We have always known that this was a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. But a striking confirmation of this has come from research by the GMB drawing on data from the Electoral Commission and the Register of Members’ Interests. It shows that a quarter of the 1,000 ultra-rich persons in Britain are Tory donors who have donated a total of £83.7 millions to the Tory party. Continue reading
Tagged with Super-rich
FTSE-100 chief execs down to their last £92,308 a week
Another story for ‘We’re all in it together’. A survey just published by Manifest/MM&K has found that the average pay of chief executives of FTSE-100 companies is now £4.m millions a year , just under £100,000 a week (though that threshold will probably be crossed next year). The average pay in their remuneration – salary, share options, share handouts (usually at 100,000 shares a time), layered incentive schemes, bonuses including those deferred from previous years, etc., etc. – was 10%, though in a quarter of companies it was more than 41%. Continue reading
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Glencore-Xstrata shenanigans show corporate managerial power out of control
The joint stock company, the foundation unit of modern capitalism, is dead. But corporate managerial capitalism is alive and kicking. Whatever the constitutional theory that shareholders are in ultimate control, this myth is daily confounded by repeated evidence of management takeover from the inside.
Shareholdings have become so remote and so fragmented, and the tentacles of the leviathan they purport to oversee so dissipated, that effective power has now long since settled firmly on the top management. But the extremes to which this is now being taken are starkly illustrated by the most recent goings-on at the Glencore-Xstrata tie-up. Continue reading
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Another unmentionable word in the Queen’s Speech: wealth
Apart from assuring us that the government’s main objective was economic stability – the stability of the graveyard it seems in this government’s case – the only other significant things in the Queen’s Speech were what it didn’t contain, not anything it did contain. Nothing about housebuilding, an infrastructure bank, reviving manufacturing, boosting capital investment, QE to bolster youth employment rather than the banks, or anything that really needs doing. And nothing about 1% versus the 99%. The inequality in wealth in Britain today is on a staggering scale, and it’s not even mentioned. So let’s start with the facts, grace of the Sunday Times Rich List rather than Treasury data – even the evidence of the distribution of wealth has been privatised. Continue reading
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Britain’s 1,000 richest persons made gains of £155bn in last 3 years
The Sunday Times Rich List, published yesterday and compulsory reading for anybody who wants to understand Britain’s power structure today, holds three extremely significant conclusions.
One is that the 1,000 richest persons in the UK have increased their wealth by so much in the last 3 years – £155bn – that they themselves alone could pay off the entire UK budget deficit and still leave themselves with £30bn to spare which should be enough to keep the wolf from the door. Continue reading