Fat Cat Tuesday
The FTSE 100 top bosses’ average £500,000 pay rise last year means Britain’s fat cats are now so wealthy (an average annual salary of £4.72 million) that according to the High Pay Centre by the late afternoon of the second working day after the festive break their earnings had passed the average worker’s annual salary of £27,200.
Last year these bosses had to wait another 24 hours until ‘Fat Cat Wednesday’!
- £177 billion profit made by landlords from capital growth over the last five years
(This profit figure actually excludes income from tenants’ rents!)
Economic blockage
House prices in London have shot up so much in the last five years (average price £429,000) that, according to the Financial Times, they are blocking labour mobility, threatening economic growth.
More than Denmark
The capital’s housing is now worth the total of all housing in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In two boroughs – Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea – the combined price of houses and flats is £231 billion; the GDP of Denmark the world’s 35th largest economy is £222 billion!
Affordable housing
Someone unfazed by costly housing is scandal-prone prince Andrew. Last week we reported the royal was living in a £22,000 a week Swiss ski chalet. In fact he liked the seven bedroom pad so much he bought it for £13 million just before Christmas!
- Private sector rents consume an average 40% of tenants’ gross income
A good read
David Cameron’s festive holiday reading included a medical memoir book by neurosurgeon Henry Marsh. Marsh has recently announced he is retiring after being a hospital consultant 28 years at St George’s Hospital, in south London, because of an increasing bureaucratic NHS “privatised by the dumb f***s who run the government.”
