THE SMALL BUSINESS BLOG

Another day and another cabinet minister – yesterday Mr. Alister Darling, today Mr. Hoon!

Mr. Hoon repaid £384 for claiming expenses for two homes during the same time period. Is this an easy mistake to make or is it that they just don’t care and take the taxpayer for what they can get? Gorden Brown said he is taking action, like usual, too little too late.

I believe the taxpayer will take action in a few days time, but our beloved PM Gordon Brown has already made it clear he will not take responsibility for any of this and he will stay whatever the election brings.

“Although this was an inadvertent administrative error, I unreservedly apologise for the mistake.” - Mr. Geoff Hoon yesterday.

Again no mention of the honorable thing to do, to resign. You begin to wonder what “I unreservedly apologise…” really means.

The double standards in our lives are incredible, these people, allegedly some of them have committed criminal acts, seem to be immune from any punishment for their wrong doings, while the general public is being punished for parking 5 minutes longer.

This system needs to change – politicians need to be held accountable for what they do. They need to be above reproach, if they fail – the maximum legal punishment with a life long ban from public life should be the standard.

How can we explain to our children what is right and wrong, when these people do as they please, break the law and get away with it.

Everybody should be the same in front of the law, especially politicians. — ST.

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Just watched the interview with our favorite Darling on the BBC – incredibly he claimed for a second home while he has been given No. 11 Downing Street to live in as his residence while in office.

He asked for the taxpayer to repay the money for his personal tax advice, so he could submit a correct tax return, I wonder if he has declared the benefit in kind?

Here is the thing, what do people do who can not afford tax advice, can they get their money back from HMRC? I guess not, they’ll just have to lump it – pay penalties and fines etc.

Yet, when asked if he should resign, he said that was a matter for Gordon Brown, the man who always ‘takes action’ without any results.

The idea that he himself could resign, for being disloyal to the British taxpayer, taking unfair advantage of his position or as some might say even abusing his position, did not enter the discussion?

In my opinion, these guys have no shame, will try and stay in power, whatever the cost to the taxpayer and the political system for as long as they can.

But here is the question for Gordon Brown, “is Darling still your darling?” — ST.

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The taxpayers in the United States is spending $30bn to become what President Obama called a ‘reluctant shareholder’. While thousands of workers loose their job, putting more financial burden on the public finances of the US. But is this a prudent investment into the future?

Other car manufacturers and many other businesses have to survive this recession without government funding, they may very well feel hard done by today. But more than this I believe we weaken our capitalistic system every-time we prop one of these badly run giants up for the sake of keeping unemployment low. In fact we weaken companies who could have survived by themselves or even make them fail. This unfair advantage for GM may come to cost the US government more than only money.

Many small, eco-friendly and innovative businesses will be damaged by this development. Part of their tax-dollars will have helped GM to compete with them for market-share.

GM’s management has failed over decades to recognize the obvious trends in the car industry and is now inflicting more damage on this industry by being allowed to survive. –ST

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I have regular meetings with big companies in my effort to finding strategic partners to sponsor our OnlineOffice for small office and home businesses.

While having these discussions we talk about the future and how business is developing in this economic downturn, and what business will be like on the other side. What often shocks me, is the fact that some of these guys do not realize that what they are seeing currently is a fundamental shift in business dynamics.

Today, more than anytime before, business is changing. More and more of it will be online and being big is no longer a guarantee to survive. In fact I believe that many mid-size and large corporates are using this economic downturn to justify massive redundancies, while the real reason is often top-level management failure of the past few years, long before this recession.

This means for small business, the opportunities are out there, you just need to look for them. This may very well be the best time to start a business, the evidence shows that businesses started in a downturn are stronger and survive better.

The chips, …. all the chips are on the table and are looking for takers. What are you waiting for.

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One of our oldest accounting partners Jason Holden from Holden Associates, today announced that they wish to provide each of their clients with a free website, not only the hosting, but a real website free of charge.

Given the fact that about 70% of small and micro businesses, like home businesses, self-employed, sole traders, freelancers and contractors, have no website – this is a great campaign to help small business to get noticed. Or like Jason puts it on his blog:

() …. putting his clients on the web and on the map. ….. ()

I’m very impressed by this and the fact that he is actually going to do this. He shows commitment to his clients in a time when most small and home businesses struggle to make ends meet.

Not all accountants are the same. Currently Jason is in a league of his own – good for him. — ST.

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This is the headline in the Nursery Industry Magazine and on the website, in which WinWeb Gold Partner Jason Holden of Holden Associates Accountants talks about the new year gone and the year ahead. The challenges for small businesses like nurseries are just as in other small business areas. He makes the point that those businesses that are well prepared will still grow and flourish.

At the end of his business advice for the nursery industry he talks about our Business’09 Campaign and mentions the £10,000 main prize and our aim to help start over 1,000 new businesses before October 31st, 2009.

Read more @ www.nursery-industry.co.uk

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Much has been made in the last few days about the problems surrounding Sage Live, the online accounting software service for small business from Sage Group PLC (LSE:SGE) . It has been offline for almost a week, due to apparent security issues. Many ‘competitors’ are obviously enjoying the apparent problems with Sage Live and use it as a demonstration of their own ability and to make themselves look infallible. But can you trust these often self-inflated assertions of knowledge and wisdom, by these so called experts?

As someone who has been in the internet business longer than most, I have built and used many housing centers, in my last company Nacamar Group PLC and now with WinWeb, for some 15 years. I would be lying if I said we never had trouble with server failures and security breaches. Nacamar, was one of Europe’s largest ISPs in the late ’90′s, today part of Tiscali, had continuous problems with hacker attacks, hard disk failures, network outages and other network problems. Many a time these problems were outside our own network and control.

Technology got better, but we should not kid ourselves, networks are not any more secure than they have ever been, the reverse is often true. Many of Sage’s competitors have never run their own network, network security and I suspect they would not know how to. This, unfortunately, creates it’s own security problems. Using public web hosting companies, which have to offer a wide range of services, can never be as secure as a dedicated service provided for one online solution only, unless you install dedicated firewalls and other security measures yourself with the necessary knowledge, data is going to be more exposed and compromised. In my mind, acceptable for websites, but not for services which hold thousands of data sets, personal and corporate.

Whatever we do, no network is ever going to be safe, all we can do is make it more and more difficult for the illegal hackers. Given enough resources and insight, any system can be hacked, anyone denying that is not only foolish, but dangerous.

We all, as reputable online software providers, suffer when one of the online software providers has a security or network problem, competitor or not.

Instead of enjoying the misfortune of others we should work together, that after all was the early ‘code’ of the internet. ISPs, like Nacamar, Demon, Pipex and others, founded organisations like ‘Linx’ to allow ISPs to co-operate with one another in the UK, in the early years. I remember we were members of 20 or maybe more of these organisations worldwide, without these the Internet would not have worked then, nor would it work today. This limited co-operation served us all well, something some of the new start-ups should not forget.

Do I think Sage has great products? Absolutely not! After all I’m the most intelligent and extraordinary Founder and CEO of any online software & business services company, my products are ‘obviously better, more secure, more reliable, more cost-effective and more easy to use’ – but then you knew that!

But seriously, we should establish a standard of service, security and co-operation, for the sake of our customers and for our own sake. — ST.

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