Richmond–well off – but are they happy?
Photograph used under GNU free documentation licence and is by David Iliff (2008) and can be found on Wikipedia here.
I read an article on the Lovemoney website about the people of Richmond in south west London, they have very high savings compared to the rest of the UK; they are obviously better off. The average savings were quoted as being £29,765 (figures from the Halifax). This was followed up by ‘What we shouldn’t learn from the people of Richmond’ in a blog by the CCCS (Consumer Credit Counselling Service) that told us that despite the savings the people of Richmond also had debts averaging over £19,000.
This is from the original press release from the Halifax:
Just a short stroll from the famous Richmond Park lives some of the nation’s biggest savers, according to latest research from the Halifax savings; which identifies UK’s postal areas with the largest savings balances. Residents in the TW10 6 area of Richmond Upon Thames have the highest average balance
in the UK of £29,765 – 380% above the average for London.
The figures are from balances on accounts with the Halifax. The people in the region where I live have less than £16,000. Mm, I have an account with the Halifax and it’s a pain and so I don’t have all my money in it. In fact, there will nothing in it in a few months time unless I decide to keep one account open. Maybe, we are just a little more shrewd up north!
Meanwhile, back in nice, posh, Richmond on Thames.
A “rich list” has revealed five of the council’s top earners took home more than £100,000 last year.
Gillian Norton, chief executive of Richmond Council, was paid £215,657 – a 1.4 per cent rise on what she earned in 2008-09.
Her salary was £173,507 and she got £41,381 towards her pension.
Four department directors and the head of human resources were also paid more than £100,000.
Mark Maidment, director of finance and corporate services, was the second highest earner last year, taking home £153,374.
According to a councillor, they need pay the right salaries to ensure the right people are in place to lead and implement the changes (£33 million in cuts). They could cut a few high paid executives. I suppose the well heeled of Richmond with their savings and debts can afford to pay high council tax though; it makes you wonder why they voted for cuts?
it seems over 2,000 council staff around the country are paid in excess of £100,000 a year (The Taxpayer Alliance). That is over £200,000,000 in total; not even enough to build a new hospital these days. The price of a couple of Euro-fighters.
That’s alright then…
The total cost of the Eurofighters to the UK was said to be £37,000,000,000 by the National Audit Office; it makes Richmond sound positively poor.
I have a hospital appointment in a couple of weeks; I’ll try to take a photograph of the new super-hospital. It cost around £370,000,000, cheap really, you could build 100 of them for the same price we are paying for the Eurofighter. Thank God it’s a European joint project, imagine if we had to fund it all by ourselves without help from our European ‘partners’. We would have to sell Newcastle to the Chinese or something!
Anyway, are the people of Richmond any happier trying to max out their credit cards and stashing the cash in their Halifax accounts? They seem insecure to me. Please comment with your views on anything or everything in this blog. I had to research all these numbers the least you can do is appreciate it!
You may like to read some of last weeks blogs. What would you do? If you were running the country was a popular blog. My Neodigital Art blog also popular on Wednesday and I followed that up with Wealthy Brits – want to move abroad, on Friday. I liked that one! There are lots more on the Home Page. You can also share this blog on social media by clicking the share button or follow me on Twitter even!
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