m moving to Washington this autumn to become a BBC North America Correspondent.
I’ll have been the BBC’s last South America correspondent as my post is closing in the cuts."
This is where I just don't get the BBC's Global Strategy. Can you zoom to the top in the USA's news providers without a correspondent in South America ? I thought that Hispanics and Latinos made up 1 in 5 of the US population. Do leaders like Jonathan Munro and Richard Burgess actually believe South America is unimportant ?
5Live seems to have found a reasonably elegant way of shuffing presenters, with Rachel Burden effectively swapping with Naga Munchetty at the end of this year. I have a suspicion that there's some money-saving ahead, with Naga being lined up with a slightly less expensive male host than Rick Edwards.
And the move is less Salford-positive than Andy Burnham or Lisa Nandy might like. Naga will be allowed to stay in London for two of her five days a week. So that's Naga, Nicky Campbell and Matt Chorley all with London dispensations.
From a Freedom of Information enquiry to the BBC:
By way of context, please note the BBC has traditionally used consultancies on an ad hoc basis when external expertise and experience are required for specific projects. However, in April 2026 the BBC announced the introduction of immediate cost control measures across the corporation, including cutting management consultancy spend, as part of savings required over the next three years.
