Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
Alan Sugar thinks small business are moaners who live in Disney World – Appointed by Labour on April Fools Day UK
Sugar appointment criticised
Philip Hammond has criticised Labour’s announcement that Lord Alan Sugar will lead a new government task force designed to fight the corner of small businesses against the banks.
“Only Labour could announce on April Fool’s day that it had appointed the man who called credit-starved small businesses ‘moaners’ who lived in ‘Disney World’ to be the adjudicator on their applications for bank loans”, he said.
Lord Mandelson has selected Lord Sugar to sit on the task force which will set up the Small Business Credit Adjudicator. Lord Mandelson believes the people he has chosen “… understand the critical importance of new finance and credit flow to the growth of small, innovative companies”.
But Lord Sugar said last year: “The moaners are bust… they don’t need the bank, they need an insolvency practitioner”.
This comes on the same day that the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Retail Consortium and 23 business leaders attacked Labour’s planned tax on jobs.
“No wonder no-one believes Lord Mandelson’s claims to be the champion of small business when Labour would rather tax jobs and the recovery than cut government waste”, Hammond added.
Well this is news that small business can do without. Clearly Lord Alan Sugar has nothing in common with small business and is merely another puppet of Labour.
Jim Ferguson
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Captains of Industry and Business Leaders are Backing the Conservatives UK
Top Business Leaders Back Tories On Tax
9:42am UK, Thursday April 01, 2010
Ruth Barnett, Sky News Online
A group of business leaders have written a letter backing the Conservatives’ proposal to halt a planned rise in National Insurance.
David Cameron described it as a “very important moment in the election campaign”.
The executive chairman of Marks and Spencers, Sir Stuart Rose, and easyJet entrepreneur Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou are among the 23 people to have signed the letter, which is published in the Daily Telegraph.
The signatories employ around half a million workers between them.
They agree with shadow chancellor George Osborne that increasing NI by 1p next April, as Labour plans to do, is bad news for the economy.
“The Government’s proposal to increase national insurance, placing an additional tax on jobs, comes at exactly the wrong time in the economic cycle,” the letter says.
The Labour Party feel that the Conservatives’ plan has not been properly costed and not properly thought through.
Sky’s political correspondent Joey Jones
“In a personal capacity, we welcome George Osborne’s plan to stop the proposed increase in national insurance by cutting Government waste.”
Mr Cameron told BBC Breakfast: “These household names – people like Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Mothercare – are saying that Labour’s plans to put up National Insurance contributions are the biggest threat to the recovery.
“They are saying there is no threat to the recovery from cutting waste in 2010 but there is a threat to the recovery from putting up National Insurance contributions.
“Labour have said the whole thing is that we can secure the recovery. Well, today that plank of their whole approach has been removed.”
Chancellor Alistair Darling pledged to introduce the rise as a way of paying off some of the nation’s debts.
But Mr Osborne said he would axe the increase for people earning less than £45,000 if his party wins power at the next election. He said he would pay for this by finding efficiency savings worth £12bn.
Mr Darling counters that Mr Osborne’s policy is at odds with the Conservatives’ claim they would cut the deficit sooner and deeper than the Government plans.
Treasury Chief Secretary Liam Byrne said the Conservatives were not able to fund their promise on NI.
“No business goes to its shareholders with unfunded promises – but that’s exactly what the Tories are doing,” he said.
The captains of industry and top business leaders are fully aware of the failure of this Labour Government. They are giving their full backing to the Conservatives, because they know we have the experience and common sense, to get rid of Labour’s crippling debt, but not at the expense of putting more businesses out of action, or risking the creation of new jobs.
Members of the public whose jobs are hanging by a thread need to take note and ensure their vote is for the Conservatives. Another term of Labour could spell disaster for them and everyone else in the United Kingdom.
Jim Ferguson
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Conservatives to offer real help for small business UK
I am pleased to see some real help being promised for small business. Its encouraging that small business is being recognised for the part it plays by the Conservatives who understand the importance of the fact that we are a nation of traders and that small business accounts for 80% of the revenue raised.
Jim Ferguson
Conservative tax reform to aid self employed
Wednesday, March 31 2010
Mark Prisk, the Shadow Business Minister, has announced that a Conservative Government would undertake a full and fundamental review of small business taxation, including IR35.
The aim will be to provide a simpler, clearer and lasting tax regime, so businesses can plan with confidence.
“For the last 13 years, Labour have constantly meddled with the tax rules for freelancers and self-employed, Prisk said. “IR35 has especially proved to over-complex, uncertain and often unfair”.
