harassed on submarines. president biden condemns an attack on the husband of senior democrat, nancy pelosi, saying there's too much vitriol in us politics. the head of iran's powerful revolutionary guards tells protesters not to come onto the streets — warning them that�* today is the last day of the riots�*. there's major disruption to rail services across scotland due to a 24—hour walkout by scotrail workers. more than 2000 rmt members are on strike. now on bbc news: we are england: a1 by night: against the clock

the road surfaces will warn out. it has been down, some of it, for 30 years. it was so frustrating stuck in traffic every day. we have major mechanical issues. we're kind of stuck in the middle of the a1. never ever happened in my life before. there was a lot on my shoulders. the amount of language has been atrocious. i can see you all super keen. you've got six hours to do what we need to do. time is not our friend now.

this is the biggest project both value wise and duration —wise i've ever worked on. there is an perception there is not a lot happening on roadworks but to have people on site every night and the public are sleeping.

it involves installing a new lane. i don't think people fully realise how much people do use ai. it's for things like food, clothing, going to hospitals and to improve them roads, it's very good for the community and for the northeast as a whole. hi, everyone. my responsibility is environmental compliance for the ai improvement schemes. we've got to do this to avoid environmental harm. so this can be things like waste management, water management, protecting our watercourses, which potentially our scheme could affect negatively, ecology and training of people as well. any questions?

i can tell you are all super keen! aye! being a lady in construction, it does not feel any different to anywhere else that i've worked before. i've got my areas of expertise. other people have got their areas of expertise. it's very inclusive. at the end of the start of shift briefing, you can tell that people are under a little bit of pressure because everyone�*s like, "quick, get signed up. we need to get out." but there's a lot of pressure on night shift. normally out there for half nine, by the time it's fully safe and it's all isolated and we've got maybe six hours to do what we need to do and get out of there so that our traffic management teams can reopen the road for six in the morning. tonight there's a crew in tarmac—ing the road. they're resurfacing. we've got people putting new bits of barrier in. they can't start until we shut the road.

it's not safe to work on the a1 with it open. once we've got it all closed, that's ourjob done for the night. and then they'll come in, the contractors do what they've got to do and when they're finished, it's back on, the job, starting again, reopening the road. traffic management is... i know people probably think we're annoying, but essentially what we do is we close roads. i've done traffic management for six years now. just having the freedom, you know, being outside, it's a lot better than being cooped up in an office. that's all sorted. i've got a one—year—old daughter, so i do see her a lot more than i would if i was on a day shift. so that works for me. hey.

what's happening? becoming a dad was probably the best thing that's ever happened. want some water there? it's something i've never, ever wanted when i was a bit younger. but then, obviously, i meant my partner. and eva's just amazing. we live two minutes from the seaside. so she loves the fresh air. she loves being out and about. here we are. exciting now. multitasking, huh? are you laughing at daddy? are you ready? in we go! i try to get enough sleep so i'll not be tired for the night shift, but at the same time, i want to get up and see some daylight. good girl. but then i want to go and pick eva up straight at the way and have a few hours with her. trickiest part is coming to work. you know, before i come to work, my partner's always bathing eva. you dancing? and i would like to get involved with that, you know, pull out the bed.

that's the hardest part, because i hate saying bye to them. such a clever girl, aren't you? it's really scary. there are cars which will come within inches of you. and i really don't understand why. because if it was flashing blue lights, people would slow right down. enjoy working and - fronting the cones out. you know what i mean? thisjob is completely. different from otherjobs because it's safety orientated. so if a car does come flying towards us in lane two, it'll hit the back of my crash cushion and the cushion willjust fold in like that.

and it'll take the impact. and hopefully protect the people in front. i can't stress enough — it's really dangerous. because if you step a foot out of place someone could get. injured and possibly die. and it has happened before. so it could happen again. there's been a fatal within traffic management where i think a car was getting chased through roadworks and the driverjust hit one of the vans and they killed the lad that was in it. but it shouldn't be happening. shouldn't be deaths on the road. 0ne death's one too many.

i do like to try and get out on the site at least once a week at night time to see what's going on. before working on this particular project, i commuted through this route for about eight years and it was so frustrating. sat in traffic all day, every day. my night shift visits are mainly just to see progress on site, to speak with all the different contractors to make sure everything's going all right and any issues. that's good. not too bad. off and running now.

i am a road surfacing supervisor, which is basically repairing the roadways throughout the country. ian is very knowledgeable, very experienced. so who do you want us to ring if there is an issue? so my phone's usually busy, shall we say. for the last two months, leading into completion and opening the road, ian's team are definitely the most important on site. i've been in this industry approximately 30 years now. this job is as close to i've been working at home for many years. i like seeing other parts of the country, but north east�*s fun. so i'll push straight. push straight through. road surface is worn out. it's been down, some of it, for 30 years.

