With homeless people dying on our streets, millions of workers scraping by on the minimum wage and zero-hours contracts, and huge numbers reliant on food banks, Britain’s top executives are doing better than ever, earning more in a couple of days than workers will in a whole year.
With homeless people dying on our streets, millions of workers scraping by on the minimum wage and zero-hours contracts, and huge numbers reliant on food banks, it is heartening to see a ray of hope – Britain’s top executives are doing better than ever!
The High Pay Centre has calculated that the average boss of the FTSE 100 companies now earns £1,000 per hour. As a result, their rate of income means that they would have passed the UK average salary of £28,200 by around midday on Wednesday this week, dubbed “Fat Cat Wednesday”, only a few days into the new year. It’s nice to know that not everyone is suffering!
According to the Guardian, “average annual pay for a FTSE 100 boss was £5.48m, or 401 times that of a minimum wage worker. It was also 172 times more than a nurse’s pay and 145 times more than a teacher’s.”
2017 seems to have opened as a year of broken records: the FTSE has reached a record high at 7190.61, surpassing the giddy heights reached just before the crash of 2008; household debt is climbing rapidly; and inflation in the service sector is rising at its fastest rate since 2011 – all ominous warnings of the new slump that lies ahead.
Such figures, vividly demonstrate the growing divide between the rich and the poor. And despite the occasional small critique on TV and in the billionaire press, this process continues unabated. Meanwhile, anger is rapidly growing, and sooner or later there will be a social explosion of cataclysmic proportions.
The lessons are there for all to see, and the conclusion is clear: capitalism means misery for millions and must be overthrown.
Vic Dale, Isle of Wight
I just saw a reference in the Guardian about “Fat Cat Wednesday”. It was about how the very rich in our society will have “earned” (something wrong with that word when referring to them) as much by Wednesday this week as the average worker will get in a year!
Apparently these bloodsuckers will get their paws on £28,000 or so, the Guardian reports, in just a few days.
I was still seething about this when I came across the jobs page in my local paper. This page arrives quite a bit nearer to the reality for most working people.
A school wants a qualified class teacher on a part time basis, for only part of a salary of £24,243. A job agency wants warehouse workers on shift work for between £13,000 and £16,000. A care home wants staff for £17,000. And a school wants catering assistants for a full-time equivalent of £15,000, but only getting paid in term time.
There is much more of the same; so my question is: who the hell gets the so-called national average? The ‘average’ includes people on a good bit more than £28,000, so it must include many more on poverty wages.
It’s obvious that many – if not most – of the “fat cats” make their wealth on the backs of the poor. The overthrow of this rotten system can’t come too soon.
Jim Brookshaw, Forest of Dean
