This is LBC from Global, leading Britain's conversation with James O'Brien.

Oh, good morning to you. It's three minutes after ten, and it will be it that I'm supposed to be

some sort of journalist for my profession. I've only just realised why my journey to work this morning was so miserable. It's because some of the buses are on strike in London. I don't know what's going on where you are. But I thought I'd check the watch at one point to see whether I got out a bed half an hour later than usual. Everything was sort of so snarled up and busy. But yeah, we're not talking about industrial action today, not directly. And neither are we talking about Prince Harry either. This is an interesting way to approach radio, isn't it, by beginning with all the things we're not going to talk about. I don't know quite why I elected to jump off that particular diving board, but we are going to

talk about a story that I will definitely need your help with, and I'll need your help from all

sorts of angles. I'll need your help from personal experience of the people that we will be

talking about. And that's quite broad, because the first thing I thought when I saw the headline on the very front page of the Times today, which increasingly seems to be the newspaper that Rishi's Sunak's government turned to to make their policy announcements without having to go to the expense of paying for advertising space, much more so than the mail. Go to work and keep disability benefits. And three things occurred to me. Do you ever do that? Do you ever say three things occurred to me when you've only actually got two at the tip of your tongue? And you just presume that by the time you get to the end of the second one, you'll have come up with a third thing as well, because it's the rule of three.

It's a rhetorical device.

Three things is a much more memorable.

It kicks in a lot more into our consciousness.

But the three things occurred to me when I saw this headline.

The first was,

crikey, that sounds kind of strange. But I don't know an awful lot of people on disability benefit. I don't know how feasible it is to suggest that the reason why they're not working is more financial than physical, for example, or mental, of course, in the case of mental health.

So that was the first thing that occurred to me.

Cricky, that sounds a bit desperate or a bit strange.

Second thing that occurred to me was the labour shortage must be really bad.

It must be really bad.

If ministers are now dedicating attention to trying to find

ways to get people into work that have never been tried before. Yeah? And whether that applies

only to people on disability benefits or whether it would also apply to people who've taken early retirement.

I'm not sure. It was, I think, John Ashworth, a Labour shadow minister who mentioned this week

the possibility of incentivising people who've taken early retirement to change their mind and

turn back. So you are going to be part of this conversation as well. The idea that

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