How did the super-rich get away with flaunting the extreme and disgusting excesses of wealth for so long, without hardly a ripple of disapproval? And why is the issue now being propelled to the front of the political agenda, first by the August riots and now only 2 months later by Occupy LSX?
Posts Tagged ‘High Pay’
Ed’s speech: predators, producers and the proletariat
Sep 28th, 2011 by David Osler.I cannot remember the last time I was wildly impressed by a leader’s set piece speech to a party conference. These days such perorations are designedly ephemeral affairs, calculated to grab the day’s headlines rather than define any lasting vision. The words delivered by Ed Miliband yesterday are no exception, and in this case, have […]
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On top pay and a bucket of warm spit in Birmingham
Sep 21st, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Vince Cable rightly castigates top pay excesses – and to give him credit, no-one else in this government of millionaires is doing so – but the solutions he put forward yesterday to the LibDem conference are worth little more than a bucket of warm spit. Simplifying complex executive remuneration schemes is not going to stop […]
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Top pay is about power not merit or value
May 17th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Yesterday’s interim report of the High Pay Commission provides some important information about top pay, but misses the main point. It says that the average annual salary of a FTSE chief executive in 2010 was £72,057 a week (£3.75 million a year), compared to the average wage (i.e. national median full-time wage) of £496 a […]
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McCluskey attacks deceit on pay
May 16th, 2011 by Newsdesk.The callous deceit of the coalition’s claim that ‘we are all in this together’ was unmasked today with a new report showing chief executives earning 145 times the average wage. Unite, the largest union in the country, said that today’s High Pay Commission report revealed that pay disparities between the highest earners and the rest of […]
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Bankers’ bonuses: not just obscene, but commercially wholly unmerited
Mar 13th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Two points are missed when ogling at Bob Diamond’s £6.5m bonus as the new Barclays chief executive, 271 times the national average wage. One is that his bonus is by no means the largest – far from it. Several of his colleagues at Barclays raked in much, more more. Two of them, Del Messier and […]
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Taxing the rich – the poll evidence
Jan 30th, 2011 by Jon Lansman.Anyone concerned about growing inequality, who thinks that tax policies need to be more progressive than those of either the Tory-led government or its New Labour predecessors, has cause for celebration this morning. The latest YouGov poll for today’s Sunday Times shows clear public backing for taxing the rich. Forty-nine per cent think the top […]
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‘Fairness’ is the issue, not ‘squeezed middle’
Dec 8th, 2010 by Michael Meacher.A new statistic just revealed: what should a chief executive earn? A Joseph Rowntree trust survey has found that two-thirds of the population believe that a CEO shouldn’t take home more than half a million a year (that’s 21 times the average national income). What they actually take home has also just been disclosed by Income […]
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55% rises for the rich. We’re all in it together?
Oct 29th, 2010 by Jon Lansman.The Financial Times reports today that FTSE100 directors gave themselves on average a 55% rise last year. Kelvin Hopkins, MP for Luton North, said the pay packages were a “moral outrage”, and TUC general secretary Bendan Barber said it blew away “any claim that we are all in this together.” The contrast with public service pay […]
