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Anorak News | Coal For (Fat) Cats

Coal For (Fat) Cats

by | 1st, March 2004

‘WHILE drugs get cheaper, we all get richer – or at least all of us who own our own house.

Millionaires’ row

In fact, so rich are we all that millionaires will be ten a penny in a few years time, according to a report by the Centre For Economics And Business Research.

By 2010, there will be 760,000 millionaires in the UK, compared with only 230,000 in 2001.

That’s the good news. The bad news, says the Guardian, “is that a seven-figure bank balance will no longer command the respect that it once did because such riches will be relatively commonplace”.

Two men who will certainly be among that number on current predictions are Neil Greatrex and Michael Stevens, the leaders of the strike-busting Union of Democratic Mineworkers.

Proving that you don’t have to be a capitalist to be a fat cat, the Guardian reveals that the two receive pay and benefits worth more than £150,000 each a year.

That makes them the best paid union leaders in the country behind only Gordon Taylor, leader of the Professional Footballers’ Association.

Someone, you might argue, has got to be the best paid – and that is very true.

But both Mr Greatrex’s basic £100,250 salary and Mr Stevens’s £91,313 are significantly higher than the £73,834 paid to Dave Prentis for running Unison, the country’s biggest union.

Unison, the paper reminds us, has 1.3 million members. The UDM has 1,431.

King Coal may not be the force it once was, but this proves that you can hit a rich seam if you only know where to look.’



Posted: 1st, March 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink