Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast. Well, I'm looking out of the window and frankly, it's gorgeous. There's beautiful flowers in bloom, a clear blue sky, regulation palm trees swaying in a gentle breeze. But that's because I'm in Egypt and I'm not trying to catch a train in the UK,

as many people will be doing,

although even less successfully today, Thursday the 5th of January,

than in the previous two days,

because it's the turn of Aslef, the train drivers union to take strike action.

They have walked out at 15 train operators and while some services are still running even in those affected operators,

and I'm thinking here of GWR and LNER, so on the west of England,

South Wales, Yorkshire, Southern Scotland routes in particular, most trains aren't running anywhere.

And the one shining star is Wales Where things are actually running better than they have been all week

Of course we had Tuesday Wednesday RMT strikes

And there's another RMT strike Friday,. Things will finally get back to normal on

Sunday at some stage and I wanted to talk just about how I see things unfolding here. I've talked to

the leaders of the two main rail unions. that's Mick Lynch of the RMT,

and Mick Wheelan of Aslef, the train driver's union.

And the sense I get is that they, having had, well, by the end of this week,

200 days of strikes, 200 days in which there have been 20 days of strikes.

That's for network rail staff who belong to the RMT union specifically.

Members are clearly counting the cost of that, as well as the overtime bans which have been

enforced for both the RMT and as left the train driver's union and i sense that they are now

actively seeking a i suppose the term would be an off ramp a way of reaching accommodation with the employers

which naturally means the government because everything that is agreed in terms of cash

will be coming straight from the taxpayer to plug the hole in railway finances.

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