July 20th - With another round of RMT strikes, Britain's train woes rumble on
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 20 July 2023
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
I'm back with the pickets at London Euston station on the first day of the latest round of rail strikes. More than half of trains in England have been wiped out as up to 20,000 members of the RMT union walk out in the long and bitter dispute over pay, jobs and conditions. How and when will it end? I wish I knew.
This podcast is free, as is my weekly newsletter. Subscribe now to get it delivered every Friday.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Thursday the 20th of July, which means that we're back at Houston Station with another rail strike. Yes, it's just one day short of 13 months since the RMT began. |
| 0:21.6 | Striking in a bitter dispute over pay, jobs and working conditions |
| 0:27.6 | and, well, it is continuing a strike all day today, |
| 0:31.6 | another one on Saturday the 22nd and the Saturday after that, the 29th of July. |
| 0:36.6 | We're also seeing, although it's slightly disguised today by the R&T strike, |
| 0:41.8 | an overtime ban by train drivers belonging to the Aslef Trade Union, |
| 0:45.6 | and on top of that, they will be continuing through till tomorrow. |
| 0:52.3 | On top of that, they've announced that they will have yet another |
| 0:56.0 | overtime ban from the 31st of July through to the 4th of August. So from all points of view, |
| 1:03.2 | it is a very, very disruptive time. A lot of people I'm talking to are slightly shifting their |
| 1:10.6 | opinions. |
| 1:11.3 | I've been speaking to people here at Houston and also at King's Cross today. |
| 1:16.6 | And while there are most definitely a lot of sympathy for the rail workers, |
| 1:21.3 | one lady said, look, government, train companies just pay the workers what they are asking for. That will solve the |
| 1:29.2 | dispute and mean that we don't have to put up with all this. She was off to Warrington, |
| 1:34.4 | after which there is a reduced service today. But I also spoke to people at King's Cross who |
| 1:40.7 | weren't so sure. And Kings Cross, by the way, just down the road, the hub for Yorkshire for North East England and Scotland, looking almost kind of normal today. |
| 1:49.5 | Regular services on LNER, but wherever you are travelling today, be warned that services will be shutting down early. |
| 1:57.8 | For instance, if you were off from London to Plymouth, how lovely there are |
| 2:02.7 | trains running, but the last one is just after three o'clock on Thursday afternoon. Where and how |
| 2:09.6 | and when is this all going to end? Well, I was thinking it would all be over by Christmas, |
| 2:15.1 | which shows how little I know about what's actually going on. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Independent, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Independent and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.