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Just got a mailshot email from Business Link. 'Urgent support for failing businesses', it says. I am mildly interested. I mean, if they're sending out bags of money, might be worth reading on. So I do. It reads:
"We have recently launched a new Rapid Response service to provide urgent help to established businesses struggling through the recession." Oh good. Nice to see. What is the nature of this urgent help, I wonder?
Their idea of help, as I read on, is to provide help with dissolving your business. Oh. Oh that's just what a struggling business is most in need of. Well done The Government for being not only useless, but mildly offensive to boot.
There are, in their defence, other sevices that they offer, like advice. Here's a fantastically useful piece:
"One thing that is critical is to be on top of your financial performance and costs, managing cash flow and having proper systems to monitor these - don’t take your eyes off that." I'm sorry to be rude, but - no shit? Honestly, it infuriates me that people think they're helping - and get paid for 'helping' - but in fact parrot the blindingly obvious. Take the advisor's salaries and gift it to companies in the form of short term interest free working capital loans - that would be of immeasurably more use.
Comments: 3
Business Link make me so cross - total waste of everyone's money. They sent me a lengthy leaflet explaining how to make people redundant in a proper legal fashion. I have no employees. They then rang me and spoke to my husband, refused to say who they were and demanded I rang back urgently. When I returned the call it was only to invite me to a seminar about how to start your own business. I have been trading 9 years which is why my details are in their system. Why would I need the info on redundancies for example. I explained this on the phone and they sent me the info for the blasted seminar through the post anyway. About 20 glossy A4 sheets - they've money to burn obviously!
The one time I did want some help when trying to change accountants I rang to see they could help and they read me the Yellow Pages entries for accountants over the phone. I could have done that myself! Grrr!
Posted by: Catherine on April 16, 2009 09:15 PM
You're really hit the nail on the head with this one. Utterly pointless "service" that is of absolutely no use to anyone with half a braincell setting up (or running) a small business. Total waste of taxpayer money.
Posted by: Peta on April 18, 2009 08:22 AM
I've never bothered to use BusinessLink. I find their services untargetted and irrelevant. Like other comments, I'm also furious that my taxes are funding this.
Darling could save quite a few pounds by cutting funding to this, but I guess doing this would be politically unacceptable, and he'd be slated for it.
Posted by: Henry on April 21, 2009 09:12 AM