RED STAR’S SUPERB SOURCES

By Carl No Marks

CERTAIN Churnos in Crumbria continue to scare readers away by filling their pages with guff that wouldn’t be out of place on a student union rag.

Squirreled away in this week’s Times & (Red) Star, Wokeington, was another “Social Justice Worrier” article, which had somehow managed to sneak past the paper’s highly impeccable checks and balances!

UK CEOs ALREADY EARNED AVERAGE WORKERS’ SALARY, snarled the headline to the article, which, incredibly, was jemmied onto the paper’s business pages.

“Bosses of the UK’s biggest FTSE 100 companies have already earned the average salary of a Cumbrian worker already,” the article huffed; a vague whiff of resentment smouldering from the page.

FTSE 100 bosses are paid around 113 times more than the average Cumbrian and have earned by January 6th, what it would take us mere mortals to earn in a year.

While the Chronic is no flag-waver for corporate excess, the article failed to explain why the newspaper had conflated the job and salary of an average Cumbrian with the pay and responsibilities of a CEO in charge of a FTSE 100 company?

Puzzling.

As per usual, the story originated from a Press Release. This time from the extremely left-wing think tank the High Pay Centre (HPC) based in London.

The Press Release we have seen made no reference whatsoever to Cumbria.

Has our scrupulous Scroogequest reporter put two and two together to make five and added Cumbria’s average salary to “localise” this social justice propaganda?

It looks like it!

The High Pay Centre’s anti-capitalist chief executive was also afforded space in the paper to froth on about the unfair “enrichment of a tiny elite”.

But there was no room in the article to mention that said chief executive has previously branded the super-rich “parasitic” and has written a book calling for their “abolition”.

Furthermore, the chief executive has given lofty economic lectures at Marxism events organised by the Socialist Workers’ Party.

Sounds like another impeccable source for the Times & (Red) Star!

And strangely, despite this crusading fair pay article, there was also no room to compare the “piss poor” salaries of Churnalists working for Newsquest Media Group Ltd, aka the finest newspaper company in the world!

These are considerably lower than the quoted Cumbrian average.

Indeed, Scroogequest is currently advertising a job at one of its “newspapers” in Andover. (It should be named Bendover!)

For a three-day week “producing content” for FOUR different newspapers/websites, new starters will be paid £15,600.

The benefits don’t end there. No home-working is allowed and the office is in a shopping centre.

You’ll also need to run your own car with Scroogequest having dispensed with costly office cars a long time ago to keep its Churnalists where it wants ’em – at their desks.

(Churnalists applying for this £13.65-an-hour role can hike their wages with a quarterly “Page View Bonus” – but only if they exceed their ~~clickbait~~ “productivity targets”.

What better incentive would quality local journalism need!

Nor was there any room in the article to reference another of Britain’s highly remunerated CEOs.

Scroogequest’s own chief executive, Henry Faure-Walker!

Previously, he’s been named 6th in the UK’s Top 10 highest-paid executives in print/online news.

His pittance before bonuses? £640,000.

Or, to apply the maths of the Times & (Red) Star, a cool 42 times the money of a part-time Scroogequest Churnalist in Bendover!