Forum Post: It's the rich who are the scroungers & it's time to make them pay & end the madness of austerity

"The Rich List published by Rupert Murdoch's union-busting Sunday Times was always a dubious annual celebration of wealth. In the last few years it has increasingly been greeted by popular disgust.

Nothing more graphically captures the grotesque reality of a tiny elite enriching itself while everyone else faces cuts, pay freezes and price rises.

This year's list blows apart any pretence of 'we're all in it together' in Tory Britain. These are the people whose interests are dutifully served by the 'arrogant posh boys' in Cameron's cabinet of millionaires.

David Cameron (Eton, Oxford), George Osborne (St Paul's, Oxford) and Boris Johnson (Eton, Oxford) represent the 1% - or more accurately 0.01% - whose monumental scrounging is documented here. They prospered in Blair's Britain of deregulation and neoliberalism. Now they continue to rake in extraordinary wealth, as the Tories cut welfare and public services to the bone.

The week of headlines about double dip recession and the return of food banks for the hungry ends with the news that bankers, oligarchs and speculators are prospering more than ever before. The total estimated wealth of Britain's richest 1000 people is now a record £414 billion. This is a 4.7% increase in just a year."

Read more: http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/opinion/15742-rich-list-p414-billion-for-top-1000