Super-wealthy get richer


Dave Carr

To join this club you need a minimum of £85 million. That’s right; it’s membership of the Sunday Times Rich List, featuring Britain’s thousand wealthiest people. With sickening regularity, this year’s list shows that the super-rich have got even richer.

This glaring inequality will further antagonise the overwhelming majority in the UK who continue to be battered with government imposed austerity, wage cuts, zero-hour contracts and ever rising utility, transport and housing costs.

The list reports that the richest 1,000 people in Britain have increased their wealth by 15% in the last year to an unimaginable total of £520 billion. That’s enough money to run the NHS for several years and still have enough left over to build millions of new affordable homes, scrap tuition fees and do much more besides.

Deficit

These mega-rich individuals collectively increased their combined fortunes by £70 billion last year. So what is Chancellor George Osborne waiting for when he demands that the budget deficit is eliminated? It’s simple George, slap a wealth tax on these people and restore the cuts in jobs, benefits and public services!

Of course the millionaire, Oxford-educated Tory chancellor has no intention of imposing a levy on his chums. But that hasn’t stopped him imposing a pernicious bedroom tax and removing council tax support for the poorest in society, while reducing the top rate of income tax and corporation tax. And for good measure he’s left open enough tax loopholes to allow the richest to salt away their wealth in offshore tax havens.

But is Labour leader Ed Miliband jumping up and down demanding the application of tax justice measures? No. As usual, he’s as quiet as a church mouse for fear of antagonising big business.

And what about the darling of the mass media – the ‘anti-establishment’ establishment Ukip? Not a peep from Nigel Farage. But that’s not surprising as one of his party backers is Paul Sykes, who just happens to be a member of the rich list club!

Working class people need a new, mass party with socialist policies to end this unacceptable social inequality. That’s why continuing the important pioneering electoral work of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition will assist in bringing about such a vitally necessary party.