It can’t have escaped your attention that in recent weeks and months that everyone it would appear has gone on strike apart from yours truly obviously.

It is the culmination of many months of rising inflation, due to a number of reasons, and wages not keeping track of the associated price rises.

For the first time in more than a century nurses took action and ambulance crews also walked out recently.

I was reminded of the time in 1990 when ambulance crews last took action and I shot this pic in Newcastle city centre.

It was near the Monument Metro station and shows nice interaction between the guys and members of the public.

Having said that I think this shot would have benefitted from some fill in flash but that was long before I knew about that sort of photographic witchcraft.

It would appear that firefighters are also planning to take industrial action and I was also reminded of the last strike in 2002.

It was while I was studying print journalism in Darlington and I heard that there would be a picket line in my home town of South Shields. So when I was back home at that weekend I met them at the fire station.

It was just after I had bought my first digital compact camera and I did the shots using available light. Needless to say they were underexposed and there was a lot of digital noise (what we used to call grain) in the resulting images but I feel they still convey what was happening at the time.