Let them breathe !!!!!!!
1 March 2013
It has been a mystery why, with GDP falling, unemployment has also fallen.
It has been a mystery why, with GDP falling, unemployment has also fallen.
The rise in employment since 2010 is a success story for the coalition. Some put it down to an increase in part-time work and that is true, except that there has not really been much of a change in the average hours worked despite less overtime, 32 hours p.w. in 2008 and 31.9 now (source: ONS - via The Spectator).
Below: A recent Coffee House graph showing the rise in employment...
I have also identified in my blog previously how the data used to compile the GDP figures is distorted by public sector spending.
Both of these things are factors but there is one other, a very important one for the future of the UK economy.
A massive rise in business start-ups.
Over 970,000 new company registrations in 2 years. There has been a 10% increase in the number of businesses in the UK since the start of the crisis, up from 3.8m to 4.2m (source ONS - via The Spectator) Most of these businesses will be operating at below the VAT threshold and other measurement thresholds, their economic activity simply will not feature in the GDP figures as a result.
Some of these businesses will fail. Some will carry on and will struggle. Some will do well and prosper. Others will become tomorrows FTSE companies and even, one day, multi-national giants...
It is these businesses and other small businesses that have the greatest potential for growth and the greatest potential to increase employment opportunities re-building our economy.
They need to be given the best possible chance to breathe, to survive and to prosper.
These are the businesses that would most be helped by supply-side reforms and tax cuts. These businesses are our future.
This is where Osborne must be bold and act. I have said it before and I say it again, he must tell the LibDems to take a running jump if they keep blocking these essential reforms.
- LOL Tom - you really do tie yourself up in contradictory knots trying pick holes.
Small businesses, yes, absolutely and this post is all about them and helping them to prosper - hokum you say, then you go on to praise 'Bank of Dave' and small.... Wake up....
Your problem always is that you are trying to attack the wrong target while letting the real culprits off the hook - BIG GOVERNMENT, that is the enemy, that's is what has caused our problems. The countries less affected by the international malaise are those that have less government, lower taxes, lower spending, lower debt - little or no deficit!!
You attack one of our largest industries that employs a lot of people and makes £billions for the UK economy, an industry that is a world leader - financial services. There are good and bad in it as in every industry, poor regulation and appalling monetary policy by government left it a scapegoat for the ignorant and politically motivated to attack.
I am no friend of the banks but lets make sure we attack them for the things they actually did wrong not what you and other left wing activists like to pretend they did. - I hit what I aim for Barry.
"...supply-side reforms and tax cuts..." This is your hokum Barry.
I attack an industry fuelled upon greed and one that lied, cheated and downright defrauded large numbers of people and entire businesses and felt neither qualm nor pain.
It is all too easy to say, " one of our largest industries that employs a lot of people and makes £billions for the UK economy,". The same could have been said about coal-mining. The loss of that industry had more than a little of warped-ideology about it too.
I very much doubt that having banking more community based would employ fewer 'honest-to-goodness' wealth creators. - Tom, you, once again someone who has never employed people, put his home on the line or built a business trying to claim that measures that would help small businesses is 'hokum'. And yet you claimed to be in favour of 'small' - come off it.
I used to have a dog and if I did not control it properly it would run up to people jump up and slobber all over them. I had to keep the dog under control releasing it only when appropriate, I was responsible and you could not blame the dog for behaving like a dog. But your attitude is to blame the dog, ignore the man who not only let it off the lead but also actively encouraged it in bad behaviour.
I have certainly never denied that the banks in particular have done some pretty bad things, no-one is more aware of that than me. You ignore those responsible for destroying a system of regulation that held the worse of their instincts in check and the man who went to the Mansion House telling the banks to go out and take risks. You also ignore the man who determined the Bank of England's inflation brief that was directly responsible for creating a debt bubble. The same man who sent public spending sky high, increasing the deficit in periods of growth with the idiotic claim he had 'banned boom and bust'....
So start blaming the right person, start supporting the needs of small businesses. You demonstrate do not have the slightest idea about wealth creation but are stuffed full of left wing theory. - Your dog was not behaving like a dog. How is it in the nature of a dog to run up to strangers and slobber all over them? Oh no. This was a trained response. You possibly thought that this was OK indoors and left the dog to know the difference between indoors and out.
All the while you have been pressing to torture the less well off, a sleight of hand to turn attention away from your Party's tax breaks for wealthy loafers.
I noticed in the Telegraph article we read elsewhere that what has helped growth in Germany is spending within the home market, where is such spending to come from in the UK?
You are all for cutting tax rates for those highly remunerated few, hardly the stuff to encourage SMEs.
What have DC & GO been saying at the Mansion House feasts?
And what effect have there words had in freeing-up capital for SMEs?
What of PWC and their ilk;advising successive Governments, writing reports and making recommendations to Governments, auditing banks and large multi-nationals and along with S&P, Moody and the rest granting the most dodgy ill-deserved AAA-ratings. Did GB force this upon them all?
What small businesses need more than anything else are customers. - You have no idea at all what small businesses need Tom. I do try to tell you but you are blinded by your own rhetoric and bigotry.
"These are the businesses that would most be helped by supply-side reforms and tax cuts. These businesses are our future."
This though, is hokum*.
By far the best model to follow is that of The Bank of Dave, community banking. As widely practiced in the more prosperous parts of the world.
The push to continue placing trust in the mega-finance sector suits only those unscathed by the recent damage such businesses have wrought upon us. Small IS beautiful.
*
"ho·kum (h k m) n. 1. Something apparently impressive or legitimate but actually untrue or insincere;
nonsense. 2. A stock technique for eliciting a desired response ..."
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hokum