1. The Duke of Westminster pulled himself up by his bootstraps: in one of the most amusing articles we’ve read for a long time, Charles Moore in the Telegraph tried hard to enlist our sympathies for a tear-jerking tale of triumph in the face of luck (and it only took ten centuries);
2. Those not on close terms with a King are using their accountants to get rich instead: this is the news that the Treasury is planning to get tough on those enablers of aggressive tax avoidance, namely the accountants. Good. And about time say all of us;
3. Britain’s top businesses seem to value their shareholders more than their employees: could there be a connection between dividend largesse and pension black holes? Yes, would seem to be the short answer;
4. Collective action can still win: even in the age of the so-called “gig economy” (yes, it’s not as much fun as it sounds…) it seems that employees can still prevail if they stick together; and
5. Despite success at Deliveroo, UK pay inequality is still shocking: we found that minimum wage workers would have to work 400 years to match a single year’s pay for a FTSE100 CEO. Life expectancy might be edging up overall, but that’s still a bit of a stretch.
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