Filed under: Small business
While the world awaits the details of Brown’s ‘big tent’ Cabinet, I’d like to comment about the appointments made so far to one area that interests me; Brown’s Business Council for Britain. This Council is dominated by the big beasts of business such as Sir Alan Sugar, private equity boss Damon Buffini, Stuart Rose the boss of M&S, the CEO of the Government’s favourite supermarket, Tesco’s Sir Terry Leahy, and Dr Jean-Pierre Garnier, head of pharmaceutical giant Glaxo SmithKline. This big name line up reminds me of Blair’s obsession of being surrounded by big and influential names, whilst grabbing a few headlines along the way. The real travesty of Brown’s Business Council is that Brown has failed to include or engage the real growth drivers of our economy – the thousands of small and medium-sized business across the UK. Having come from a small business family myself, the government’s obsession with big business has been depressing – more so in light of the regulatory burdens that have been placed upon smaller business in the last decade. So here we go again. Yet another Labour government ignoring the energy and talent of Britain’s small business sector, just to favour the high-flying glamorous world of big business. So no change there then Gordon.
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Well said. That is exactly right and what has been blighting Britain for these last 10 years at least.
It seems these politicians get carried away with the glamour of big business, while ignoring that big business often has the intent to stifle and destroy little businesses.
We see it with the supermarkets and local shops (everytime a large supermarket opens in a town 126 local jobs disappears as local shops give jobs to local farmers, forists, etc etc)
We see it with the big pharmaceuticals trying to destroy alternative medicine, when as Pricne Charles rightly says, alternatives can greatly improve the quality of people’s lives and heal them much more quickly and with better long term improvements than many chemicals treatments ever can. Eample there is talk in the press today about endometriosis where the lining of the womb wall attaches itself to other organs and cause great pain. This, they say is incurable and I have recently met one girl who suffered terribly for 10 years, with constant pain killers and two operations. I was diagnosed with this by a doctor and I treated it myself with essential oils and I got rid of it in 6 weeks and it never came back. So which treatment is better?
My sister was crippled and could hardly walk. The doctors wanted to operate which would have resulted in lifetime disability. Instead she went to a Shiastsu specialist who told her that she had almost no circulation in her lower body. She healed my sister. I could tell you so many stories like this. So while the NHS drug bill is massive and people are often terminally sick, there are treatments out there which are being ignored.
Another instance is how big business do not even support critical disciplines such as IT by not giving graduates and trainees jobs. As a result of big business outsourcing their technical work to India, IT graduates have droped by 50% as kids worry they can’t get jobs.
Having worked in technology for 20 years and with Indian offshore companies, I can tell you the Indian offshhore companies are massively hiring Indian graduates and so in effect we are training their graduates instead of ours. And the so if there is a war where are we going to get our technical expertise from? Do we not want to create and support technical innovation here?
Comment by Mel July 3, 2007 @ 1:30 pmHear hear. Labour have been seduced by the corporates and City institutions, and Gordon is their pimp.
In my field, renewable energy, the energy majors did almost nothing for the early development. Independents like us spent decades making it work. We only asked for a fair price for our carbon, and to let us get on with it.
Within a short period of green issues getting trendy and the corporates seeing some money in it, they have got Gordon wrapped round their little finger and a host of different support mechanisms that are entirely partial and designed to help the big boys build the uneconomic schemes that they have persuaded Gordon is the only way to deliver the Government’s targets, as though targets are any more rational in this field than most others.
Under the government’s proposals, carbon saved by putting windmills offshore will be worth more than carbon saved by putting windmills onshore, carbon saved by putting energy crops into coal-fired power stations will be worth more than carbon saved by putting forestry by-products into coal-fired power stations, and so on. And that’s just for electricity. They have priced carbon from transport differentially from carbon from electricity-generation, differentially from carbon from heat-production, which in some cases (domestic heat) is actually penalised relative to fossil fuels, which have no carbon price attached and receive a VAT reduction. And this is all because the corporates have told him that “this technology is going to be big”, “that technology won’t deliver”, and so on. He thinks it’s independent advice, but the solutions they have advised him to favour are the ones that they can dominate. It’s completely crooked.
Then there are the additional regulations (e.g. PPC) and increases in costs (e.g. business rates) that drive consolidation as the best way to spread the burden. And grant mechanisms – have a look at the Low Carbon Buildings Programme Phase 2 scheme to see something that is consciously designed to create an oligopoly (mind you, that pissed off several corporates as well as small businesses).
The challenge for the Conservative party is to look like they aren’t more of the same. Some of your representatives (e.g. John Redwood) are credible in this regard. But there is a strong tendency to suck up to the City, and plenty of non-exec Directorships in corporates on your side of the House.
The answer isn’t to bring in small businessmen to balance the corporates in advisory positions. They won’t. The big guys have so many resources to put into policy issues, small guys, if they get to the table, are always struggling to keep up. And it is a myth that there is a commonality of view amongst small businesses. A couple of small businessmen have managed to get on to the Government’s existing advisory teams, such as the Renewables Advisory Board, but they represent a particular opinion and not the commonality of view of businesses like theirs. Remember everyone has an interest, and it is a very uncommon businessman who does not see policy issues through the prism of that interest.
What the Conservatives need to do is not bother with this sort of advisory board at all, and instead approach policy from principle – no favours, maintain proper competition (e.g. no mergers above 20% of the market), don’t use mechanisms where government picks “winners”, internalise externalities with broad-brush mechanisms, minimise regulation (what happened to caveat emptor?), and, as all this should require much less government, keep taxes (particularly on employment) low.
Comment by bgp July 4, 2007 @ 10:40 am