Liverpool

The UK is getting more enterprising – The North must catch up

Uk Enterprise

Britain is getting great at starting business again and rediscovering its entrepreneurial spirit. The latest statistics on start up’s show an all- time record for new company incorporations here – a massive 581,173, which is an increase of almost 10% on the previous year. That bastion of enterprise that is most often held up as the example to us all, the United States, suffered 70,000 more business closures than start- up’s in 2014. Government initiatives such as entrepreneurs’ relief and the Enterprise Investment Scheme, introduced by the last Labour government and continued by the coalition, have also helped small businesses grow. And get this – according to the Centre for Entrepreneurs one reason Britain has become such a hotbed for start-up’s is immigration. A survey it undertook last year showed that one in seven businesses here are run by migrants. A ‘hats off’ to StartUp Britain and the more recently launched GREAT campaigns. Both organisations are doing a damn fine job in promoting all that is good about starting your own business, and growing it!

But it’s still not enough, and in the North of England we are still failing to encourage and support enough people to have a go and setting up on their own.

There has been a massive push over the past five years to provide support to what are commonly known as ‘Gazelle’ type businesses – those companies that have been established for a time, and with the right mentoring and coaching can meet their ambitious growth potential.

This has been a reasonably successful approach, led by initiatives such as the Growth Accelerator, who partnered Downtown last week for the ‘Limitless’ conference that we hosted with 100 plus delegates in Liverpool.

However, just as I would argue that it is a mistake made too often to focus on big business, which make up a tiny percentage of the UK business community, I would equally express concern at the start up agenda being neglected.

The next round of European funding has just landed and negotiations are taking place as to what projects should be going forward and supported. I hope that the objective of creating a more entrepreneurial culture in the North is a big part of the new programmes that are agreed.

We need to start to see the establishment of tomorrow’s Gazelles today.

One job?

Jack Straw

Two more MPs were caught in a sting operation by Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches’ programme recently, with both allegedly selling their ‘black book’, influence and power to a bogus Chinese company.

That the two men involved, Malcolm Rifkind and Blackburn MP Jack Straw, have both been rather preachy when their peers have been revealed to be undertaking such unsavoury activities in the past makes it difficult to have much sympathy with either Right Honourable Gentleman. But the point that was highlighted to me during the half hour show was that our Members of Parliament are now, and have been for some time, significantly underpaid.

The £67,000 annual salary for what amounts to a job were you are in the public eye and under severe scrutiny for 24/7; base yourself in the not inexpensive city that we call London; be responsible for a small business as you employ staff; sacrifice your family life and weekends; and have to reapply for that job no matter how well you have performed every five years, is a scandal.

I get that in public life there is an acceptance that you don’t necessarily get the rewards that you would get in the private sector. Nevertheless, for local government officials to be paid more than the Prime Minister, as is currently the case, cannot be right.

Nobody has to sign up for the job of MP, of course, and so why should we be concerned?

Firstly, we are slowly but surely attracting two types of people to parliament. Those who are ‘professional politicians’, usually well -heeled and in a comfortable financial position; and those who think that, even with the job description I have outlined above, £67,000 is a decent wage. I predict that after the election in a few weeks’ time, this will get worse.

Secondly, if the MPs salary continues to be depressed as independent pay commission after independent pay commission is ignored, we open ourselves to the prospect of more UK politicians being open to ‘outside interests’, legitimate or otherwise.

The calibre of our MPs is getting worse. That will accelerate unless we begin to remunerate them fairly, and re-establish the respect that MPs once enjoyed.

Of course, that respect needs to be earned, and by and large Westminster can be proud of its record pre the expenses scandal reveal and its reaction and attempt to clean up its act since.

In principle I think Ed Miliband’s proposal that MPs have ‘one job’ in future is probably a good thing – but they should be paid the going rate that job too.

MP’s should be forced to do Work Experience

Work Experience

The more I listen to Westminster politicians talk about business, the more I realise how little they understand or appreciate the challenges entrepreneurs and business owner’s face. In particular, they are clueless about small and medium sized companies, basing much of what they say on business growth and business policy around the issues that impact on the Jaguar Land Rover’s and BAE’s of this world.

The Prime ministers call last week for private sector bosses to give their staff a pay increase because we had experienced seven months of growth following seven years of recession was actually beyond clueless, and he should hang his head in shame in what was clearly blatant electioneering speak.

This week Ed Miliband, no doubt trying to be helpful, suggested that training and apprenticeship budgets should be handed directly to employers. Again that is fine if you have an army of people around you, but for the vast majority of firms the red tape and bureaucracy that surrounds anything to do with ‘public money’ is an absolute nightmare. Far better to let registered providers and colleges manage these funds, and support businesses through the complex and complicated processes. As Downtown Liverpool chairman David Wade-Smith often says the most expensive ‘free’ money is public sector cash!

Part of the reason why our political leaders are failing to engage effectively with us is that an increasing number of them are professional politicians who have never worked outside of the fantasy land that is the Westminster bubble.

You only have to spend a day in the House of Commons to appreciate how easy it is for an MP to get caught up in stuff that, within that environment, seems to be the most important thing on the planet, whilst to the rest of us it is usually hot air and bluster.

Politics has been ‘professionalised’ and I see little chance of that dramatically changing anytime soon. We will therefore need to find a way of helping our MP’s get some real life experience.

I would suggest, as a starter for ten, six weeks work experience programmes that are compulsory for all MPs to participate in. They could help on the shop floor, attend board meetings and spend a day working alongside a business owner. The only other stipulation I would make is that any company they worked with are companies with a turnover of no higher than £10million.

The disconnect between our elected representatives and the community – business and otherwise – is getting wider, and it needs to be addressed.

Are Politicians Anti-Business?

