Deal or no deal...

8 hours without daylight - it must be another day of negotiations with The Guardian and Observer management.

Still no deal, still plenty of tough issues to resolve but at least there was one small step forward today.

I can't wait till we get on to the really tricky issues like the no compulsory redundancy clause which management want to do away with.

I'm lucky to some extent in that I only have to come in to the disputes procedure at Stage 2 - there's been 18 meetings prior to this one! Our workplace reps have put in a tremendous amount of work.

Last night I attended the NUJ-run Claudia Jones Lecture, given by broadcaster and journalist Dr Robert Beckford. The NUJ's Black Members' Council set the event up 7 years ago to both honour the memory of Claudia Jones, a leader of the Black equal rights movement and radical journalist and trade unionist and to contribute to Black History Month. The event is supported by the Mayor of London and The Guardian.



I did a short speech of thanks after the lecture and then did a radio interview with Henry Bonsu about diversity and equality in the media industry. It is still shocking to see, travelling round as I do, that newsrooms in cities with high Black and ethnic minority populations can have no black or minority ethnic journalists and yet still believe they can properly reflect and serve all their readers.




Photos: (c) Jason Harris