More now than ever. They are the cause of a big spike in breakdowns this time of year. It seems everyone who uses them has a story to tell. But how bad is it . Ive come to northampton, ill meet someone who has made it his mission to rid our roads of potholes. You cant make it out now, but at this very spot five years ago there was a massive pothole in the road. Tell me what happened here. It was a dangerous pothole on that bend. People were trying to avoid it, because obviously they did not want to damage their vehicles, but we have very good vehicles coming along here. I reported it to the council and nothing happened. I reported it to the police and it was repaired within two hours. I needed to make sure i could do everything i could to make sure no one was injured. Thats what started your passion to rid the roads of potholes . I thought someone has to stand up. We spend an awful lot of money on our taxes and get a decreasing quality of roads, someone needed to make a stand so i started with a small social media campaign. Mark has become an expert in road construction. He has been nicknamed mr pothole. Mark reckons there are so many potholes close to where he lives, its almost an epidemic. Inside out has come up with a challenge. We will find out how many potholes there are within a 15 minute drive from his house. I will be timing him. Off we go, mark. This is a lovely one you will go over. You really feel that. As we come round this bend, you see there are more. There is a massive cluster, you can feel them, day in, day out. I can really feel it in my seat. Its quite uncomfortable. This feels more like rallying. Im going to avoid these ones because i dont want to damage my tyres. You can have a blow out later when you dont notice the damage, that can be really dangerous. This one is more like a paddling pool. Getting on for a swimming pool. That is at least three and a half, four inches deep. Is that one of the deepest you have seen . Now. No. I have seen over a foot deep. Youve got a nice one forming there, just outside. Over there an extremely rough patch breaking up quite considerably. Everywhere you look there are potholes . There are some craters you could hit your car with if you went down. We will find out later how mark got on with his challenge. Of course, car and lorry drivers arent the only users of our roads. Potholes might be a nuisance for motorists, but for cyclists, they are a much scarier and more dangerous. These members of a local cycling club say they are always trying to dodge and avoid potholes. They claim the roads in northamptonshire are some of the worst. It can be quite scary, because there are so many potholes that we spend so much time looking out for them that it does spoil the enjoyment of the cycle ride itself. Have you yourself had any accidents . I have been fetched off by a pothole on a roundabout in northampton, i was making a turn, my narrow front wheel got caught in the pothole, fetched me off. Lots of traffic about. Fortunately a man working on the road stopped the traffic so i could get up and get away. As a cyclist you must see potholes in the road all the time. Do you report them . We do. They do not always get fixed. I feel aggrieved about that because having bothered to report it and give a location, we would expect some follow up action. This is hawthorn road in northampton, and a pothole repair team are busy at work. The plan is to do longer lasting repairs across the county, but only the worst potholes get filled. In northamptonshire we are not able to fix every pothole that is reported to us or picked up on our inspections. What constitutes a pothole is a hole that is 15 millimetres deep and about a foot wide, and is really a risk to the public. If it is slightly less than that it wont get filled. It would not meet the criteria. We constantly monitor the network of roads and paths to look at these potholes and we will fix them if they are a safety defect. Something smaller could be a hazard on the road even though it does not meet your criteria for size . We are unable to fill those at the moment. Again its about using our budget to the best of our ability. And using the Resources Available to us. As is so often the case, it boils down to money. There is just not enough to fix all the potholes. So who is responsible . The funding of roads is split between central and local government. Basically the government pays for all motorways and a roads, thats about 90 of the roads we use. They are the responsibility of local authorities. Why do we see so many potholes on our roads . The simple answer is weather. We have had one of the harshest winters we have had for a long time, prolonged cold patches, rain, snow, wind, you name it. Do you have any idea exactly how many potholes there are in northamptonshire . In terms of how many there are an existence, i know how many we fell, roughly speaking. 47,000, thereabouts in an average year. The government told us it will have given Northamptonshire County Council more than £97 million for Highway Maintenance between 2015 and 2021. Plus a bit extra from a special pothole fund but the council say that is still not enough. What have the government told you when you say we need more money . They appreciate that but as with all these things they say there is only so much money. We have a 1. 