IR35 has cost business £73 million over 10 years but it has barely raised revenue for the Treasury. Prisk criticised Gordon Brown for making it harder to be self-employed at a time when Britain should be open for business.
“This is why a Conservative Government would mandate the independent Office of Tax Simplification to undertake a fundamental review of current arrangements with the aim of providing a clearer, lasting and fairer tax regime”.
This announcement is in addition to previous plesges to simplify the tax system, cut Corporation Tax for small firms, and make small business rate relief automatic.
“Small businesses cannot afford 5 more years of Gordon Brown”, Prisk added. “Only the Conservatives have the energy and the ideas to get Britain working by boosting enterprise”.
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Labour addicted to union cash while Libdems get bought off by Labour UK
Secret papers reveal Labour’s dependency on union cash
Tuesday, March 30 2010
Previously unpublished papers reveal the true scope of Labour’s dependency on union cash.
Following Conservative pressure, the Government will publish the previously confidential minutes and papers of the Inter-Party Talks on the Funding of Political Parties.
Francis Maude, Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, led the Conservative delegation in the Talks. “Gordon Brown wrecked the opportunity to clean up politics because he wanted the unions’ votes to become Labour Party leader”, he said. “These documents expose the Labour Party’s addiction to union cash”.
The Talks were chaired by Sir Hayden Phillips and were suspended without substantive agreement in October 2007.
Peter Watt, then Labour General Secretary and a delegate on the Talks, has subsequently written how the Talks failed since “the Labour Party could not resolve its internal issues”, “my own party was the biggest block to reform” and Gordon Brown “repeatedly warned the Prime Minister [Tony Blair] that he would block any attempt to reduce the unions’ power.”
Peter Watt also notes how the Liberal Democrats were bought off by Labour: “[Labour] managed to clinch a deal with the LibDems by promising that Menzies (Ming) Campbell would get a taxpayer-funded car and driver if the reforms went through.”
The newly published papers today reveal the true extent of the union funding of the Labour Party:
- Many union members would not pay a political levy to the Labour Party if given a choice.
- Some trade unions affiliate more individuals to the Labour Party than they have union members paying a political levy (only money from the political levy can be used for political purposes).
- From 2001 to 2006, the unions gave the Labour Party £45 million in cash.
- Trade unions pay £1 million a year to the Labour Party at a local and regional level, tying in local Labour Party branches through binding “Constituency Development Plans”.
Sir Hayden Phillips drew up detailed option papers on how the political levy could be reformed to give union members genuine choice. The Labour Party objected to these proposals. This was the key stumbling block that led to the Talks failing.
It’s wrong that union barons, not rank-and-file union members, decide how much to give to Labour”, Maude added.
“A Conservative Government will seek an agreed long-term settlement that would introduce an across-the-board cap on donations to end the big donor culture. As part of that reform, union members must have real choice on whether they want to pay a political levy and where it goes.”
Interesting to see how easy it was to buy off the Libdems. I suppose some things never change.
Jim Ferguson
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Gordon Brown’s record – Conservative “Vote for Me” campaign
Michael Gove has launched a new poster campaign putting Gordon Brown’s record at the heart of the election campaign.
These posters arrive alongside a new analysis of Labour’s time in power, and you can view both by clicking the links below.
Speaking at the launch, Shadow Education Secretary Michael Gove said:
“Gordon Brown is asking people to vote him in for another five years but he and his tired Government will just make things worse.”
“He has doubled our national debt and squandered billions of pounds selling off Britain’s gold at rock bottom prices. He has taken billions out of our pensions system and doubled the tax rate for the poorest workers. He has let down our young people by causing record youth unemployment, and overseen an increase in the gap between the rich and poor. And he has let 80,000 criminals out of prison early, leading to 1,500 crimes being committed by people who should have been behind bars.”
“We can’t go on like this. The choice at this election is five more years of Gordon Brown’s tired government making things worse or David Cameron and the Conservatives with the energy, leadership and values to get the country moving.”
… and here are some other things Gordon Brown did…
Cut the Defence Budget at a time of war – and got caught out denying it!
Gordon Brown misled the Chilcot Inquiry, Parliament and the public when he claimed that ‘the defence budget has been rising every year since 1997’
(Hansard, 10 March 2010, Col. 291).
He was later forced to admit that ‘I do accept that in one or two years defence expenditure did not rise in real terms’
(Hansard, 17 March 2010).
Figures from the Ministry of Defence show that the defence budget actually fell year-on-year in real terms on four occasions since 1997 – in 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2007.
(Channel 4 News Factcheck, 10 March 2010).
Taxed jobs as we were emerging from recession.
