Former Dragons' Den panellist Doug Richard has called for a major overhaul of the way the government supports small businesses with ineffective schemes ditched in favour of incentives for investors.
In a damning document, the California-born businessman says the UK is plagued by "Kafkaeseque bureaucracy" so it is time for the government to step back, sweep away the burden of regulation and let entrepreneurs, the UK's "wealth creators", thrive.
Read more at Business Zone
Here's Tory rebel Dan Hannan's list of 10 reasons why the UK would be better off out of the European Union. UKIP welcomes his support!
1. Since we joined the EEC in 1973, we have been in surplus with every continent in the world except Europe. Over those 27 years, we have run a trade deficit with the other member states that averages out at £30 million per day.
2. In 2010 our gross contribution to the EU budget will be £14 billion. To put this figure in context, all the reductions announced by George Osborne at the Conservative Party Conference would, collectively, save £7 billion a year across the whole of government spending.
Read the rest of Hannan's blog here.
Non-job of the week This week’s non-job was spotted and sent in by a TPA activist and is really is the archetypal wishy-washy, semi-indefinable role that has proliferated in local government over the past few years. Let’s not forget there’s a squeeze on public finances and there will be for the foreseeable future, so such ‘right-on’ positions – presumably invented to keep us sweet – should surely be axed to free up funds for tax-cuts and the frontline services we actually want?
Come on Aberdeen City Council, do assess how vital this role really is:
“Development Officer
£25,608-£29,245 p.a.
Post Specific Requirements: Experience of working in a developmental role, of promoting customer or citizen engagement and an understanding of the corporate goals. Presentational, facilitation and communication skills, ability to produce clear reports for a broad range of audiences and to work with diverse community interests and to promote equal opportunities. Ability to use ICT, eg. mail, word processing, databases, internet research.”
Answers on a postcard as to what ‘facilitation skills’ are…
How completely and utterly vague, but of course the second sentence manages to reveal as much as we need to know. Perhaps they should’ve called this the ‘Just Checking Everyone’s Okay Officer’– possibly well-meaning but ultimately intrusive and offensively patronising.
It must be tiring forever trying to dream up ways to ‘tap in’ to minority communities and foist yourselves upon them, but someone’s got to do it (or at least that’s what local government seems to believe). Why must such communities be treated like a different, endangered species that require such molly-coddling and protection from the government, and on such an intensive basis? Are they not now more conspicuous by being constantly declared as ‘equal’, whilst the rest of us are presumably the sort of closed-minded throwbacks that might assume that these folk are ‘unequal’ without our governmental betters there to tell us differently?
On the full job description, the whole Development Officer role is encapsulated in two enigmatic points:
1. The development and mainstreaming of the Council's social inclusion, equalities, sustainable development, community engagement, and strengthening local democracy strategies.
2. Partnership and forum development to ensure that communities' and partners' needs are identified and represented in strategic and neighbourhood action programmes
