DINNER PARTY INTEL...

The topics you have to be able to discuss this week

1. Fat Cat Friday

It took the CEOS of blue-chip UK companies until 1pm on Friday January 4 — just 29 hours of work for 2019 — to earn the average worker’s annual salary of £29,574. “Fat Cat Friday” highlights the vast discrepancy between executive and worker wages. According to the High Pay Centre and the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development, which collated the figures, UK executives earn 133 times more than the average worker; in 1998 that figure was 47. They estimate that FTSE 100 CEOS earned as much as £1,020 an hour in 2018.

2. Bad week for Bolsonaro

He’s only a week into the job, but Brazil’s farright president, Jair Bolsonaro, is already facing criticism. His administration has been called amateurish after Bolsonaro announced a tax rise and proposed lowering the minimum retirement age, only to be contradicted by his own chief of staff later the same day. He’s also thought to be courting conflict within his own cabinet — seven of 22 ministers are former military officers — by welcoming the option of a US military base on Brazilian soil. “You get the idea that the government has been taken over by people who don’t have an idea what are Brazil’s most serious problems,” political analyst Maria Herminia Tavares de Almeida told news outlet AFP.

3. Sleeping on the job

Japan is on a mission to counter an epidemic of sleeplessness that is thought to cost the economy as much as $138bn a year.

The health ministry recommends that workers take a 30-minute nap in the afternoon, and a number of companies have introduced measures to ensure a well-rested workforce, including setting up special “sleeping rooms” and offering financial incentives or rewards for adequate rest.

The Guardian reports that adults in

Japan sleep six hours and 35 minutes a night — 45 minutes less than the international average — and 92.6% believe they don’t get sufficient rest.