I saw a couple of news stories today that were reporting on new figures that have come out of Experian on the number of business insolvencies in different parts of the UK.
The first (Huge rise in insolvencies, but London fares better than rest of the UK) was from Londonlovesbusiness.com and looks at the November statistics compared to the same time last year. The graphic below is from their site graphs the Experian data.
The second (North/South business insolvency divide begins to widen) was from Business Matters and looks at the month on month data over this year.
There were a few things that occurred to me when I saw these two articles:
1. Both articles had the same data but came up with two very different stories
2. Don’t always believe what you read in the press.
3. Both are right and not right at the same time.
4. Everyone has their own agenda.
My Christmas wish for all of us in business: Read press like this less, talk to friends and your trusted advisors more, be more open, ask for help early and even if you don’t need it and let’s work together to make sure these statistics (whichever ones are true) don’t get worse.