1 million from the pothole fund this year, possibly a similar amount last year but a drop in the ocean compared to what we need. The council is now tackling the biggest cash crisis faced by any council in the country for the last two decades. Potholes or wont be a priority. We are trying to maintain them at their current level, we are doing a rather good job of that. They wont deteriorate but they wont necessarily improve. We asked mark to record a number of potholes on a five minute drive from his home. Are you disappointed by what you found . Yes, we need government to invest in our roads. Its all right putting in new infrastructure but we need to maintain the roads we use day in day out that drive this economy. Mark has finished his 15 minute challenge, how did you get on, how many potholes did you find . Over 75. Wow. I thought you would say 20 or 30. Thats an incredible amount. Were you surprised . Not really. I can see how roads are deteriorating. Its notjust here, its across the whole country. There are potholes everywhere. Not only on motorways and local roads. Everywhere you can see. Some had been left for such a long time, someone will get killed. They have some fantastic old trains here, the east anglia and railway museum. 2018 is the 70th anniversary of the creation of british rail. Last week the government said it may have to take back east Coast Service so is it time to turn the clock back and renationalise the network . 0ur railways were originally private companies. Then 70 years ago there were nationalised and became british railways. In 1994, john majors government privatise them again. Im looking back at the history of rail to see what lessons we can learn from the east coast line today. This station closed to passengers in 1968, now the mid Norfolk Railway is a tourist attraction and proof that railways are still very popular. I am going to discover how our railways have been affected by nationalisation, and in turn privatisation. Once there were 120 private lines, by the 1940s these have become four Big Companies which were nationalised. Why were the railways nationalised in the first place . After the second world war, railways are hugely worn out. We dont have any money. There are Big Four Railway companies, great western, southern, lms and lner, two of them are particularly struggling, they will go bankrupt. One reason for nationalisation is to stop that happening. In 1994 it was all change again, and the government privatised british rail. But one line has struggled to make money for its owners, and with price hikes and delays, have been the cause of misery for commuters. This line, the east coast mainline which runs through peterborough has been in a state of change for years. Its been run by several private companies and has been nationalised twice so far. Are our railways still in a state of flux, and can they get back on track . Cat hobbs runs a Campaign Calling for the renationalisation of the railways. The idea of having a market is that you have swashbuckling entrepreneurs who are taking risks. But we take all the risk and they ta ke but we take all the risk and they take all the profit. That does not really work if the private sector just takes all the profit and the Public Sector takes the risk. Last week the transport secretary announced that the east coast franchise currently run by virgin and stagecoach has failed, and will end early. This is what you expect in a competitive franchise system, private businesses risk substantial amounts of their own capital and if they fail to live up to their targets they lose out, not the taxpayer. This has happened before. In 2009, National Express walked away from the same franchise, a Government Owned Company stepped in, run by michael holden. We spend a lot of time investing in people and in systems, but also on the trains and stations themselves. If you can make the east coast mainline work, why couldnt the private sector . There were struggling for cash because there werent generating enough revenue from the business to pay the premium due to the government. They did not have the money to do what is needed. Its the same story again this month. Would the line be better run if it was nationalised . You can run railways successfully in either the public or private sector, you pay your money and take your choice. Governments generally speaking are not good at running things. My view is that the government ought to set the sense of direction and vision, if you like, for the industry, then leave it to professional people to get on and deliver that vision over a period of 20 years or so. 20 years gives time for long Term Investment and planning. The east coast has had four operators, including the government operator in the last 20 years since privatisation. Before that, it ran for almost 50 years under british rail. Once upon a time, british rail was the jewel in the crown of our National Transport system. Though there are some who dont remember it like that. Charles swift spent his working life on the railways, based in peterborough. He started at lner when he was 15 years old in 1945, three years before nationalisation. When it went from lner and it was run privately, internationalisation, did it feel differently straightaway . No, it had to work its way. For several years after, when we were first nationalised, we still had the same, then we started getting a different type of management in. People that started to tell you what you should be doing when they did not even know what the hell they were doing themselves. People then eventually wanted to get off the job. To be quite honest, i was quite happy to get away at the end of the day because there were not supervisors that had been Railway Drivers and things like that. You had someone coming from outside to do the job. People did get a bit peed off with the red tape and things like that. There is still a romantic view of the glory days of railways, partly because it was a way of life for the 600,000 people who worked on them. Doreen foster worked at lner in peterborough in the 