British FTSE 100 chief executives have made more money in 2023 by 2 pm Thursday January 5 than the average UK worker will earn in the whole year.
FTSE 100 CEOs are paid £3.4m on average, which works out at 103 times the £33,000 average salary for full-time UK workers. The GMB trade union said it would take a 999 ambulance call handler almost 150 years to match the pay of the average CEO. Senior bosses of the next 250 largest UK companies would need to work until 11 January for their pay to overtake the annual earnings of the median UK worker. Every person in the top one percent of earners, (£145,000), will overtake the median by 23 March.
Link here.
More drownings as small boats wallow in the hostile, freezing Channel while Rishi Sunak wallows in Tory adulation for reinforcing the hostile policy towards migrants. Naturally Suella Braverman ekes out crocodile tears while keeping the door slammed shut on desperate ‘criminals’ risking their lives to seek asylum.
Meanwhile the traffickers cash in on human misery by charging exorbitant crossing fees for overloaded boats not much better than paddling canoes. So a few women and kids drown, so what?
Meanwhile middle England, mesmerised with xenophobia, seems to think that foreigners are the reason why England is not a verdant utopia.
Meanwhile the rich laugh and go about their day.
They’re young, rich and mortgage-free, and the scions of the 1% are having a roaring twenties. Despite the economic gloom currently shrouding the UK and many other western countries, sales of luxury brands have been booming and growing numbers of buyers are young adults. Swiss watches, Louis Vuitton trainers, rare Birkin bags and 81-year-old whiskies are fuelling impressive growth among luxury brands such as LVMH, Burberry and Kering. Imports of Swiss watches to the UK were up by 31% in the first half of 2022, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry – the average spend at the Watches of Switzerland group being around £6,000. Meanwhile, sales of watches below £2,500, sometimes referred to as “mid-range”, are falling: http://bit.ly/3Gx7SoK
People across various industries are taking industrial action this month. Rail and road workers will be engaged in a series of strikes as will postal workers. Nurses and ambulance teams have announced multiple strikes, civil servants plan to walk out, and teachers and firefighters are currently balloting their members on strike action.
It’s great to see this kind of solidarity among workers after years of putting up with the bosses’ crap. Capitalism screws workers, and workers should retaliate if they can. Whether it’s official or unofficial, legal or illegal, the strike weapon is perfectly legitimate if it’s to improve or defend working conditions, and if it is democratically decided and run by those involved.
As Iran sees a 3-day general strike with shops closed in 40 major cities and 90% of retailers shutting, and hundreds of thousands out in the street, the odious Iranian regime seems on the brink of collapse. With over 450 people including many women and children slaughtered by the police, and 18,000 jailed for dissent against the regime, the state has been brutal in trying to crush this protest-turned-insurrection. But it has only made it worse.
Crucially, workers are striking in solidarity. That has to happen, for any real change. The reviled ‘morality police’ may have disappeared and may even be abolished, but it hardly matters. Workers want this regime destroyed. We salute and take inspiration from their courage.
A UN report says that 81,100 women and girls worldwide were murdered last year.
Most of these murders are gendered, ie, they’re killed because they’re women or girls. 56 percent were killed by their husband, partner or other relative. Only about 11 percent of all male homicide victims were killed by a partner or relative. Many countries saw a rise in femicide during 2020 lockdowns. More than five women an hour are killed by someone from their own family.
Gender oppression is part of capitalism. But it’s no picnic for the patriarchy either, as males make up 81% of all homicides. Poverty, oppression and murder are the background noise behind all the frenzied money-making.
Qatar has spent €220bn on the World Cup (that’s around 110 times the cost to NASA of sending the Artemis rocket to the moon).
Qatar has provided all-expenses trips for 1,600 social media influencers, and is paying football fans to attend the tournament. In return these fans must gush about the event and the host country, ‘like’ and re-share third-party posts about the World Cup and use the hashtags #IAMAFAN and #Roadto2022. Meanwhile Qatar’s Supreme Committee will monitor their posts and can demand that they delete content unsympathetic to Qatar.
Not just footballers, now even football fans can be bought. For the rich in capitalism, everything and everybody is for sale.
Labour’s response to Hunt’s Autumn Statement has not been to criticise what he proposed as it’s what they would have done. They are arguing that the present situation, where people’s real living standards are falling, is the result of Tory mismanagement of the economy over the past 12 years. This assumes that if there had been a different government or a different policy this wouldn’t have happened.
It’s the old illusion that governments can control the way capitalism works, when experience as well as theory shows this not to be the case. It’s not the Tories who are the problem but the capitalist system.
“People say our economic and social system is broken, but it isn’t. The system is rigged. It generates increasing wealth for the already rich and powerful at the expense of the majority of the people on this Earth.
Billionaires, corporations and oligarchs measure success by their bank balance, or by share prices, and by holidays in space. Where we see climate breakdown, poverty and injustice — they see nothing but profit.
It is the relentless pursuit of profit for the few which is causing the misery of the many, and pushing the planet to the point of no return.”
Shame they’re only demanding a Global Green Deal, not world socialism.
