I’ve just watched a piece on Newsnight (BBC) on the state of British manufacturing industry and how the economy needs to be rebalanced between services and manufacturing. What struck me was the composition of the panel discussing it. There were a presenter, an entrepreneur, an academic, an MP and a journalist. All five were women.

If all five had been men, I wouldn’t have gone to the blog with it, but the fact that they were all women is noteworthy. It happens so rarely. I even called Diana in to see it, since she generally complains at the lack of women on discussion panels, be they serious (Newsnight, Question Time) or not (Have I Got News For You, QI, Mock The Week).

They were not taking a “woman’s point of view” on manufacturing. They were not discussing “women’s manufacturing”. They were the people called in to discuss British manufacturing and doing it as well as anybody. In fact, I liked the lack of raised voices and the presence of rational argument.

Excellent!  Let’s have more of it, so we get to the stage where it’s no longer unusual enough to comment on.

Keep going, BBC. A few more like this and you’ll have started to make amends for the Sports Personality of the Year shortlist.