THE TELEGRAPH: The wealth gap is at its widest for more than 40 years, creating ghettoes of the richest and the poorest that have virtually nothing to do with each other, a report finds today.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation also found that in parts of the South-East the "average" family is an endangered species. The result has been an increase in "urban clustering" of poor people in cities with wealthy households concentrated on the outskirts. Income divide at widest for 40 years (more) By Christopher Hope
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (19/02/2007):
Blair's wealth gap: voters want City bonus curb By Patrick Hennessy and Melissa Kite
The Jodeph Rowntree Foundation
TELEGRAPH SPEAKERS’ CORNER:
What can be done to heal Britain's economic divide?
I am all for people being able to become rich, but it seems to me that this country has encouraged unadulterated greed. There is no concern for the people who simply cannot get bonuses on the level of the City's so-called "high fliers". For most people, they just have to struggle along whilst a relatively small number at the top of the pile, simply because they have had the chance to enter the City or kick a football, get all the benefits. They cream it all off. This is not fair. And a country which encourages such unfairness will, in the long-run, live to regret it. Civil unrest will surely ensue.
They used to say that (absolute) poverty was the breeding ground for communism. I would go as far as to say that (relative) poverty could well become the breeding ground of communism, too. That beast - communism - is just lurking in the shadows. We need to be vigilant.
By creating a dependency culture, and at the same time allowing obscene pay rises, mega-golden handshakes (for jobs usually not well done), and even more obscene City bonuses, this government, and several governments before it, is setting the scene for an ugly future for us all.
Nobody is worth some of the ridiculous pay awards that some of these people are 'earning.' It is a total disincentive to work and effort for the vast majority, since they might as well give up, knowing darned well that they will never achieve such dizzy heights.
The world has been here before, albeit in smaller magnitude. We need to take heed. No society can be healthy when this group feels insulated and superior to that group. This is a recipe for division, bitterness, and strife, and takes the concept of capitalism to the Nth degree. – ©MA
Mark Alexander
