Debt crisis: Live - Telegraph The income gap between the highest and lowest is growing more quickly in Britain than other economies over the past three decades. Topping the inequalities off, there have been average pay rises for FTSE 100 executives at 43pc, with "top" directors at 49pc, all of whom can use their status to avoid tax. It is time for these inequalities to stop. This May Day, strike with your union if you have one. Call in sick, take a holiday, don't show up. Join actions and marches in your city, bring your community together and talk about the issues in your area, make some noise. Remember, you are not alone. Together we can make a change. 07.45 The May Day celebrations in Paris will have added significance today as they fall just days ahead of key elections. Presidential candidates Nicolas Sarkozy, Francois Hollande and Marine Le Pen are all planning rallies in the capital. Police are planning for the worst and will station hundreds of riot officers on the streets, fearing that election tension could escalate into violence. 07.40 The pound shot up against the euro yesterday, its rise fuelled by eurozone concerns. It shows no sign of letting off this morning and is still hovering around €1.224 this morning. 07.34 Greece is heading for elections on Sunday that threaten to draw a halt to the country's savage austerity programme - demanded of it by the "troika" (the EC, ECB and IMF), and designed to reduce the country's crippling debt. The public is rejecting the two main parties that support the cuts and opting increasingly for anti-EU groups. The Golden Dawn party has been handing out food parcels and distributing leaflets calling for the eviction of immigrants from Greece. In fact, Greece itself could face eviction - from the eurozone - if it fails to follow through with cost-cutting measures. In his interview with the Guardian this morning Evangelos Venizelos says: We mustn't allow Greek society to become fascist and nor can parliament host followers of neo-nazism. It's absurd and a pity that people who are despairing and bitter, who are unemployed and have lost their businesses, should be persuaded by such policies. Giorgos Germanis, a Golden Dawn candidate, speaks next to a banner with the twisting Maeander, an ancient Greek motif that the party has adopted. 07.29 Evangelos Venizelos has said that while Greece wishes to remain in the euro - a poll recently showed 75pc public support - there are many other parties that could push it out against its will. Speaking to the Guardian he said: There are certain misconceptions that worry me: for instance, the misconception that whatever happens we are not going to leave the euro. Europe and the eurozone have no reason, rationally, to push Greece out of the euro. But this is a system in which many parties, many countries, many governments, many electorates participate and we could have events which, rationally, are not controllable. I never thought I would see this happen. My generation grew up thinking that every year things would be better. And now there have been several years where things have got worse and the distance between [us] and other European countries is growing ... It's been a very difficult experience. The responsibility and the anguish have been huge. 07.24 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, our International Business Editor, has been spectacularly good at picking out the weak areas of the eurozone in the last few years. But now he's spotted a positive sign. The M1 money supply in the eurozone has picked up, providing a glimmer of hope, he says: Mario Draghi's liquidity blitz is beginning to feed through into the EMU money supply. At last. This is the best news in months for Europe. As you can see from the charts below (from the ECB's new data), real M1 deposits are rising briskly again in the core. They are rising out of the depths of Hell for Europe's Arc of Depression. That is to say, the rate of collapse has slowed on a six-month basis from minus 5.6pc in February to minus 3.7pc in March. Be thankful for small mercies. The 'narrow money' M1 figures have a lead time of about six months, so were are talking about a better autumn. Possibly. Since we are in totally uncharted waters, nobody really knows what is going to happen. This bear is not yet for turning, but I have great respect for monetarists. They have had a good run over the last five years. 07.14 The Telegraph's Jeremy Warner believes that even UK Chancellor George Osborne would shy away from the austerity measures being attempted in the eurozone: Putting flesh on the bones of this push-me-pull-you fusion of solutions, the European Commission proposes that some part of the European bailout funds be applied to a €200bn "Marshall Plan" of infrastructure spending. This might be thought a rather better use of the money than financing insolvent governments, but unfortunately the chances of it being agreed any time soon are about zero. It's tough enough persuading the surplus nations to sanction use of the bailout funds for direct recapitalisation of eurozone banks; getting them to spend it instead on Spanish railways and windfarms would be next to impossible. As it is, austerity has succeeded only in killing off growth, undermining support for structural reform and causing fiscal consolidation to stall. And so the crisis beats on, with no sign of lasting resolution. Halfway through? With electoral insurrection threatening the political consensus around deficit reduction, it may be only just beginning. Graffiti on a Madrid wall prior to recent anti-austerity demonstrations 07.02 The Spanish Finance Minister Luis de Guindos also revealed that the government is planning to create a "bad bank," which would separate toxic assets from the financial system. Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker, right, jokes with Spanish economy minister Luis de Guindos. 06.45 Spain fell back into recession yesterday. The crisis-ridden economy shrank by 0.3pc between January and March, plunging it into a double-dip recession following a similar fall in gross domestic product in the fourth quarter of 2011. Quarterly (red blocks) and annual growth in Spain (Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadística). The Telegraph's Angela Monaghan wrote: Germany continued to heap pressure on Spain. Speaking alongside his Spanish counterpart in Santiago de Compostela, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble said there should be no easing of austerity in Spain... The Spanish public have staged mass protests in the face of sweeping austerity and rising unemployment. The Government has announced €40bn of budget cuts for this year as it attempts to cut its deficit to 5.3pc of GDP from 8.5pc of GDP in 2011. The country's unemployment rate has soared to 24.4pc. 06.31 First, let's take a quick look at today's front pages. The Daily Telegraph has gone with a story on proposed changes to teachers' pay that would be based on performance in the classroom, while the Financial Times runs a piece on calls for more border staff. 06.30 Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage of the European debt crisis. Debt crisis live: archive