Serial killer

It will be interesting to see over the next few weeks what BECTU officials can conjure up with their BBC strike mandate in Birmingham. 47%  of members in Vision, Audio & Music and Information & Archives working at the Mailbox - many, I'm guessing, of those below - said they were ready to down tools, digital or otherwise, by a majority of 87.2%.  They want network factual production - on tv and radio - kept in the city, not moved to Bristol.

The problem is that there are few live network programmes from Birmingham now - and strikes longer than a couple of days are not a good idea for lower-paid staff.  So on-air disruption through loss of technical staff would be limited to local and regional output - and managers might just re-broadcast other Midlands output.

The prize would be to threaten The Archers. The show is recorded over a six-day period every four weeks. Management, who have to be given notice of the strike days, could simply reschedule the recordings - at least for a while. What remains to be seen is whether or not Equity members are up for the struggle. That could just make the BBC twitchy.

• Wednesday update: strike called to run 24 hours from 1530 on Wednesday 18 January.