Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Natasha

Froze and I'm joined by Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews. Well, we are in the office,

despite the fact that there has been another strike today. Fraser, what has been going

with these strikes and is Central London very busy at the moment?

People are now used to, first of all, the kind of lockdown mentality, of course. If in

doubt stay at home. Now, we're quite hardy at the spectator. We sort of came in even when

it was against the law to do so. So we're, we just want to clarify the listeners. We were

weekly allowed to come in as we were classified as key workers as much as I think Fraser

loves the idea that we were defying the government. But yeah, go on.

Well, we were defying the zeitgeist. Everything is, and we're here today, but I got to train in,

which was almost empty. I'm still running by the way. Apparently they changed the plans of

last minute. Then I got on rental bike and dodged the underground. So there were ways to get in

if you want to get in, but there's a sort of feeling creeping over that this country isn't working

in the way that it used to a few years ago. So in a way, you lose track of who's on strike,

or why they're on strike. It just seems to fit a general trend of collapse. And I think we're

going to get a lot more of this. I mean, Mike Lynch, the RMT union leader, has said that he can see

strikes lasting for the foreseeable future. And that it's quite easy to see why. I mean,

right now with inflation, as it is just over 10%. You're getting a situation where the average

privates pay increase is about 7%, and the average state sector pay increases about 2 or 3%.

So that differential partly explained by the way that public sector workers were more protected

over the pandemic is a recipe for strikes as a recipe for discontent. And I think also,

Mike Lynch, I think, was quite right when he was saying that much as there's inconveniences,

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