as we're widening the road from two lanes to three, it's getting a new surface, all of it, so hopefully it should be quieter — the new surface for the residents. so hopefully they will be a bit happier. the planner at the moment is removing the old road surface. so it's milling it up, cutting it off, putting on top of lorries and sending it to our recycling plant. the fact that we can't keep digging holes for getting stone, a certain amount of materials

recycled back into the surface now. just to make sure everything keeps going in a circle and wejust keep on going till the night's over. relatively relaxed at the moment. you know, we're getting going. when there's other people out on site. "oh, i love the smell of tarmac and..." i just... i can't even smell it any more. like, it's just in the background all the time. it's generally the time of the project when tarmac is going down, you know you're nearly finished. so that's always a good sign. we've been in construction phase forjust over two years now. we're a few months off finishing, so we're nearly there. my boss likes to remind me now and then when our target open date is. yeah, it is quite a lot of pressure to take on at times, but we've got a really good team. i hope when this

airs, we've made it. that's the tarmac paving machine, and it's only had a minor breakdown. it's going in a limp mode, basically like your car does, you know, when it's not happy. once you've cut into the road, you can't open it until it's put back. so it doesn't help with the stress. definitely not. there's a lot of things that can go wrong on night shift. it can be a lot of plant machinery breakdowns. so we have to have a lot of contingency plans in place to see, you know, if this happens, what do we do? we've sent our guy to pick up the back—up machine. he should be in the next hopefully half hour, a0 minutes, if that. and then we'll get going again. but obviously, it's delayed things. it's not ideal. it'sjust, it's time, isn't it?

time is not ourfriend now. i love doing night shift. it does feel busier on the run up to the road reopening. we do have to go out a little bit more at night. so just going to take a water sample out with that new manhole. things might get forgotten about, missed — the procedures or maybe it's not getting followed quite as effectively. just to make sure that it's not got any suspended solids in it. our work can affect the watercourses, if any sediment, which is basically soil or concrete wash off, get in at these watercourses. it can negatively impact and possibly pollute them as well and reduce the biodiversity.

so i grew up in a village. so it's basically in the heart of northumberland. if we find newts, it could potentially start the night works because the newts are protected by legislation. the reason for the fence is because we're within 500 metres of their breeding ground and at this time of year they're migrating to their breeding grounds. so we put the fence up to protect the works from the newts and they don't come onto the site. ijust love being out on site just in the thick of it, making sure that we're doing things correctly, complying with the legislation, protecting the environment. that's the main thing. try and educate the site team to use this correctly. it's not a rubbish bin. i would actually say

it's my dream job. when the roads closed, we'll usually leave two people on a closure point, and that ensures that no members of public come through. i've heard of stories where people are pulling up to closure points and, you know, they're not happy. they just want to be through. so they will get out and attack the operatives with — it could be weapons, it could just be spitting at them, which is horrendous. so, yes, it can be a dangerousjob with members of the public. one of the biggest risks of night shift work is people driving into our road closure. that can be by accident, or sometimes it can be on purpose. we've got a lot of people on foot on that road, working.

the site traffic travels at ten mile an hour and a car comes through at 70, 80 mile an hour... it really does scare the team. that is a danger to life. there's a few people in traffic management. they've got the sons in. and it's i think it's a big thing because of how dangerous it is. i wouldn't be letting her get into the traffic management. definitely not. you know, why would you want your daughter to work on the roadway, it's this dangerous. yeah. so their life is on the line. the back—up paver here. that's what i've been waiting to see. if you have a small hiccup, beginning of a shift, it's amazing how you never

seem to recover. and it always puts more stress on the end of the shift. we probably won't get as much material laid as we would hope tonight, but we'll do our best with the time we've got left. we have mechanical issues. fairly major mechanical issues. we've got... well, how would i put it? both pavers are incapacitated. neither is laying. we are kind of stuck in the middle of the ai. you don't want to appear on the radiojust letting all the drivers know that the motorway is shut

for overrun roadworks. there's plenty of people doing myjob, all being in a similar position where you think, "oh, my god, we're on the radio." we're famous now. we've made the radio. it's not a nice feeling, to be truthful. the first one started the night with re—genning, then it's just stopped. so we've only laid 200 tonne, like... he's probably pulling the hair out of his leg cos he'll actually have to explain tomorrow why what's happened happened. never ever happened in my life before. i'd buy a lottery ticket if i was that driver. you very rarely get two of us. it's unheard of. we have fitters, mechanics on call all through the nightjust in case there's an issue. northbound junction 78. 0ff slip, we're here. there's a fitter coming up now — hopefully he can find a way to get round this system or find out why it's not cleaning itself. but obviously you're looking at a lot of money stacked down there in the backs of lorries. they are loaded with tarmac.

you have a certain time window to get that material laid before it cools. so that becomes rubbish. it goes back to the recycling plant. obviously it's a tremendous amount of money just wasted. i left school with very poora—levels, couldn't get in to university, so picked up an apprenticeship and worked my way up on the tours. it's given me a great understanding of what's going on out in site, what the teams face on site, what challenges they face. we're off to see barry, who was a site manager for one of our specialist subcontractors. barry is a good laugh. was only talking about fishing.

