Only 5 days late...

Earlier this year, we reported how the BBC was a whole week late reporting on the "scandal" of the road markings at Chester's newly revamped railway station.

Aunty has done it again, albeit slightly quicker this time. Today's groundbreaking news on the BBC website concerns the collapse of the ancient city Walls. This event happened on the afternoon of Thursday 3 April and was duly reported in the weekly Chester Chronicle the very next day. The council put out its own press release yesterday and today's free edition Midweek Chronicle has a further update on the state of the Walls.

Interestingly, the BBC report acknowledges that the collapse happened last week, so why has it taken 5 days to publish the story?

While in London last week, recording the Newswatch debate with BBC head of local and regional programming, Tamsin O'Brien, I learned (to my complete astonishment) that the BBC does have a Chester correspondent based in the city. Her name is Kate Simms. Which rather begs the question of what exactly she is doing to earn her salary - a salary paid for by Cheshire licence payers. If she was filing news this late on a newspaper, she could expect to be fired. Yet because she reports for the BBC, we continue to get a shoddy service of either late news or no news. Once again, Cheshire licence payers are bottom of the heap when it comes to supplying an up-to-date news service.

Tune in tonight!

Filming went ahead as planned yesterday at BBC Television Centre.

Newswatch will be broadcast tonight at 8.45pm on News24. There is a repeat tomorrow (Saturday 5 April) on BBC1 on Breakfast. I'm not sure where in the schedule for the programme it will be - probably towards the end of the show, but don't take my word for it.

if you miss that too, you can watch it online for a week on the Newswatch page.

Without giving too much away, there is an interesting revelation made by my debating partner, Tamsin O'Brien, who is head of local and regional programming for the north-west at the BBC.

We might yet see a change before too long. Then again, maybe not.

Tune in to see whether there really is light at the end of the tunnel.