Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Thursday the 9th of November

and I'm back at London Waterloo Station, the busiest railway station in the UK and therefore a good place to take stock of the latest turn in the long and bitter rail disputes that are going on.

Just as a reminder, in June 2022, the first national rail strikes since the 1980s began on the railways of Britain.

Initially, on Midsummer's day, last year it was the RMT Union.

They were joined a month later by the train drivers belonging to the Aslef Union.

The dispute is best summed up in a few words.

The rail unions say we want decent, no strings offers that take into account the high level of inflation.

We worked all the way through COVID.

We haven't had a pay rise for a long time.

We want some money and we don't want it tied to any changes in our working practices.

We'll certainly talk about those,

but you are going to have to come up with extra money,

effectively to buy those from us.

The train operators,

and we're talking here about the 14 train operators

directly contracted by the Department for Transport to Run Services,

and actually any deal is going to be

signed off by the ministers, they say, you're joking, we can't possibly afford that.

We'll give you a modest pay increase, but we can only do that if you agree to more efficient

ways of working. Have you seen how much we're losing?

The taxpayer is currently pumping in £4,000 per minute

on top of the usual subsidy

...