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The great divide: rich v poor

12 August 2008

Jaw-dropping facts and figures, compiled by PCS negotiations officer Tom Taylor, show the gap between rich and poor in the UK today.

The richest 1,000 people have seen their wealth quadruple under New Labour. The personal fortune of Lakshmi Mittal, Britain’s richest resident, increased from £19.25bn to £27.7bn last year.

The number of children and pensioners living in relative poverty in the UK rose by 400,000 in 2007.

“I have never seen such a polarised UK economy. The rich are so very, very rich. The West End can’t get enough diamonds. But the poor are getting poorer” – Stuart Rose, Marks and Spencer chief executive.

City bonuses have hit a record high at £14bn and the pay of company directors increased by 37% last year. Executives have fuelled a spiralling demand for luxury goods to the extent there is a five-year waiting list for new Rolls Royce cars and a shortage of crew members for ‘superyachts’.

To make ends meet, 25 per cent of people are cutting back on food spending, 11 per cent are buying fewer clothes for their children, and more than 10 per cent have been forced to borrow more to pay their rent or mortgage.

“Having a friendly Labour government has almost been better than having a Tory one” – Philip Beresford, Sunday Times Rich List compiler.

At Christmas, £35,000 cocktails were being sold in Movida, a club frequented by London’s ultra-wealthy; a London restaurant was selling Christmas hampers for £50,000; or you could buy a diamond-encrusted book at the bargain basement price of £3m.

The average adult now has a personal debt of £33,000. As a result, record numbers of people are petitioning to have themselves made bankrupt.

“Rather than asking whether huge salaries are morally justified, we should celebrate the fact that people can be enormously successful in this country. Rather than placing a cap on success, we should be questioning why it is not available to more people” – New Labour business minister John Hutton.

(Unless, of course, you work in the public sector where a 2% cap on pay increases has been imposed)

The TUC estimates that tax dodges cost the government £25bn a year. While lie detectors are proposed to identify ‘benefits cheats’, no such measures are planned to deal with corporate tax avoidance.

Individual savings are at a 50-year low as disposable income has been squeezed by rising interest rates, record debt levels and sluggish income growth.

“If the banks make money, they get to keep it. The moment they look like losing it, we have to cough up” – Jonathan Freedland, Guardian writer

“No industry has a comparable talent for privatising gains and socialising losses” – Martin Wolf, Financial Times writer