of military personnel and civil servants, who are being trained to support the border force at ports and airports. other members of the armed forces are learning how to drive ambulances. the next three weeks to the new year resemble an advent calendar of disruption as nurses, transport workers, postal workers, baggage handlers and others have scheduled strikes. the blue indicates the nurses strike, the red is various travel disruption, and the yellow other industrial action is taking place, including of course the industrial action by postal workers. so that is what you are looking at dotted throughout december and into the new year, up until the 7th of january. 0ur political correspondent jonathan blake is at westminster for us. morning to you. one cobra meeting
they ll discuss the deployment of military personnel and civil servants, who are being trained to support the border force at ports and airports. other members of the armed forces are learning how to drive ambulances. the next three weeks to the new year resemble an advent calendar of disruption as nurses, transport workers, postal workers, baggage handlers and others have scheduled strikes. our political correspondent, jonathan blake, told us more about the strikes and the government s attempts to minimize them. i think they believe it will make a difference but there s nobody at westminster who is pretending it s going to be a winter anything like as normal, with the level of strikes that are planned at the moment, as you were just outlining, there is going to be near daily disruption to various different sectors of the economy and people s daily lives as a result over the next few weeks. and that is why the government is stepping up, it says, its contingency plans to minimise that d
israel s army said it was looking into the incident. the israeli forces said they arrested three suspects during the raid onjenin and that palestinians had fired at them during the operation. ministers will escalate contingency planning for forthcoming strikes with a meeting this afternoon of the emergency cobra committee. they ll discuss the deployment of military personnel and civil servants who are being trained to support the border force at ports and airports. other members of the armed forces are learning how to drive ambulances. the next three weeks to the new year resemble an advent calendar of disruption as nurses, transport workers, postal workers, baggage handlers and others have scheduled strikes. our political correspondent jonathan blake told us more about the strikes and the government s attempts to minimise them. i think they believe it will make a difference but there s nobody
something we have to sort out, or it will threaten something we have to sort out, or it will threaten our something we have to sort out, or it will threaten our democracy - something we have to sort out, or it will threaten our democracy is - will threaten our democracy is themselves will threaten our democracy is themselves. will threaten our democracy is themselves. , , ~ themselves. very interesting. we will ick themselves. very interesting. we will pick that themselves. very interesting. we will pick that up themselves. very interesting. we will pick that up with themselves. very interesting. we will pick that up with the - themselves. very interesting. we will pick that up with the foreign l will pick that up with the foreign secretary later. hard work for you guysin secretary later. hard work for you guys in the next 50 minutes or so. let s talk about the strikes. nurses in england, wales and northern ireland are due to strike on the 15th on the 20th of december. 10,0
business website. baggage handlers and others had scheduled strikes over this period. the collision course between workers and employers is not hard to understand. rates of pay growth in both the public and private sector have been easily outstripped by the rising cost of living meaning most workers are getting poorer every day. public sector workers have been hardest hit with an average annual basic pay rise of 2.2%, languishing miles behind prices, which are over 10%. but when the employer is the government and the staff are in critical public services delivery as with nurses and ambulance workers the social and political stakes are high. the government has two arguments as to why it can t award inflation matching pay rises. the first is that it would be unaffordable. government debt as a percentage of national income at 97% is already near its highest level since the 1960s. the uk owes as much as it earns in a year and big public sector pay rises woud push that higher still.