Tuesday, June 30, 2009

[small business] poisonous atmosphere inimical to it

You've all seen it:

Charles Clarke and Jacqui Smith, two former home secretaries, had said they expected to reach a “tipping point” of 80 per cent of British people using ID cards by 2018, at which point their use would have been made compulsory by law. However, when asked yesterday whether that was still the case, Mr Johnson stated a categoric “no”.

Yeah, yeah, more of the same. Yada, yada. We've all commented on this government, on its wastage, on its ludicrous pies in the sky, while we lose our jobs or can't find one we would have walked into a couple of years back - the sheer ignominy of going for positions one used to offer oneself a few years back.

What Smirky Brown and Peacock Cameron, [strutting about making very witty comments about Brown], have no concept of, in their very clubby atmosphere, is that the chances of anyone setting up a small business in the UK are zilch. Nada.

This is exacerbated by the crippling tax code, the prohibitive council rentals, the total power they have to determine what your business must be and how it must be run and the total lack of room to move. - the contentment to grind a business down until it's bust and then wait hopefully for the next one to do the same to.

'Oh dear,' the sharks shake their heads at each other. 'No one's tried to start a business in the last few months.'

'Wonder why that is?' says Shark 2.

'Must be the worldwide economic climate,' nods Shark 3.

There is no 'we'll get behind you and cushion your first year', no concessions, no incentives, no schemes in place which are not undercut by taking from you in another area, no effing leadership from the top! Just the dead hand of socialism.

You see a boarded up shop front and think, 'I could make a go of selling XXXX here.' Then you learn they want £5000 up front, plus this, plus that, before you've even started. I know. I've checked it out in the area.

From the banks to the councils, when you walk through those doors, it's all about how much money they can make out of you, to infinitesimally offset their own losses due to their profligate and criminal incompetence. Anyone at all stupid enough to try to float a company - the sharks see him coming. All the forms come out to be signed - a percentage for this, a percentage for that ......

The small business climate is poisonous, lethal, prohibitive. A company I know the head of went to the wall on Friday and it really came home to me. This is a company where money was coming in and quite reasonable money. The money going out was crippling. A change of EU regulations meant that new systems he'd installed were now 'illegal' and had to be replaced at an all up cost of £13000, including having to divert staff to this completely meaningless drivel.

They made one too many demands on him and he folded. Unbe-effing-lievable!

Doesn't this country want any small business at all?

Sorry.

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