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A tale of two cities in London itself: Super rich and painfully poor
By Marion Masar |
January 12, 2011, Wednesday
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I am standing in the Room of Luxury on the ground floor of the world's most famous department store - Harrods - in London.
I am in to buy a new perfume for my wife and I look for something special I cannot find anywhere else. As I chat to the beautiful shop assistant, I ask how business is. She replies that it has never been better and people who come in generally do not ask how much an item costs but just buy it if they like it.
I end up forking out 125 pounds (US$194) for 30ml perfume exclusive to Harrods, but I double check the price before I hand over the money. The store's 330 departments offer a wide range of ultra luxury products and services, among others personal shopping assistant, bespoke fragrance formulations and pet spa.
As I exit the store, several super luxury cars are parked outside, with personal drivers waiting for the owners and ready to take them to some of the expensive restaurants in the area or back to their multi-million-pound apartments.
This scene is a far cry from the world evolving at the junction of Seven Sisters and Holloway roads in Islington, North London. The buildings here are run-down and the wind is stirring litter and dust into the air, giving the area even gloomier look.
The most common type of restaurant here is the "fried chicken shop," and there are strikingly many pawnshops (a profitable business in difficult economic times) and even more so-called "One Pound Stores" that sell everything, well, for a pound.
The area is overcrowded with all sorts of people but one cannot miss the fact that at this hour, 10:30am, there are surprisingly many middle-aged folks who normally should be at work but are not.
Gainers v. losers
London - you either love it or hate it. London - the mix of cultures and people, rich and poor living side by side.
According to the 2010 report conducted by the Government Equalities Office, the rich-and-poor divide is now wider than 40 years ago.
According to the report, Britain has moved from being a society where those near the top had three times the incomes of those near the bottom in the 1960s and 1970s to one where, since the start of the 1990s, they have four times as much.
However, the report concludes that the situation could be much worse "as the gainers and losers from this process have still only had half their careers within this more unequal world."
The situation is far worse than the government's report. One only needs to look at the example of a starting salary in a bank or back office job and compare it to salaries of CEOs and executives of large retail or financial organizations, in order to fully comprehend the two very different worlds people in Britain are living in.
On the one hand, you have a minimum wage of 5.93 pounds for workers aged 21 and older and, let me assure you, that many people across Britain still get paid the minimum wage.
Starting salaries in the banking sector and back office job are somewhere around 15,000 pounds a year. Deduct from this National Insurance contributions and income tax, and a worker in London is easily left with less than 1,000 pounds a month to live, which borders on relative poverty.
Warning signs
On the other hand, you have directors of public institutions, CEOs of large companies and local government officials on average salaries of 250,000 pounds a year and up. (Recent research into salaries of public servants revealed that 300 public officials get paid more than the prime minister.)
To fully appreciate the extreme differences among residents of the United Kingdom, one only needs to look at the last year's salary of BP chief executive Tony Hayward - a modest 4.01 million pounds in cash and shares (up from 2.85 million pounds in 2008).
At the same time the city's main newspaper, the Evening Standard, has recently run a campaign called "The Dispossessed" and found that in a city as rich and famous as London, poor children are still being buried in mass graves. In spite of everything looking like utopia on the surface with all those people blowing their money in London's department stores on Oxford Street, there are warning signs.
(The author is a London-based freelance writer, student of Mandarin Chinese at the Confucius Institute of Business Studies at London School of Economics. Shanghai Daily condensed his article. He can be reached at marion.masar@hushmail.com)
I am in to buy a new perfume for my wife and I look for something special I cannot find anywhere else. As I chat to the beautiful shop assistant, I ask how business is. She replies that it has never been better and people who come in generally do not ask how much an item costs but just buy it if they like it.
I end up forking out 125 pounds (US$194) for 30ml perfume exclusive to Harrods, but I double check the price before I hand over the money. The store's 330 departments offer a wide range of ultra luxury products and services, among others personal shopping assistant, bespoke fragrance formulations and pet spa.
As I exit the store, several super luxury cars are parked outside, with personal drivers waiting for the owners and ready to take them to some of the expensive restaurants in the area or back to their multi-million-pound apartments.
This scene is a far cry from the world evolving at the junction of Seven Sisters and Holloway roads in Islington, North London. The buildings here are run-down and the wind is stirring litter and dust into the air, giving the area even gloomier look.
The most common type of restaurant here is the "fried chicken shop," and there are strikingly many pawnshops (a profitable business in difficult economic times) and even more so-called "One Pound Stores" that sell everything, well, for a pound.
The area is overcrowded with all sorts of people but one cannot miss the fact that at this hour, 10:30am, there are surprisingly many middle-aged folks who normally should be at work but are not.
Gainers v. losers
London - you either love it or hate it. London - the mix of cultures and people, rich and poor living side by side.
According to the 2010 report conducted by the Government Equalities Office, the rich-and-poor divide is now wider than 40 years ago.
According to the report, Britain has moved from being a society where those near the top had three times the incomes of those near the bottom in the 1960s and 1970s to one where, since the start of the 1990s, they have four times as much.
However, the report concludes that the situation could be much worse "as the gainers and losers from this process have still only had half their careers within this more unequal world."
The situation is far worse than the government's report. One only needs to look at the example of a starting salary in a bank or back office job and compare it to salaries of CEOs and executives of large retail or financial organizations, in order to fully comprehend the two very different worlds people in Britain are living in.
On the one hand, you have a minimum wage of 5.93 pounds for workers aged 21 and older and, let me assure you, that many people across Britain still get paid the minimum wage.
Starting salaries in the banking sector and back office job are somewhere around 15,000 pounds a year. Deduct from this National Insurance contributions and income tax, and a worker in London is easily left with less than 1,000 pounds a month to live, which borders on relative poverty.
Warning signs
On the other hand, you have directors of public institutions, CEOs of large companies and local government officials on average salaries of 250,000 pounds a year and up. (Recent research into salaries of public servants revealed that 300 public officials get paid more than the prime minister.)
To fully appreciate the extreme differences among residents of the United Kingdom, one only needs to look at the last year's salary of BP chief executive Tony Hayward - a modest 4.01 million pounds in cash and shares (up from 2.85 million pounds in 2008).
At the same time the city's main newspaper, the Evening Standard, has recently run a campaign called "The Dispossessed" and found that in a city as rich and famous as London, poor children are still being buried in mass graves. In spite of everything looking like utopia on the surface with all those people blowing their money in London's department stores on Oxford Street, there are warning signs.
(The author is a London-based freelance writer, student of Mandarin Chinese at the Confucius Institute of Business Studies at London School of Economics. Shanghai Daily condensed his article. He can be reached at marion.masar@hushmail.com)
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