Don't be dictated to by Leftie bullies - take on the striking railway drivers who do less than half a year for 60k, blasts Kelvin MacKenzie

The reality is that they are losing the dispute. And they know it. Now is the time for the managers to actually manage and lock them out rather than them decide when they are going to pop in.

I am sick of state monopolists, whether they are train drivers or junior doctors, dictating how and when they will supply their service.

Being a train driver is not the toughest job in the world. I think you will agree all you have to do is follow a straight line. Currently they receive £60,000 for that onerous task. They work a four-day week, with an average 154 rest days a year.

Drivers are entitled to a minimum 20 days’ annual leave on top of the eight bank holidays can be taken as lieu days if worked. Then you have to throw in their sickies which are truly disgraceful.

For instance on TransPennine Express the average is 30 days sickness a year, compared with 4.6 days for the national workforce average.

Sickness was so bad on TransPenine that the company had to reduce to number of trains running between North-West England and Scotland by a quarter. The management should have shut the network down. A total disgrace.

Mind you it’s not much better at LNER where train drivers are off sick 20 days a year. Are they ill or are they using their alleged ill-health as part of the industrial war. I suspect the latter as it’s hardly stressful to move a lever.

On average, train drivers are in the cab for around half the year just 183 days. If you took off the sickies it would be less. What job do you know where you can make £60K for such little effort?

Plus the driver gets free travel. And if they work in London their family (and unbelievably friends) get free travel. That bonus came from a man they describe as their ‘’friend’’ , the Mayor Sadiq Khan. This is a great job by any reasonable rule.

Mick Whelan, an almost comical Left-wing figure, says the drivers face ‘’ some of the most horrendous hours and conditions in the world.’’ Seriously? Tougher than coal mining? Tougher than the military? Tougher than long-distance lorry driving.

He’s talking tosh and he knows it. This dispute, which feels like back in the Eighties, has been going on for a year now. It’s nowhere near being settled and I hope it isn’t, certainly on any terms which favour these industrial thugs who use their jobs to ruin your day.

I sometimes wonder if the rail managements have the cahones for the fight. They have something in their back pocket called the Minimum Service Level Act which could require striking staff to keep working to provide 40 per cent of time-tabled services.

Downing Street has made it clear there is no point in Parliament passing this kind of law if managements don’t do something with it. Good point.

For the second stoppage this year involving Aslef the rail companies have chosen not to use this legislation. The companies are concerned that Aslef will walk out completely if the law is brought in.

Good. I want to see the pain equalised. Commuters and others are sick to the back teeth of being used as bargaining tools by this workforce. I was at Wapping when the Lefty printers were defeated after literally decades of running the business, often in the face of supine managements.

It was painful and dangerous with me as the Editor being protected by three ex-SAS men. But Rupert Murdoch won and the business became more profitable and gave it, and his news rivals, many more decades of life than had it been run by Sogat and Natsopa (whatever happened to them?)

The railways are coming to that same moment. My advice is to get off their nears. Put forward all the changes in terms and conditions that you want and if Aslef or the RMT don’t like them – and they won’t - then shut the network down.

Better to have eight weeks of pain than a lifetime of being dictated to by Leftie bullies.