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Chief Executives' Pay

 In January...Chris O'Shea, the chief executive of Centrica (the owner of British Gas said his £4.5m pay package was "impossible to justify" and "so there's no point in trying to do that." In 2016, the then CEO of the Co-Op group, Richard Pennycook, sought a 60% cut in his pay package as, he argued, his job had got simpler after a restructuring... These admissions cause embarrassment and are not the story the business elite want to tell. Right now, in fact, pleas for even bigger and better pay packages are being heard in the city. Julia Hogget, the CEO of the London Stock Exchange, has said that CEOs are getting paid at levels that are "significantly below global benchmarks". She fears an exodus of businesses and executives who feel greater rewards will be found elsewhere, especially in the US, where top CEO's pay is on average about three times the level to be found at FTSE 100 companies. The High Pay Centre reports that, in 2022, the UK's

The Virtuous Wealthy, Private Education

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  The website of Eton College promises that "Eton believes in equal opportunity for everyone irrespective of gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, belief, disability or social demographic background." Before you dispatch your progeny to claim their free first-class education at this socialist paradise by the Thames, it is worth checking the "fees" section of the same website which takes a rather less egalitarian line on the issue of "social and demographic background"... A battle over private education looms. Concerned parents are already wondering whether they can pay next year's fees in advance of the next election. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the coming row it will at least expose an important modern hypocrisy: for all their elaborate trumpetings to the contrary, private schools are not instruments of social justice. That they have come to believe they are is richly amusing. But it is also concerning... Allegory of Virtue 1640-1649 Alber

Celebrity versus Talent

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  Who could have predicted Hollywood's sudden flowering? When Keanu Reeves publishes his debut novel, The Book of Elsewhere , in July, he will join a swelling cohort of celebrity writers. Tom Hanks, Sean Penn and Millie Bobby Brown have all published novels in recent years... The reason is not, I think, a sudden upgrade in the intellectual calibre of our celebrities... The relevant factor is a new and extreme deference to the power of the "personal brand" which originated on social media but now pervades our culture. Possession of a "platform" or a "following" is now a licence to do pretty much whatever you like creatively, regardless of your talent. Consider publishing. Modern  Britain's bestselling novelist, Richard Osman, is loved as a writer but it is relevant to his success that he was a famous TV personality first. Children's fiction is beset with celebrities exploiting their name recognition. David Walliams is the most famous example...

Maximum Wage

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  Here's a couple of good questions for an election year: while we may talk about minimum wages, why don't we ever discuss maximum wages? And while our politicians may argue about how little a family can survive on, why do they never address the other end of the inequality scale: just how much accumulated wealth might be too much... Are electorates and politicians across the world prepared just to shrug for ever about that widening wealth gap. It can seem as they are. Our own shameful government, led by a man worth £529m at the last count, seems to be pinning its slim chances of re-election on drastically reducing or abolishing inheritance tax, the single policy that most benefits the vanishingly small number of families as rich as the prime minister's. At what point does the question arise: enough is enough. For Ingrid Robeyns, a professor of philosophy and economics at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands the urgency of that question is long overdue. Not only does

Welsh Council Tax

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It is the very worst of taxes. Council tax is, as it stands, "indefensible" says the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). Brutally regressive, it lets mansion owners off with a negligible contribution to their local authority, while those in cheaper homes - those least able to afford it - pay far too much. It acts as a kind of anti-wealth tax. At long last, we have a government brave enough to reform it. Not in England, of course, but the Welsh government, as so often before, dares to go where others fear to tread. Its consultation on proposals to redistribute the tax burden so that the broadest shoulders bear a fairer share ends next week, with three options for degrees of redistribution being considered. Arenig, North Wales James Dixon Innes (1887-1914) Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] This is real levelling up - not something the Tories ever backed. Under the most ambitious plan, it would increase the number of council tax bands to 12, better reflecting actual values at top

Anti-Ageing Treatments - for Children

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  Inspired by social media, particularly TikTok, it appears children are adopting strict anti-ageing skincare regimes. It's mainly girls, and they're all shockingly young. Generation Z, younger teenagers, pre-teens and children, sometimes as young as eight, according to the British Association for Dermatologists. The buzzword is "preventive", as the young slap on moisturisers, peels and elixirs intended (and priced) for older people. They're using the old favourite pester power. Shocked mothers received Christmas wish-lists pleading for creams and serums from brands like Drunk Elephant and others. Products sometimes cost upwards of £50 or £60. Head of an Old Woman Percy Bigland (1858-1926) Photo Credit: Walker Art Gallery [CC  BY-NC] It's no surprise that social media is heavily implicated. Influencers are cited as the cause of this anti-ageing obsession and the consumer power of children is growing... It's all a galaxy away from my own gen X childhood &qu

Pay Madness

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  Raving Madness Caius Gabriel Cibber (1630-1700) Photo Credit: Bethlem Museum of the Mind [CC BY-NC] The boss of British Gas owner Centrica has said it is "impossible to justify" his £4.5m pay packet. Chris O'Shea said there was "no point" trying to justify his huge salary when millions of his customers were struggling to pay their heating bills due to soaring energy costs.  O'Shea, who has been chief executive of Centrica since 2020, received bonuses totalling £3.7m in 2022 on top of his £790,000 salary. The bonuses were paid out as Centrica made record profits of £3.3bn after oil and gas prices jumped following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "You can't justify a salary of that size," O'Shea told the BBC yesterday. "It's a huge amount of money. I am incredibly fortunate. I don't set my own pay. That's set by our remuneration committee."... Asked for the second time by the BBC Breakfast host Charlie Stayt to justif