Hello. Three minutes after ten is a time. How much, how many minutes can I, did I do this at the top of yesterday's show? How much time can I spend discussing the minutiae and the machinations of deciding what to talk about on the program before we actually get onto the things that we've decided to talk about on the program? I'm going to make a confession very briefly. I can't, I don't know how to get into the strikes anymore.

I can't just do another hour asking you if you still support the nurses. I'm very clear on

why the nurses are likely to reject the latest pay offer. I think the two hours, the key words,

recruitment and retention remain absolutely front and centre on that in addition, obviously

to remuneration. Oh, three hours, recruitment, retention to remuneration oh three hours recruitment retention

and remuneration that's but i don't know i don't know that there's much else to add and yet i feel

that it's something that quite rightly leads the news agenda and therefore we should be talking about

so if you want to have a cracker coming up with a treatment of that topic that lends itself to a scintillating hour of phone in radio, then you know how to get in touch.

What I'm going to do instead at 10 o'clock this morning at the top of the show today is something that I don't think I've been fighting shy of it.

But I've been, I kind of, I don't like simple answers to complicated questions until they turn out to be true, at which point I fall in love with them.

I mean, there is nothing finer than a simple answer to a complicated question that's actually correct.

But they are rarer than hen's teeth. And this tale of voter ID, the fact that when you get to the booths, the voting booths, on May

the 4th, in England for the local elections, you will be required to provide ID of a kind

that you have never been required to provide before. Photo ID to get your ballot papers in local elections in England,

police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales,

and latterly, UK parliamentary elections.

So although in the first instance,

this is relevant chiefly to people voting or hoping to vote in England, it will eventually reach all corners

of the United Kingdom and therefore remains obviously relevant. How important is it? Now, there is

every chance, if you're one of the people who's been texting or tweeting me over the last few months

explaining why I absolutely need to cover this, there is every chance that you already know more

about this than I do, for which I can only apologise. Nobody can keep all the plates spinning all the

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