Just a tree and wreath from a top-end florist could set you back £1,500 according to the Guardian. Events company Theme Traders reports the capital's capitalists have even had live reindeer.

It seems the £80,000 job involved installing an ice rink in the drive and flying in French figure skaters.

... lumps of coal

Meanwhile, London's poorest kids will receive less at Christmas than the average family pet.

700,000 children living in poverty could get presents with an average value of £19.55. Families who can afford it will give pets around £22 of gifts, according to the Childhood Trust.

The study found almost half the 25,000 London kids poverty charities work with say they don't enjoy Christmas. Of these, four in five give poverty as the reason, and three in five cite anxiety and stress.

Children aren't responsible for poverty at Christmas. Nor are their parents or guardians. Capitalism is.

Property trillions...

photo spudgun67/CC, photo spudgun67/CC (Click to enlarge)

The value of Britain's housing stock has broken the £6 trillion mark, says Halifax.

In 2007 the bank's estimate was £4.1 trillion. That's a 50% increase in ten years - for nothing.

Britain's gross domestic product - all the stuff we make in a year - is around £2 trillion. It would take three years just to make stuff equivalent to the market value of the country's homes.

The value of the top 100 companies on the stock exchange is also around £2 trillion. Britain's homes are worth three times the total value of the top 100 companies on the stock exchange.

That's a hell of an early present for landowners and property speculators.

... eviction notes

Nurses at the private London Clinic are getting a different early Christmas present: an eviction notice.

The Harley Street employer owns bedsits in Primrose Hill, which it leases to staff at an affordable rate. What a waste!

One nurse told the Camden New Journal in November: ""They just issued us with a section 21 order a couple of weeks ago that has given us two months' notice to leave.

"They are within their rights to do this, but it came completely out of the blue. They have said if we do not move they will get a court order." Merry Christmas!

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