Hello and joining us down the line we have Spike's editor Tom Slater.

Hello.

And joining us down the line we have a special treat, Spiked columnist and author of the

forthcoming book Beyond Grievance Rakee-Bissan.

Hello, thanks for having me.

Coming up on the show today, we'll be talking about the rail strikes, grooming gangs,

the anniversary of Brexit and trans-activists were on women.

So this week Britain has experienced some of the biggest rail strikes for 30 years. Workers with the

RMT Union are all on strike for a bigger pay rise and for job security.

Tom, what have you made of this? Well I think the strikes are definitely worth supporting, wrote Peace on Spike this week, to that effect.

I mean, a lot of these workers are three years into a pay freeze.

They're looking to get, again, kind of some sort of guarantee that they're looking to get again kind of some sort of guarantee that there won't be

compulsory redundancies which are being talked about under the auspices of

modernization on the railways and I think this could be a flavor of things to come in so far as more and more people really struggling with this cost of living crisis and effectively being told that they've got to put up with a real terms pay cuts. In many situations where people have been struggling for quite a long time,

there's obviously been a lot of discussion in the media this week. I think the attempts to kind of

discredit these strikes and the RMT have got increasingly desperate.

I mean, we've all heard the one about train drivers and how much they earn by this point,

despite the fact that the RMT doesn't even represent that many train drivers.

A lot of these people are making kind of money in the low 30s,

and a lot of them are making a lot less than that. People are really struggling.

I think it's revealed a lot, I think. I mean, the strikes, there's a strikes themselves

and then there's been the reaction to it. I think as whenever

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