Striking train drivers are Europe’s best paid

YOU can’t miss the note of malice in the press release put out by the train drivers’ union, Aslef, as it announced rolling strike action across the network which will last all this week.

It boasts that ‘the action is likely to bring Britain’s railways to a standstill’ and quotes its leader, Mick Whelan: ‘We have, in the past, called everyone out on the same day; by spreading the strike action . . . coupled with our ban on overtime across the week, the ramifications for the rail industry will be greater.’

The pay offer it rejected in April — 8 per cent over two years — would, as the Transport Secretary Mark Harper observes, take the average train drivers’ pay to £65,000 a year for a four-day, 35-hour week.

No wonder there’s a stampede of applications whenever a vacancy occurs.

In the South, there are roughly 300 applicants per train driver’s job advertised. In the North, around 750 applications are received for every driver’s job.

Or to put it another way: British train drivers are far and away the best-paid in Europe. A survey last year by the TV network Euronews showed monthly pay for British drivers at the time to be the equivalent of 5,542 euros a month. The next highest paid were Danish train drivers at 4,763 euros a month.

In third place were Irish train drivers at 3,173 euros a month. Lagging well behind were German and French train drivers, at just over 3,000 euros a month.

But Mr Whelan demands our sympathy for his allegedly oppressed men (fewer than 7 per cent of train drivers in the UK are women).

They’ll get little of that from those of us dependent on train travel and being driven only to despair.