By spitefully announcing more rail strikes after bagging payrise, Aslef show they’re worthy of contempt

Brothers grim

ONE day you think you’ve ended rail strikes by handing the union a jaw-dropping pay deal. The next it spitefully announces more walkouts anyway.

Aslef’s latest action — 22 days of chaos for the East Coast mainline over some fresh grievance — should mortify new Transport Secretary Louise Haigh.

After gifting the militants 15 per cent over three years, no strings attached, she said she was fulfilling an election pledge to “move fast and fix things” . . . to “put an end to the rail strikes”.

Except nothing has been fixed.

And the strikes are very far from over.

Did anyone seriously believe, after the Government’s capitulation, that the ­bullying brothers wouldn’t rapidly try their luck again?

And that goes for every public sector union.

It is beyond naïve to imagine they won’t see train drivers wangling £69,000 for a four-day week and fancy the same.

Now consider the mayhem Aslef will cause from London to Edinburgh — and multiply it tenfold.

Because once the network is renationalised as “Great British Railways”, these serial strikers will be able to shut the entire system.

Aslef chief Mick Whelan is gleefully hailing the new Government, to which his union donated £100,000 before the election, because it “listens”.

The last, he said, treated him and his comrades with “utter contempt”.

Utter contempt, it turns out, was fully justified.

Reeves’ duty

FOR 14 years our Keep It Down campaign has convinced successive Chancellors to freeze fuel duty, saving drivers billions.

And year after year in opposition Labour backed us.

So Rachel Reeves should do the right thing and commit once again to keeping pump prices down.

They are at a six-month low.

The Chancellor must not use that as an excuse to raise duty.

With inflation and unemployment low, and growth the highest in the G7, she has been left an economy in far better shape than the Government claims.

And with the overall tax burden already at a historic high, there is zero justification for picking Sun readers’ pockets at all.

Cry freezedom

MANY convicts should never again see the light of day.

But plenty of others have it in them to go straight, given a chance and some real hope for their future.

In Paul Cowley, the frozen food chain Iceland has a man almost uniquely qualified to sort them from the rest — and give them a job.

His rehabilitation scheme could be a blueprint for other firms.

And he’ll find an ally in Prisons Minister James Timpson, who does the same at his stores.