30/12/2016 London News

Good evening and welcome to BBC London News.

Southern Rail passengers have been warned that services will be

"severely disrupted" over the next few days because of a fresh strike

by guards and an ongoing overtime ban by drivers.

Members of the RMT union will walk out on New Year's

Our political Correspondent Karl Mercer reports.

Not strike one, not strike two, not even strike three,

For months, customers on Southern trains have suffered.

Even on days when there haven't been strikes,

Now, they face going into the New Year with more of the same.

Over the next three days, the RMT union will be on strike.

A week later, they'll be joined by drivers from the Aslef union

in the long-running row over changes that would see drivers

being responsible for shutting the train doors instead of guards.

I'm not looking to take any credit or to get a victory.

To help the travelling public maintain a safe and secure railway

and provide the train company with the benefits of enhanced

On the eve of the New Year, I make this challenge to them.

Let's forget about the dogma, and let's do this for the public.

The company insists it will continue with its plans

It, too, says it's willing to talk but once again,

It has been a very frustrating number of months and I would

like to apologise for the service we've been offering,

which of course has not been anything like good enough.

We've continued with our plans, we are continuing to roll

out our plans and we intend to do that.

We feel our plans are very reasonable, they're all

about a better service for our customer and are about

improved punctuality and more opportunity for our people to work

We think it's entirely a good thing we're doing.

We think the response of the trade unions have been unreasonable

The company is warning it will only run around half of services over

The following week, it won't run any if the driver strike goes ahead.

A new year perhaps, but the same old problems on Southern.

We'd like to hear from you if you've been affected

We're hosting a special televised debate on Sunday 8th January.

If you'd like to take part, email your details,

including your point of view, to bbc rail [email protected].

A teenager has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder

after another boy was knocked off his bike before being stabbed

The attack happened on Rushcroft Road around

It's thought the 18-year-old victim was attacked by a gang of men

who got out of a Ford Focus car after it struck him.

He remains in a critical condition in hospital.

Christmas may be over, but Londoners are being urged

The capital currently only recycles around 30% of its rubbish,

After the festivities, the clean-up begins across London.

Many councils will collect overflowing rubbish for

But with a less than sparkling record on

recycling, households in the capital are being asked to make it a New

It's vital that we up the amount of recycling that we do.

We are below the national average in London, 31%,

In order to look after our planet, basically.

The borough of Surrey Heath recycles more than double the average amount

And with so much more waste created during the holidays,

it's a chance to reduce the load on Southeast landfill sites.

In London, over the Christmas period, we create

enough waste to fill Trafalgar Square several times.

That includes 38,000 tonnes of Christmas wrapping

paper and card and 192,000 real Christmas trees.

Some experts blame London's poor attempt at recycling

on the capital's growing population and the increasing number of people

renting, rather than buying their own homes.

But in Ealing, big improvements have been made just by

With Londoners doing their bit to make

Students at a school in north London have come up with an idea that

could raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for charity.

The group, from Skinners Academy in Stamford Hill, won a competition

Now, their idea is being put into practice,

Henrique was born with cystic hygroma and he needed a tracheostomy

Henrique's parents didn't know if he would ever talk.

But last month, after only a few hours of music therapy classes,

Got so chuffed when he first realised that sound

He said, "water", "grandma", and "hello".

Without fundrising, the charity that helps pay for these

And these students in Hackney have come up with a new way of raising

iRoundup is a system where pupils can round up every payment

for their school lunch, so a small part can be

We thought it would be easy to implement into the real world.

Their idea won a competition for young entrepreneurs,

Now the company that runs school lunch payments,

It's very rare that you hear a genuine new idea

We've already raised nearly ?10,000 just during this trial period.

With a full launch in 2017 we're expecting to raise

between ?150,000-?200,000 in the first year.

So, what do the students think about their idea of raising money

Thanks to the students, small change can make a big difference.

And it's been another cold and foggy day, let's have a check

Fog has been causing problems through the day-to-day on the roads

and flight cancellations and delays at our airports.

We still have a Met Office yellow weather warning in force for fog.

Visibility down to 100 metres, perhaps less at first tonight.

That fog and muggy weather will be widespread with a possibility

Through the night, we will probably start to see the worst of conditions

It won't be quite as murky as we start off Saturday but some

of us will have a frosty start to the day.

As we get through to New Year's Eve, there will be a lot of cloud around,

occasional brighter spells just about possible but it

won't be as murky thanks to the south-westerly

Temperatures reaching a high of 10 degrees.

A bit milder than it has been for the last few days.

The New Year celebrations, the weather looks something

like this, dry, quite cloudy, temperatures around 7 degrees

But then, for New Year's day, we have outbreaks of rain,

perhaps even a bit of winteriness over the highest hills and then

Good evening, fog has been a problem in recent days, slow changes over

the next 48 hours or so as this weather front moves south bringing

rain and behind it, much cleaner, cold arctic air which will sweep

that fog out of the way. The fog was dense in places, you could hardly

see across the Thames in Kingston, Greater London this afternoon. It

has been thickening up in the last few hours and if you are on the move

in the next few hours, into the morning, state shoes and two BBC

local radio because it will keep you up-to-date because it will be dense

in the morning. -- stay tuned.