19/12/2016 Look East

Hello and welcome to the Look East late news.

With some Post Office staff and

airport workers beginning a wave of strike action, is the region

Two men remain in a critical condition tonight after they were

And I'll have your weather for the week ahead,

Fears for a Christmas of discontent in the region after the first wave

of strikes at post offices and at airports.

20 Crown Post Offices across Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk were affected.

And at Stansted Airport, baggage handlers and ground staff

will strike on Friday and Christmas Eve, just

We'll hear from the Communication Workers Union in a moment,

Despite today's strike action, the Crown Post Office in Newmarket

hopes it still delivered a first-class service.

The union says it is one of many key high street post offices in the east

You had to wait half an hour before we got served.

Here, it seems normal, you know, always courteous

and everything so I didn't find any difficulty whatsoever,

The Colchester Post Office was still guaranteeing a normal service

It is a dispute over pensions, job security and

concern the post office will no longer exist on our high streets.

We are absolutely up for sitting down and talking.

What we can't do, of course, is change the strategy which

is about improving post office services for customers in an

increasingly competitive market place, and a very changing, within

changing lifestyles, you know, the Post Office needs

to change and is changing and that will continue.

A number of union members from region

made a special Christmas delivery this morning to the Government,

70,000 postcards signed by the public supporting the campaign.

Meanwhile, Swissport baggage handlers here at Stansted and across

the country could also go on strike before Christmas.

Sue Spooner from Norfolk is due to fly to Australia

But if the strikes go ahead, it could mean she can only take hand

luggage leaving the Christmas presents behind.

I can understand why they are doing it at this time

of year because they going to get the most publicity and it is a

blackmail for the Government and I just think that is outrageously

Ryanair is the key airline at Stansted Airport using Swissport

It says flights are expected to operate as normal

but they may have to operate with hand luggage only.

For employees, it's hugely disruptive, it has a

massive impact on business but what we can't forget

being able to strike is absolutely vital to them being able to

Talks are due to be held tomorrow to try and avert

the baggage handlers' strike later this week.

As for the Post Office strike, Downing Street says all

parties should get around the table to settle their differences.

Earlier I spoke to Tim Pavelin from the Comminication Workers Union.

It's been a long running dispute, so I asked him why they've

We have to use the available opportunities to highlight it to the

public and the media and the Christmas period has been that

But most of the main branches have remained open

today, you have hit them with your best shot

Well, I think the strategy is not going to be a sprint,

we didn't think it would be concluded in the build-up

to Christmas and so we are prepared to go on until the New Year

and beyond until we can get a resolution.

One of your grievances is the franchising of the

What is wrong in principle with that?

Well, you lose a directly managed service, the highly trained

staff that you find in the Crown offices and the product knowledge

If you go into a high-street and you find your post office

is stuck away at the back of a supermarket or newsagent

and WHSmith tend to take on a few of the

franchise offices this year,

it's not giving you the same high street service

Do members of the public need the same

post office that they used to have though?

I mean, people don't do their car tax any more in the

They send e-mails and so on and so forth.

Hasn't the Post Office got to change?

Well, if you go back a few years, in 2010,

and decided the Post Office did have a future, a future

in the digital age and it meant that we could've

been the front office for government,

we could've established accounts,

financial accounts through our financial services strand.

But there has been no investment, it has been allowed to dwindle

and what we are seeing now is

really the point where we had to take action to try

You feel that you do have the support of the public at

the moment, is there a chance that that might wane if this starts to

No, I think that the period, it is here now,

it is in the very last week up to Christmas,

we are still finding we are getting support and I would love to see

a negotiated settlement because I don't want my members to

lose their wages, they are prepared to sacrifice and defend their jobs

and I do hope that the sooner the two parties, three

if you include the Government who certainly are involved,

can get round the table, then hopefully the sooner we can get

Two men have been seriously injured in a double stabbing

It happened late last night in a multistorey car park.

