Is he having cake ?

BBC DG Mark Thompson today celebrates his 54th birthday.   It's normally followed by his summer holiday, before a return to the Edinburgh Television Festival in late August.   But tomorrow, the NUJ are on their second one-day strike over compulsory redundancies at the BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring.

If Mark is off watch, who is in charge ? COO Caroline Thomson, or Director of News Helen Boaden ? Lucy Adams, now called Director of Business Operations, is the public face of the HR strategy on this.  In a dispute where questions and answers never quite match, her line is that the BBC can never guarantee to avoid compulsory redundancies - an unchanging mantra.  The NUJ never expects to win that guarantee, but believes more can be done to help the 100 who currently face an unwilling exit.  Lucy wants to make this a local dispute, but the NUJ is winning support around the UK, with 20% (or more) unspecified cuts to come in Delivering Quality First.  This strike will be followed by a work-to-rule and appraisal boycott, so management may be thinking it's run its course.  However, under house rules, no completed appraisal should mean no pay rise in August - so there may be more stand-offs to come.  And in September we'll know where the DQF axe falls - any lull looks temporary.

One strike already underway is in the BBC Arabic Service. It's over new rotas, and started on Saturday, for a week, but output seems to be pootling along here.