BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

Hello and welcome to more or less.

Coming to you, lockdown style from under Aduwe, a short train ride away from our central

London studios.

Just like old times, eh?

This week we will of course be examining some numbers behind the rail strike.

We'll investigate claims that the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has wasted 11 billion pounds

on something to do with quantitative easing, is pollution from tires really 2000 times worse

than pollution from exhausts.

We look at some sexy statistics, or possibly some sexless ones, and are there more bees

in the world, stars in the galaxy, or complaints about that item in the more or less inbox.

Music Radio Podcasts

First, let's talk about that strike.

The railways have been in chaos, and with tens of thousands of workers on strike, principally

overpay, it's perhaps not surprising that politicians, industry voices and the media

have devoted quite some energy to making claims about how much rail workers are taking

home every month, and how it compares to other workers in Britain.

Here, for example, is the Secretary of State for Transport, Grand Chaps.

railway workers themselves are actually relatively well paid compared with other public workers.

So to give you an example, the average medium pay is £44,000, at £31,000 for a nurse,

or for a train driver £59,000, with a fifth of the learning over £70, so this is not

a bandly paid industry.

...