Emma Baines

On 17 October 2000, four people were killed and 70 injured in the Hatfield rail crash. A high speed train derailed because of metal fatigue in a section of track that had been tagged for replacement months earlier. Railtrack, the company which had managed the permanent way since British Rail was privatised in 1994, never recovered. In 2001 it went bankrupt, more than £3 billion in debt. In October 2002, responsibility for maintaining railway infrastructure was essentially renationalised with the formation of Network Rail.

Yesterday was the second day of the nurses’ strike in the UK. Up to 100,000 nurses at almost eighty hospital trusts, health boards and other NHS centres in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were on strike over inadequate pay and appalling working conditions. Many nurses on the picket lines have spoken to reporters about relying on food banks and not being able to pay their energy bills. Some newly qualified nurses are choosing to look for work elsewhere rather than take up the job they’ve trained for because it simply doesn’t pay enough.