Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast and if you happen to be like me a regular visitor to London St Pancras International Railway Station, you will recognise that sound as, well, effectively, an arriving Eurostar train.

I'm not sure if it's from Paris, Brussels or Amsterdam,

just winding down at the end of its race

from continental Europe to London.

I am here again at London's St. Pancras International,

there go the brakes,

because I'm afraid I have yet more

rail chaos to bring you. Today, we've had, and I'm speaking to you, from the point of view of

looking ahead to the weekend, but also looking back to where we have been, we are, I calculate,

81 weeks into the strikes by those train drivers belonging to Asnev in a long and bitter row over pay and conditions.

And in particular, the government effectively saying you can only have a pay rise

if you agree to massive changes to your working arrangements. And those are continuing to bite.

We've just seen, you might have read, I wrote about it on Wednesday, that you've had massive

votes 90% or more, possibly positively

North Korean territory, if I may, in favour of continuing to strike. And that was from

five train operators. Basically, you just keep renewing the mandates. Every time Asleff goes to its members, they vote, yes, we want to

carry on striking. The costs to them are relatively low. They have pretty decent wages

on average and therefore they will just keep striking until they get what they want. And that's

basically an OK pay rise that doesn't

say everything that you've always had like not having to work on Sundays if you don't feel like

it is going to be scratched. So the government knows what needs to happen. Train rail unions know

what needs to happen. Probably you as a passenger if you are like me repeatedly

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