LABOUR took to streets around Gloucestershire handing out millionaire’s shortbread to mark Fat Cat Day.

Fat Cat Day falls on the third working day of the New Year, by which time the chief executive of a FTSE 100 company – with an average salary of £4.72 million – will have earned more than the average British worker will in the whole year.

Members of Stroud constituency Labour party travelled to Stroud, Stonehouse, Kings Stanley and Dursley, handing out leaflets and millionaire’s shortbread to open a discourse on social division.

“This is not the politics of envy but is pointing out the growing division in society between the very rich who are growing richer and the rest of us,” said Stroud Labour chairman Dick Greenslade.

“£4.72 million is more than many of us will be paid in a lifetime. Company boss Martin Sorrell saw his pay increase in June last year from £17.5 million to £29.8 million last year while public sector pay rises were a mere 1 per cent - so a nurse would have seen an increase of around £250.”

Figures for Fat Cat Day are based on the average salary in 2012 of £26,500 and in 2014 of £27,200.