West End News: Servants’ wages still a class apart

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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 10 April 2008

Servants’ wages still a class apart

• IN his review of Bloomsbury Below Stairs: Grace Higgens at Charleston 1920-1970 (Bloomsbury maid to measure, April 28) Simon Wroe refers to “traces of the old class disparity (the Bloomsbury set see nothing wrong with paying their skivvies £40 a year while their income is 100 times that).”
“Class disparity” is worse now: the wealthiest today – bankers and CEOs rather than artists and writers – are even richer by comparison and can easily earn 200-300 times what their servants earn.
And to add insult to injury they pay less income tax on it.
Unlike those on poverty wages today, at least Grace Higgens will not have paid income tax on her £40pa.
Martin Kennedy
Brewer Street, W1

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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