Have a nice weekend

Exhale and relax. Despite some niggling and unconvincing rhetoric from the NUJ leadership about who blinked first, a second round of strikes has been averted at the BBC.  Management can now have a normal Friday, pottering off after a light sandwich lunch, rather than being locked in meetings about strike rotas, and worrying about who's doing overnight Sunday for Monday. 

The staff can get on with the output - and at TVC, it's been decided that the Club can now serve alcohol throughout Friday afternoons, as it does at the weekend.

Ideally, the union side should regroup, but there's animosity between BECTU and the NUJ that will take time to expunge. The BBC will also need time to forgive the NUJ for campaigning for a no vote in the strike ballot, rather than let its members make up their own mind.  And Thommo has to keep a grip on the talks when they do happen, rather than let prickly people on both sides get unnecessarily nasty again.

A Christmas wish or two - an upturn in the BBC's Pension Fund investment portfolio in 2011, and a different approach to governance of it.  It is very odd that Zarin Patel chairs the Investment Committee of the Pension Fund - and, outside that work, also seeks to drive down the deficit on behalf of the BBC Executive.  If the first was going well, the second wouldn't be necessary...