This morning, officers from Suffolk Police painstakingly

search the area around Foundation Street

Yesterday evening, at ten o'clock, the

Ambulance Service called the police to a serious assault where two men

Both were taken to hospital in a critical condition

with what were described as life-threatening injuries.

Suffolk Police say that one is still in a

critical condition whilst the other is now stable.

The area around Foundation Street will remain

cordoned off whilst the investigation continues,

Blackfriars car park that has been closed all day.

This morning, I have been speaking to some of the local

residents who told me what they experienced last night.

This must've been around about 11 o'clock I got

back and there were a few police cars parked outside my house and I

was told I couldn't actually enter my house because of an incident

involving a few people being stabbed and they didn't really disclose much

I just got told there were a few people critically injured

and a few people arrested at the time.

The area itself, it is what is known for drugs and stuff.

There's a lot of trouble that happens down here and everything.

But it is a rough area but really there should be more lights and

public cameras as well for the police so they can monitor it

better and I think that then it would be like a deterrent to keep

Suffolk Police say they have arrested two men, a 57 and a

48-year-old on suspicion of conspiracy to commit

The police force are now asking anyone with any information

The region's hospitals are facing growing pressure

They say that months of planning mean their systems are all coping

but some planned surgeries are being postponed until

We have seen an increase this year of about 10% in people who are

attending A in both hospitals, both at Colchester and at Ipswich,

and that's a fairly consistent increase that we have seen every

We knew it was coming so we have planned for it so both in terms

attending A and the number of people who have to go

into hospital, we have seen an increase.

We've got some additional capacity, both in the hospital and

outside and we do know that that will be enough,

as long as we don't see either a sudden cold spell or indeed

But indeed even if we have those situations, we have got contingency

plans to make sure we can deal with that as well.

There could be more searches of woodland around RAF Honington

in Suffolk for the airman Corrie Mckeague who's been

Volunteers from Suffolk Lowland Search and Rescue,

with 30 members of the public, searched five square miles

It's the first search to be organised by the Mckeague

Councillors in Norwich have denied profiteering from fines

A Freedom of Information request by the Norwich Evening News revealed

?400,000 had been collected in just nine months.

Norwich City Council said the money goes back into road projects.

Well-wishers have donated koi carp to replace fish which were killed

when vandals damaged a tank at Castle Park in Colchester.

45 fish were being held in a container while their pool

Many of them were around 30 years old.

Four replacement koi have been added to the pond today,

I'll say goodnight, and leave you in the hands

Thank you. Still a lot of uncertainty in the focus on the

run-up to Christmas. Tonight, largely cloudy, some clear

intervals, probably some patchy Mr frost. I think some of us were

actually dropped lower than these values. Possibly down to freezing.

Light winds and a few showers, a few showers and bits of drizzle first

thing tomorrow. Then it should brighten up, season sunshine coming

through. Temperatures, near average for the time of year, about six or

seven Celsius at best. Like to sell easterly winds. We finish the day

light and dry. So, as it stands, I think we get off to a cuddly start

with some outbreaks of rain and then it should become drier and brighter

but some blustery showers expected later in the day, rattling through

an egg model is to south-westerly wind. Thursday, hangs on how quickly

this front actually close away. At the moment, it looks like most of us

will wake up to dry skies and hopefully will see it some sunny

spells developing. Friday, high-pressure building in and this

Weatherford pushing in from the west, eventually bringing some rain

are properly not until after dark on Friday. Friday, early mist and

frost, largely fine and dry but turning cloudy as the day goes on.

In a moment, Thomas will have the national forecast but I will leave

you with the outlook for the Christmas weekend. It does look like

we did have some rain Christmas Eve and that should then clear, just

leave us with some blustery showers and some sunny spells. Christmas

The rest of the weekend, some rain around, windy, but with dry and

bright spells. Heavy weather is brewing, it will

not reach us just yet. It will take a good few days before the stormy

weather reaches us. At the moment, it's just potential, nothing is

certain, but it will be different to what we've had over the last few

weeks, it's been so calm.