we're talking about something i know now instead of work. _ but he is also very experienced and very knowledgeable, knows his craft inside out. fetch it back a bit more, steve. teams with special skills are not necessarily available in the east, so they travel from outside the area to come and work on the project. we live in doncaster so we travel up to the north east and stay up here. we've been everywhere, from scotland to southampton. it's all right. it's better than where i live, to be fair. yeah, better — nicer place. always looks good when we do it. it always looks good. we make it look easy. but i don't let them bother you during the day when you're asleep. i need to always sleep. i'm not like you — i need it. laughter.

when you're certainly on a night shift, when you're out on site monday to friday, working ten—hour shifts, you need that craic with your fellow colleague and you want to be enjoying your work. full ppe. you know that. ten out of ten. bang on, great stuff. ten out of ten. sojust need to do a bit - of noise monitoring up here, cos there's noisy works going on, so there's like residential- houses up there. john's dead canny. he is very knowledgeable about health and safety, i and then he comes to me . for the environment advice. you can well imagine that people . who are trying to sleep do not want them noisy works on the night shift on the roads, waking them up. - we've got values that we shouldn't j be exceeding, and if we do exceedj them, we've got to take action. so the sound here seems to be acceptable. - we do have a lot of fun. what do you think -

about the new top gun? it's f a b. what does that spell? fab. he is a bit of a moaner, - but he probably says i'm a bit of a moaner as well. so, yeah, it's goodl going out withjohn. john likes going out with me. sometimes. we do have a bit of a laugh - and a joke, but you've kind of got to as well at that time of night. i think that's us i done for the night. 0k, jamming. it's cleared. we've got it going. so i've got one of them going. yeah, we're going to try and get the one that can't on top of a loader. we regenerated it and off we went.

i dare say ian's just gone from stressing like thatjust to get back to the calm, normal self again. bit of a relief, i must say. it's always worrying when you've got that much money tied up, like, to be fair. better than we thought or hoped for. that's three load down, isn't it? so we'll keep on going. it is 20 to four. the road opens without an issue now. what do you say you've been swearing as much since that microphone...? i haven't been swearing as much, but honest, the amount of language has been a bit atrocious. you do get a sense of accomplishment when sections are complete. i suppose that's the big thing. you've actually achieved something. i i was at one point i had a feelingl

that we weren't going at all again. we'll get there. we'll not lose that much. so it's just a little after four in the morning. get myself packed up and head home. i just feel really, really tired. i don't know if i've got like... my craic is not as good as it was at the start of the shift. people are starting to get up. birds are chirping. you just think, "i just want to get back into bed." well, that's it. that's the end of the night. it's been trying, but it's down. so that'll have to do for the tonight. we'll go again tomorrow. without the breakdown.

it's really rewarding when it's all open. i there's no roadworks. when we drive up, we can, you know, we can see it with friends _ and family that we helped to do that _ it's definitely the best part of the night. - i it should be done in the next ten, i 15 minutes, then on the way home. so when i used to get stuck in traffic before i worked on the road, it wasn't the best and you didn't like it. but now i understand why we're doing it and why there is traffic. everybody wants to go home safe at the end of the day. so that's why we're stuck in traffic, it's to protect the workers. nobody likes sitting in roadworks. i don't like sitting in roadworks. and the one thing i'm looking forward to when the road gets reopened is my family and friends stop texting me and ringing me and asking when it's going to be reopened. i think the majority of people, the first time

they drive up might go, "well, that seems all right." and then it'sjust the norm. and really that's what you want, to be fair. members of public happy. and then that's that, really. it isa it is a pretty autumnal sort of

weekend. low—pressure nearby. fairly strong winds, add bits of rain mostly affecting west areas. the further east the better chance of staying dry. low—pressure sitting out to the west of the uk, bringing lots of isobars. lots of weather fronts, hence the rain. an air source coming up from the south, from the subtropics and that is why it is so mild for the time of year across all parts. to this evening rain eventually clears from scotland. some showers will be heavy, blustery here as well. more persistent rain affecting the east, too. nowhere is particularly cold with lows of 10—14 foot up don't forget, the clocks go back one hour early on sunday and restarts in the oven a mild note with some sunshine around what about the rain cleared from the south—east but plenty of showers affecting northern and western parts. winter quite a feature touching gale force in the far south—west. another fairly mild

day.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines. the household energy supplier 0ctopus energy has reached a deal to buy bulb, one of the companies which collapsed last year amid soaring wholesale gas and electricity prices. the head of the royal navy orders an investigation into allegations that female recruits have been sexually abused and harassed on submarines. president biden condemns an attack on the husband of senior democrat nancy pelosi, saying there's too much vitriol in us politics. the ministry of defence has accused the russian government of "peddling false claims" after moscow said uk forces helped with a drone attack on russian fleets near the crimean port of sevastopol. there's major disruption to rail services across scotland due to a 24—hour walkout by scotrail workers. more than 2,000 rmt members are on strike.