Ed Miliband

The Sunday Times decided to devote half a dozen pages and an editorial lead last weekend to expose how business ‘unfriendly’ Ed Miliband and the Labour Party is. And, despite the mindless repetition among the thousands of words written to prove its point, there is no doubt that the narrative being used by the official opposition does not lend itself to one drawing the conclusion that the private sector has the full confidence and support of Labour’s leadership.

Indeed, though Shadow Business Minister Chuka Umunna has been at pains to point out that it is tax dodgers, unscrupulous bankers and poor employers that Labour has a problem with, the consistent and constant attack on ‘the private sector’ has led many to conclude that Ed actually is ‘red’ and he would lead a government determined to strangle enterprise and wealth creation.

But, just as there appeared to be an open goal for David Cameron to knock the ball into, and prove the Tory Party’s business – friendly credentials, the Prime Minister decided to shoot himself in the foot by telling bosses it was time they gave their employees a pay rise!

The problem with the rhetoric from both Labour and Conservative’s at the moment is the generality with which they speak – and the obsession with the negative.

For all the talk of ‘economic recovery’ it is a fact that many small businesses are still facing challenging times, and that far from being in a position to increase pay, they worry about being able to keep the staff they have.

The fragile recovery has not allowed business to increase their prices to customers, so where is the additional cash for wage hikes to come from?

The failure to distinguish between ‘big’ business and the vast majority of UK companies who are ‘SME’s’ is starting to grate with many business owners and entrepreneurs.

Have our political leaders thanked all those businessmen and women for fighting through tough times, keeping on staff and surviving by taking a pay cut themselves? Has the Prime Minister called on the treasury to give small bosses a break and be less aggressive when it comes to collecting VAT or corporation tax (no sweetener deals for the small or medium sized company I’m afraid), or indeed have Ministers been exploring how UK Plc can take the pressure off a business owner by actually meeting a promise they all make pre -election – and genuinely cut red tape and bureaucracy?

There is no doubt that unscrupulous employers, illegal tax dodgers and financiers on the fiddle should be held to account and punished. However, they are a very small minority of what makes up the business community of the UK, and it is time for politicians from all sides to start to acknowledge the hard work, honesty and contribution that the vast majority of business owners make to the well -being of the country.

The Footy

And so it came to pass that another bonanza football deal has been brokered, with a sum in the region of £5Billion being paid by a diverse range of media outlets for the TV rights to Premier League football. As I wrote last week here we will be witnessing a fixture programme that will stretch throughout the week, and I do believe this is the beginning of the end for the game.

Dopes like me who have an addiction to a football club, rather than the game itself, will probably continue to moan and groan, but like a chain smoker that has been threatening to pack in the fags for years, will find it almost impossible to ‘give up’ something that is no longer interested in the supporter. However, kids, the next generation of fans, will see football as a TV series, and they are likely start to choose to support teams randomly, depending on results. They certainly won’t be stupid enough to brave a cold, dark Wednesday night to watch Stoke battle out a mid- table fixture against West Ham!

If grass roots football was to benefit, or indeed prices for tickets were to be slashed, there may be something to celebrate. But the additional cash will simply go into the pockets of overpaid footballers, their agents and football ‘administrators’.

To those at the top of the game at the moment of course, this is an irrelevance. ‘Make hay while the sun shines’ should be the FA’s new motto, and one they could inherit from the banking community who had such an attitude during the financial boom – and look what happened to them!

Saturday at 3PM

Football 3pm

The next round of television rights for the product that is the Premier League is about to be negotiated, and various proposals are being presented by the media companies that will give the once ‘beautiful game’ even greater riches in exchange for even greater flexibility as to when games are played; and the notice period that has to be given in announcing televised fixtures.

Potentially this means that we will see ‘live’ games on TV from Friday through to Wednesday evening.

We have already witnessed the further dilution of our once feted FA Cup this season, with TV insisting on 3rd Round ties being played on a Tuesday night – meaning that the 4th Round draw had taken place before some of the previous round of games had been completed. Now, night time kick offs and even more bizarre kick off times look likely to be introduced as FA Premier League bosses prioritise the chasing of the shilling over the interest of supporters.

There is no doubt that the Premier League has been more of a force for good, with greater investment in stadium facilities; a more family friendly environment at most grounds; and a competition that is the UKs most successful export product.

Nevertheless, the Television viewing public, whether they be in the pubs of Moss Side and Walton or the bars of Delhi and Shanghai, are as hooked on the ‘product’ not simply because of the unpredictability of the result and the patchy quality of football on offer, but by the fabulous atmosphere that is generated by fervent, bonkers supporters of English football clubs.

If the powers that be continue to mess around with fixture planning and kick off times, then attendances will, sooner or later, begin to be hit – and when that happens the FA will find themselves in a much more difficult round of negotiations with the media outlets than has been the case thus far.

There is a simple solution to all of this nonsense. We should go back to the entire weekend programme being played on a Saturday at 3PM.

The argument that this would adversely affect attendances is patently nonsense now, as any football supporter who wants to watch a game live via a TV, iPad or laptop can easily find a channel that is streaming the game of their choice – or find a pub that has a foreign channel showing the game.

Saturday at 3 O Clock is the traditional time for football in England. It fits with our culture, and offers supporters the certainty of planning their match days, whilst also significantly reducing the number of ‘domestics’ as fans justify to their partners why they are having to leave the family home at 8.30am to watch a football game that starts at 11.30am (Man City vs Everton a couple of seasons ago).

There is a case for playing a ‘headline’ game on Sunday at 4pm, but other than this, for me, it’s Saturday’s all the way.

And if we could also convince UEFA to see the sense of re-introducing a knock our UEFA Cup, played on Wednesday night, rather than the crazy Thursday evening Europa League, we’d really be making some progress.