1940s. I love trains, of any kind. Mostly steam trains, for grandad was a driver. I used to go down to the loco shed, years ago. There was a job going at the lner savings bank, so i applied for it and got it. Did you notice a real difference in the way things had run . Pre nationalisation and post nationalisation once everything became british rail . It did not seem the same. It wasnt the family atmosphere. Even within a nostalgic perspective, would anyone want to turn the clock back to the times when british rail was known forjokes about its sandwiches . No. We cant go back to the 1970s, and i dont think we would want to. I think we need to learn the lessons from the past and make something fit for the modern time. British rail was underinvested in. Where does the money come from . We dont have to buy back the tracks, we already have network rail. The Rolling Stock would be pretty expensive . That is leased, the trains are owned by private companies, the government can buy trains directly and that will be much more efficient. Right now railways are a blame game, everyone can blame everyone else. The dft, the train companies, the Rolling Stock companies, actually if you run the system as one integrated system, you would not have those problems. If push came to shove and we decided to buy back the franchises, do you think its something we could afford or should afford . I think it would be a very bad idea, and if the treasury was involved in the Decision Making after the next election, i think they would say, do you want to spend this much money buying the trains back or would you prefer to spend it on improving the nhs, and i think its obvious what the answer to that would be. Giless long history as a train driver has given him at strong views about re nationalising the railways. They talk about putting the railways back under the government or nationalising them again, its the biggest load of codswallop ive ever come across because it would not work. There is not the affinity, railwaymen went to work. They went half an hour before the start of work and it would be half an hour after they finished when they would go home. They loved the job. Are there any lessons from history that the troubled east coast line can learn from today . We really do need to learn or decide if our railways are a service or there to make a profit. When it was railways, people complained about the money being spent on it. Now its privatised, people complain about the amount of money they have to spend on the train ticket. People really need to make a proper decision about what we want from our railway system. It is now thought that 1 of the British Population is gender nonconforming. More people every year are seeking treatment to change their gender. Sophie has been to meet the parents who support their children who are desperate to change. What colour are we going to do next . Do you want to go a bit darker next time . Yeah. For cheerleading, can i have my hair in a ponytail then curled at the back . If you want to, darling. Emma lives in bedfordshire with her three children. Her eldest daughter is keira, who used to be a boy. Keira was more, i want to dress up as a girl. She was practising with make up. Wanting to grow her hair. I actually spoke to a Sexual Health officer, she said i think actually you know, you have got a little girl trapped in a boys body. At the time, emma thought it was a phase. But as the years went by, she realised it was more than that. Keira, when she was a boy and was lucas, she was very quiet, very timid. Looking back, its because she was so uncomfortable in herself as a boy. She did not want to go and face people and do anything. When she transitioned and became keira, something clicked overnight in her and she is more confident. She knows what she wants and she is sticking to her guns. And she is still only 13. Is this your room . Wow. Wonderful. A year ago, keira ditched the boys clothes and went shopping for a whole new wardrobe. I said, you can choose what you like. She said, whatever i like . I said yeah, if you want girls clothes, go and choose them and her whole face lit up. Where is the sparklyjacket . This. Thats her favourite. That is really, really nice. Do they do this in a size 12 . i want one. From that day on, she wanted to be known to the world as keira. Although keira looks like a girl, she wont be able to have surgery to change her physical form until shes an adult. Until then, she will be offered medication to delay puberty. This will give her time to decide what she wants to do. Do you ever worry about her future . Of course, absolutely i do. We have things coming up like hormone blockers. Puberty kicking in, what effect that will have on her Mental Health overall. Thats what concerns me. A lot of transgender children do try to commit suicide and self harm. Thats due to lack of support from family or for how they feel about their bodies. Although there are organisations that can help parents deal with the challenges of bringing up a transgender child, emma has decided to find some local support. Mianna lives 30 minutes away in hertfordshire. Her son dexter is now seven. I think it was around two and a half, that he started to protest about wearing knickers and wearing girls clothes. The terminology he use was, i feel a boy. He would say that. Ifeel a boy and point to his heart. By five and a half, dexter had realised he was not meant to be a little girl. Im not a girl. Im a boy. He came running in from the garden one day and said, ive got it, mummy, and i said, got what . I am dexter, mummy. I am dexter. I said, awesome, love that name. He ran back out into the garden and carried on playing. Emma and keira have arrived