It seems that the pre-budget report has failed to impress. You only need to scan through the responses of business media to see that opinion is certainly not weighted in Darling's favour.
A common thread is that Darling isn't thinking big enough and is instead trying to palm us off with lots of little and therefore ineffectual measures. As Matthew Gwyther from Management Today states: "For an event that had the potential to be one of the more seismic economic policy announcements of the 21st Century, it was about as much fun as doing your tax return. And rather less rewarding. Where was the stirring rhetoric, the grand gesture, the bold decision making?"
This disappointment is echoed by Marc Barber of smallbusiness.co.uk, who expresses concern that the 50% tax on bankers' bonuses is more of a gesture to keep the tax payer at bay, rather than a move that will have any great impact. He says: "It seems this decision was designed to assuage voters’ anger at the fat cats clawing at our money, although it is more useful as a deterrent to the bonus culture than a serious effort to offset our debt."
There is also much criticism of the 0.5% increase in National Insurance, seen to be yet another slap in the face for the self-employed and smaller businesses. And of course speculation is rife that delaying cuts on public spending is a pre-election tactic, that as one blogger accuses: "...leaves this for the next government to deal with."
While I'm tempted to agree with many of these sentiments: yes, taxing bankers' bonuses doesn't address the root cause of the financial crisis; no, increasing VAT and National Insurance is unlikely to help small businesses, I wouldn't want to go all out and jump on the 'bash the budget' bandwagon.
As Marc Barber concedes, Darling has kept to his promises and included measures to help small businesses, including the deferral of the 1p corporation tax rise and the ‘time to pay’ scheme. The measures are there, it would just take nothing short of a miracle to satisy all the talking heads in the middle of a recession. Surely, even if Darling gave his own home to drive money back into the economy, it wouldn't be seen as enough. Coupled with an imminent election, it's no wonder that the cynics are out in force.
This is not to say the report is beyond criticism, far from it. As I've already stated, more could have been done to protect businesses from increases in tax and the banking crisis does seem to be on an endless loop that sickeningly repeats itself. However, from a business perspective, if finances are so tight as to be toppled by a relatively small tax increase, what does this say about your ability to safeguard profit and cash flow? Any business leader worth his or her salt should know that a business will always be subject to external factors, whether that's a slowdown in the market or a tax increase.
Not so long ago, the papers were falling over themselves to proclaim Great Britain a nanny state. But when the chips are down we're all quite happy to demand more hand-outs and berate the government for not doing more for us. You can't have it both ways. The reality is, if you refuse to take the necessary precautions when times are good and/or refuse to adapt to changes in pressure, then maybe you shouldn't be trading full stop.
It's tough love. But someone's got to say it.
Thursday, 10 December 2009
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
A little bit technical
Let's face it, nowadays you're just not allowed to be untechnical. Time was, I could quite easily get out of anything remotely complex by flogging the old "I'm just not technical." line. Website management: "Why would I know? I'm not technical."; setting the video: "You'll have to do it, it's too technical for me."; or even turning on the oven "Goodness these buttons are all a bit too technical." But if I tried that these days I'd be laughed out of the kitchen, the living room, my job! In short: I wouldn't survive.
To give you a working example of how technology has infiltrated my life: in the last half an hour I have created an Open ID and discovered how to 'whitelist' email addresses. I've even enabled the macros in a document (I hear the techies amongst you shudder with disbelief). Hardly complex or revolutionary, but for a natural technophobe like me, these sorts of achievements feel like climbing mountains. Albeit small ones.
The problem is that with all these changes in technology, we just can't afford to ignore all the tools and tricks that allow us to get by on a daily basis. So integral to our lives has technology become, that saying you aren't technical is akin to saying you can't write in your mother tongue. Of course there are different levels of aptitude: in the same way that some of us can write in full sentences but can't spell, whereas others of us are journalists, copywriters and novelists, technical skills range from base to brilliant. The point is that we should all have them to some degree, or we'll soon start to struggle.
It can of course go too far one way and I appeal directly to all those companies that knowingly or not have penalised the very elderly by making it mandatory to access services online, thereby making some services inaccessible to those that desperately need them. Unforgiveable, even in this day and age.
Having said that, for the rest of us, with regular access to PCs, mobiles, blackberries, iphones and the like, we simply need to accept that we can't ignore technical advances anymore. Technology is an integral part of our language and we need to embrace it.
What this really means is accepting the pace of change. Accepting that knowledge isn't fixed and confined to reference books. Knowing that despite what we knew last year, we always need to build on it, expand it, challenge it and keep apace with a mutable technical economy.
This is often to our advantage of course. New technology means new ways to reach people, faster ways to access what we want and most importantly, the opportunity for expansion, innovation and growth. For anyone that's stood scratching their heads over the 'opportunities' section of a SWOT analysis, this is where technology gives you all manner of options. Staying ahead of the technical game makes you leading edge and often inspirational.
But remember: it's not for long. Look up McKinsey's 3 horizons of growth and you'll understand that improvement is a constant process. I'd even go so far as to say, much as I'm loathe to quote anything I've read in the gym: 'success is a journey, not a destination.'
And finally, to the person who recently decried my efforts to understand social media: It's most definitely not about sex, I promise.
To give you a working example of how technology has infiltrated my life: in the last half an hour I have created an Open ID and discovered how to 'whitelist' email addresses. I've even enabled the macros in a document (I hear the techies amongst you shudder with disbelief). Hardly complex or revolutionary, but for a natural technophobe like me, these sorts of achievements feel like climbing mountains. Albeit small ones.
The problem is that with all these changes in technology, we just can't afford to ignore all the tools and tricks that allow us to get by on a daily basis. So integral to our lives has technology become, that saying you aren't technical is akin to saying you can't write in your mother tongue. Of course there are different levels of aptitude: in the same way that some of us can write in full sentences but can't spell, whereas others of us are journalists, copywriters and novelists, technical skills range from base to brilliant. The point is that we should all have them to some degree, or we'll soon start to struggle.
It can of course go too far one way and I appeal directly to all those companies that knowingly or not have penalised the very elderly by making it mandatory to access services online, thereby making some services inaccessible to those that desperately need them. Unforgiveable, even in this day and age.
Having said that, for the rest of us, with regular access to PCs, mobiles, blackberries, iphones and the like, we simply need to accept that we can't ignore technical advances anymore. Technology is an integral part of our language and we need to embrace it.
What this really means is accepting the pace of change. Accepting that knowledge isn't fixed and confined to reference books. Knowing that despite what we knew last year, we always need to build on it, expand it, challenge it and keep apace with a mutable technical economy.
This is often to our advantage of course. New technology means new ways to reach people, faster ways to access what we want and most importantly, the opportunity for expansion, innovation and growth. For anyone that's stood scratching their heads over the 'opportunities' section of a SWOT analysis, this is where technology gives you all manner of options. Staying ahead of the technical game makes you leading edge and often inspirational.
But remember: it's not for long. Look up McKinsey's 3 horizons of growth and you'll understand that improvement is a constant process. I'd even go so far as to say, much as I'm loathe to quote anything I've read in the gym: 'success is a journey, not a destination.'
And finally, to the person who recently decried my efforts to understand social media: It's most definitely not about sex, I promise.
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