Don't be daft, he doesn't disclose numbers or personal information. To say someone is generous and has a sense of social responsibility in no way breaches any professional code whatsoever.

He's also quite open about his charitable trusts and is interviewed in the ST along with his daughter, its not the worlds best kept secret.

Your post seems to suggest that it is not possible for 'poor' people to ever go on and become highly successful and wealthy but there are plenty of ways to fund a business venture rather than simply going cap in hand to your bank.

It sounds harsh but it is this type of attitude that pretty much rules people like you out of ever joining the rich list by 'self made' means. No drive to succeed.

My post suggests that after paying rent/mortgage, bills and pension out of an average wage there is nothing left to fund a successful business venture, and what makes you think "people like me" want to be rich? I want enough to pay the bills and have a little bit of a life including leisure time like rugby which I have. I don't have a burning desire to join the rich list thank you. Money isn't everything to have a drive to succeed you know which is typical tory desire. My drive to succeeding is having enough money to pay the mortgage at the end of the month, something which Tories just don't understand as getting rich is everything to them.

Which ones where these? The hinduja brothers who inherited a business set up by their father years before they were born?
Son of state prosecutor and friend of Valdimir Putin Alisher Usmanov?
Steel magnate who is conveniently the son of a steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal?
Pharmaceutical heir Ernesto Bertarelli?
Tetra-Pak heir Kristen Rausing?
Selfridges heir Hilary Weston?
A Brewing Heiress like Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken,
Lifeline of the Ayotollah John Fredriksen?
The Duke of Westminster?
Heirs of the Weston fortune?
Earl Cadogan?

There's most of your top 15 there, I too could be 'self made' like them of only I had a rich father, was part of Royalty, or made deals with people as awful as the Ayotollah or Putin. I'll be honest though, if to be a success like Roman Abramovich I have to do what he did, I don't want to be a success

No idea what 'dem nasty toreehs' have to do with the list but your attempts to randomly bring them into the discussion are admirable.

Alan Sugar / Duncan Bannatyne - will be others but I haven't looked at the list.

Like I said there is nothing to stop you trying to join the list. Even those who inherited wealth from others, that wealth was created somewhere at some point.

I thought you couldn't work, so how you're "earning" to pay the mortgage is a little confusing.

I'm confused to how you put ''earning'' in apostrophes yet never mentioned in HWS post?

sorry the phrase "average wage" is in there, which implies earning.

anyway, this is just going to go the same way as usual, so it's really not worth it. Some people want life as a gift, some people earn it, always has and always will be.

You know full well I have a husband, don't be so pendantic.

There are loads from Jamie Oliver, Alex Chesterman and Simon Cowell to "unknowns" like Peter Cashmore and the Housers.

Some got lucky, others had mentors some did it by sheer hard work, quite a lot started with nowt. Not everyone is cut out to risk everything but the opportunities are there is you want to grab them. But importantly there are chances for people to make a smaller amount and live well, as others have said some want it all right away without putting in the effort.



I took that to be an example rather than a statement of her situation.

Worth saying again but any business person who thinks they are some sort of genius because they have aquired some wealth and have a successful business is only kidding themselves and I include all of the panel of Dragons Den and Alan Sugar in that statement (although they would probably admit as much themselves if only in private).

There is no secret at all to forming a business with very little capital and after that its just your own hard work and 95% luck - you will probably be in the vast majority of start up businesses who fail after 12 months and then its down to you and your own personal situation, can you busk it for six months while starting again, are you prepared to sleep in a squat above the shop that you were supposed to have been evicted from like Richard Branson had to, or do you have a family and a mortgage that needs you to scrap the dream and go work for someone else with immediate effect.

Even if you "make it" most businesses trade on loans, good will and pure good luck, hit a patch of bad luck and most will fail, watch your turnover drop over six months and expect your bank manager to start pestering you, no-one wants to know a business owner when they've made a bad decision or hit a run of bad luck and there is no "angel" who will knock on your door to save you like some of the TV programmes will have you believe.

Hard work, and a huge smattering of luck and you may make a living at it, throw in some incredible luck and you may make the Sunday Times list.

I was not being pedantic, you are being disingenuous.