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So Chris, you know you and I recorded that excellent episode of newscast earlier on where I had a chat about Strap A and then you and I had a big chat about constitutional affairs because Labour had done that big commission that was out today.

Yeah. Well there's now been some breaking news at 7 o'clock on Monday evening and appropriately because you're now on a train. It is about train strikes and here's what it says.

The RMT union say they're going to stage additional strikes between the 24th and 26th of December with all members to be instructed not to book on to work from 1800 on December 24th so 6pm on Christmas Eve until 0600 on December 27th.

So more disruption on the trains in addition to the strike action that was already being planned.

And in addition to all the stuff that people are putting up with even when the strikes aren't on, you know, whether that be the problems on the West Coast Mainline or I'm on the East Coast line between Leeds and London today which had all sorts of problems because they've over had lines stopped and this trains packed and it's set up an hour and a half after it was meant to.

The train and so many people in Leeds today talking to us about the trains when we were talking about what Keir Starmer had to say so yeah, trains, trains, trains and pretty bleak news.

And you do just think like having strike action on Christmas Eve, although it's towards the end of Christmas Eve as opposed to the whole day is quite a high pressure move but maybe not as high pressure as it could have been because the could have said it's all of Christmas Eve as opposed.

Yeah and it's back to that conversation that we had, didn't we with McLean's couple of weeks back on newscasts about where does that leave that kind of battle for public opinion as well as the battle that they've got with the employers to try and get a better deal out of them.

You know how does that kind of shake out as you crank up the inconvenience that's kind of, it's quite a, it becomes an increasingly high-stakes gamble doesn't it particularly when so many people have said up until now at least that his kind of performance as a union leader is one that's kind of helped keep plenty of people at least sympathetic even if irritated by the strike.

And in other RMT news McLean said that the union is going to put this new offer to its members that came to them from the real delivery group which we understand is a 4% pay increase back days for this year and a 4% pay increase for next year as well but that the union is going to recommend that people reject that and so the strikes will still go ahead.

Right Chris I'm going to leave you to your train journey which hopefully is not too disrupted.

Thank you.

And we'll continue with the episode of newscast we made earlier.

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