in st albans. Many parents feel quite alone when raising a transgender child. Today, keiras mum and dexters mum are meeting up to offer each other support. I really feel like i have grieved, i grieved for talia, and not because im unhappy with who im left with, i love dexter to bits. It is like a loss of somebody. What do you think is the hardest thing for parents like us with transgender children . Whats the hardest thing to cope with . The hardest thing is not being able to fix him, not being able to take his pain away and his anxiety away and not being able to, you know, when hes awake in the night and he says, mum, why did you make me wrong . Why dont my privates match my brain and my heart . I cant make that better and as a parent, that is all you want to do. To fix everything for your kids. My biggest fear is her being bullied or discriminated against. Or for her Mental Health being affected because at the minute its not. I dont care what anyone thinks, ijust dont want anyone being mean to her. There is one place in the country within the nhs which deals with a child facing gender difficulties. Based in london, the tavistock sees 2000 children a year and last year they took around 300 children from the east. Its a figure thats rising all the time. Today is mienna and dexters fourth visit and even though hes only seven, miennas is worried about puberty kicking in. She does not want to let him down. For us, the thing we needed confirmation on from tavistock was, am i doing the right thing by being so accepting of him . Sometimes you need the confirmation and reassurance from a professional. With dexter getting older, its a race against time to get him the hormones he needs to block his female puberty. And mienna wants to know if this practice will be safe. Its fair to say that the Evidence Base in this area is poor. But as far as we know, this is a fully reversible treatment. As far as we know, the long term implications in terms of health seem to be positive. As i say, we dont have full evidence. We must be realistic. At the moment, there is enormous interest in gender. We always have and we continue to work carefully to ensure young people and their families are fully aware of what they are undertaking and that there is time to consider that. Its about not shutting doors and not making assumptions about how things will be in the future. The nhs advises time and space for a child who is questioning their gender. While mums like emma and mienna continue to learn what it means to be transgender, children like keira and dexter can work out their true identity. Hello. Quite a lot of cloud for western parts of the country, more sunshine further east. This is a beautiful picture coming in from one of our weather watchers in suffolk. Not the same everywhere, more cloud is rolling across Northern Ireland, wales, western scotland and england. This afternoon we will keep the sunshine in the east and further rain arriving the west. We can see this warm front moving in from the west, its bringing those outbreaks of rain over the next few hours in parts of Northern Ireland. Across england, scotland and wales it is fairly bright. The best of the sunshine in east coast and particularly across the north east of scotla nd particularly across the north east of scotland too. Most of us have double figures or high single figures further north. That rain initially from Northern Ireland pushing into western parts of wales, into scotland. 0vernight it continues to progress east. Many parts of the country will see a lot of cloud and light drizzle overnight. With the cloud it to be particularly cold. A mild and frost free start on monday. Mondays weather dominated by the fact weve got this warm front in eastern parts of the country. It is bringing us the mild air, the yellow colours in place across the country on monday. Colder air not far away. Monday is murky and great, a lot of cloud. 0utbreaks murky and great, a lot of cloud. Outbreaks of rain for eastern scotla nd outbreaks of rain for eastern scotland and eastern england. The skies will brighten further west. Some glimpses of brighter weather likely here and where we see the sunshine it could be 13 degrees, quite a pleasant feel. During tuesday more rain for parts of eastern england, east anglia, down towards kent and sussex. Clearer and brighter elsewhere with sunshine for the west of scotland and Northern Ireland. Turning a bit colder around east coast. We are going to be seeing this easterly wind developing later this week importing much colder air from scandinavia and northern europe. That means as we head through the week ahead, although its quite mild and cloudy with a bit of rain, things turning colder later in the week. It is also looking largely dry with some wintry sunshine on offer too. This is bbc news, im ben brown. The headlines at eleven. Brendan cox, the widower of the murdered mp joe cox brendan cox, the widower of the murdered mpjoe cox resigns from two organisations set up in her memory after claims of Sexual Misconduct in the past. After claims of Sexual Misconduct in the past. President trump criticises the fbi for missing Warning Signals about Wednesdays School shooting, describing it as unacceptable. 66 people are killed in a passenger plane crash in iran. The airline says there are no suivivois. A major review of University Funding is to be unveiled by ministers tomorrow as mps claim Interest Rates on Student Loans are unjustifiable. Also emma watson donates £1 million to a new fund aimed at making uk workplaces safe for women. Ahead of tonights baftas, the actorjoined 200 female british and irish stars in signing a letter calling for an end to Sexual Harassment in all industries