Richie Rich.

The eagerly awaited Sunday Times Rich List was published last week. A thick, glossy magazine full of super-yachts, country piles and unpronounceable surnames. Somewhat remarkably only one Briton makes it into the top ten, the (Grand Old) Duke of Westminster who leads the indigenous charge by scraping into tenth. Above him are the global elite, Russian oligarchs, Indian steel magnates and tetra-pak heirs. The underlying theme seems to be that the rich are getting richer as they control more and more of the wealth in the UK; the top 65 people have as much as the bottom 30% of the entire population. How do they do it? Accidents of birth account for much of it, being born into rich families is still the major determinant of adult wealth. Then there are the self made johnnies who peddle the rags to riches story. The King of the self mades must be the walnut faced computer purveyor Lord / Sir Alan Sugar. Sugar and his fawning cronies love a good humble beginnings story and view themselves as geniuses that prospered because of their “vision, drive and determination”. Have they really got something the rest of us haven’t? Is it not just that they were in the right place at the right time and for every one of them there are many others who, for one reason or another, didn’t quite get the breaks? As for the fabled “trickle-down” effect, the tide has turned and wealth is no longer trickling its way down, it is making a mad, LibCon fuelled, dash to the top.