Memories would appear to be short at the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, which only a few months ago were fulminating against the “fat cat” bosses of water and energy companies.
Of the bosses of the UK’s biggest water companies, the Mail on Sunday disclosed they had been handed an “eye-watering” £50m in pay “despite billions of litres leaking from mains pipes each day, looming hosepipe bans and public anger over sewage being dumped into rivers”.
As for the energy companies, the Daily Mail harrumphed that their “fat cat” bosses were “lining their pockets while bills soar,” saying they were raking in almost £13m a year.
And yet it seems to have escaped their notice that Kwasi Kwarteng’s budget – with its 5% cut in the upper band of income tax – will give each of these fat cats they professed to despise so much a pay rise that will in most cases run into six figures.
The Daily Mail admitted to its mystified readers: “There will, of course, be relentless shroud-waving from the Left and the BBC, who claim Mr Kwarteng’s audacious agenda merely benefits the rich. But they are wrong, and he must stick doggedly to his guns.
Shroud-waving certainly isn’t in the nature of the Mail‘s owner, Lord Rothermere, when it comes to his own finances or those of his executives. They all certainly fall into the top-rate tax bracket, with his lordship making £10.91m between 2020 and 2021.
Rothermere, who has just taken over as CEO of the Mail’s parent company, is believed to be the most handsomely rewarded media executive in the country, with the three other top earners all employed by his group.
