At last! Help for the forgotten fat cats

Most of us wouldn’t – couldn’t – rate ourselves as well paid, so we’re entitled to wonder about the oft-stated claim at the government's conference dragging on in Birmingham this week that it is the friend of business and therefore the new well off.

Who, I wonder, told ministers that the business community needed encouragement? Surely it couldn't be to confuse the electorate about our present world? Silence, that Doubting Thomas!

I mean, does business need to know the government is with them, assuming, that is, that the government has much interest in anything other than Brexit.

And, oh, and the exciting who-done-it of the alleged attempted poisoning in my Salisbury of a fat Russian turncoat.

Out in the cold

Sorry, government, but out here in the cold we can’t hear the news these days, or see it in print, or on a screen, without knowing of the fabulous payoffs of retiring directors, and the astonishing sums some CEOs get.

Investopedia spotlights some salaries in the stock exchange world. ‘Several CEOs of the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 companies earned massive seven-figure salaries in 2016, according to the High Pay Centre’s August 2017 report on British CEO pay,’ it announces.

Here’s some of that list: Sir Martin Sorrell, of WPP Plc (Wire and Plastic Products, a multinational public relations company based in London. ) Salary: £48.1 million. His salary is nearly twice the second-highest paid CEO of the FTSE 100, reports Investopedia.

£22.4 Million A Year

Arnold W. Donald, Carnival (Carnival UK’s P&O Cruises and Cunard Line are headquartered in Southampton.) Salary: £22.4 million.

Rakesh Kapoor, Company: Reckitt Benckiser Group, HQ in Slough. Salary: £14.6 million.

Pascal Soirot, company AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company based in Cambridge, Salary: £13.4 million. AstraZeneca moved from Sweden in 2013. It is among the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, posting £23 billion in revenue in 2016.

Erik Engstrom, Company: RELX Group based in London. Salary: £10.6 million.

And how does this compare with, say, the people who really matter in our lives? The website, Save the student dot org, gives us this insight.

Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventure book, Sailing to Purgatory, at SailingToPurgatory.com