Last December, Gordon Brown’s Government announced a tax on jobs – a 0.5 per cent rise in the rate of National Insurance Contributions for both employees and employers. This comes on top of the
rise in NICs announced in the 2008 PBR, meaning a total planned rise of 1 per cent. This is a tax on all businesses and on every person earning over £20,000.
The Federation of Small Businesses has estimated that this could mean up to 57,000 jobs are lost. (FSB,
Press Release, 24 March 2010)
Increased spending on quangos by £10 billion.
The cost of unelected and poorly accountable government bodies has soared by almost £10 billion under Gordon Brown. In his first year as Prime Minister, total expenditure on so-called
“executive non-departmental public bodies” rose from £37.0 billion to £43.0 billion in 2007-08 – a 16 per cent rise
(Cabinet Office, Public Bodies 2007, p.10; Public Bodies 2008, p.10).
Figures for 2008-09 revealed quango expenditure rose by another £3.5 billion to £46.5 billion – a 7 per cent rise
(Cabinet Office, Public Bodies 2009, p.6) making a mockery of his claims to deliver a new politics.
Brought boom and bust to the NHS – which led to NHS cuts.
Despite massively increasing spending, Gordon Brown has been guilty of a ‘boom and bust’ approach to the NHS finances, forcing NHS Trusts into cuts and wasteful short-term spending. Between 2005 and 2007, 14,500 jobs were cut from the NHS as Trusts struggled to recover from deficits
(NHS Information Centre, NHS Staff 1998-2008, 25 March 2009).
And since 2004, the number of beds in the NHS has been cut by 21,500 – the equivalent of 12 per cent
(Department of Health, Bed availability and occupancy 2008-09, 30 September 2009).
Accident and Emergency departments and maternity units up and down the country have faced or are facing cuts and closures. And things are only set to get worse, as one of Gordon Brown’s own health advisers said that ‘the days of the District General Hospital are over’
(Professor Sir Ara Darzi, NHS London, A Framework for Action, 11 July 2007).
Let truancy rise to record levels.
In 1998, Gordon Brown’s Treasury set a target to reduce truancy rates to 0.5 per cent
(HM Treasury, Comprehensive Spending Review, Public Service Agreements 1999-2000, December 1998).
But the figure now stands at 1.05 per cent – up 44 per cent since 1996/7, well in excess of the Government’s target, and at a record high. 67,000 pupils skip school without permission every day
(DCSF, Pupil Absence in Schools in England, Including Pupil Characteristics: 2008/09, 25 March 2010).
Paid couples more to live apart than together.
The tax credit system penalises parents who live together, giving families a financial incentive to split up.
The IFS has highlighted the fact that a couple with children earning £20,000 between them could be more than £5,000 better off in terms of benefits and tax credits if they split up.
(The Sunday Times, 4 March 2007).
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Labour will kill the recovery with their tax on jobs UK
We will stop Labour’s damaging NIC increase
Monday, March 29 2010
The Conservatives have announced that a Conservative Government will stop Labour’s tax rise on jobs by cutting waste.
Stopping the planned increases in National Insurance Contributions will result in 7 out of 10 working people being better off.
A Conservative Government will take immediate action to start cutting Government waste, in order to spend £6 billion less in 2010-11 than Labour’s plans.
“The re-election of a Labour Government under Gordon Brown – with more debt, waste and taxes – will bring us a new recession”, George Osborne said, speaking alongside Ken Clarke and Phillip Hammond.
“Labour will kill the recovery with their tax on jobs. We will cut Labour waste to stop it.”
Former Government advisers Sir Peter Gershon and Dr Martin Read, now members of the Conservatives’ Public Sector Productivity Advisory Board, advise that savings of £12 billion across all departmental spending are possible in-year without affecting the quality of front line services.
Having identified these savings the Conservatives can now commit to stop Labour’s tax rise on working people and jobs at the same time as reducing the deficit faster:
Labour are planning to raise Employees National Insurance Contributions (NICs) for everyone earning over £20,000. We will stop this increase altogether for everyone earning under £35,000 by raising the primary threshold at which people start paying NICs by £24 a week, and raising the Upper Earnings Limit by £29 a week.
Relative to Labour’s plans everyone liable for Employees NICs earning between £7,100 and £45,400 – which is 7 out of 10 working people – will be up to £150 better off a year under the Conservatives. Lower earners will get the greatest benefit as a percentage of their earnings. Nobody will be worse off.
Labour are also planning to raise Employers NICs for everyone earning over £5,700. This is a tax on jobs that will undermine the recovery. We will raise the secondary threshold at which employers start paying NICs by £21 a week, saving employers up to £150 for every person they employ relative to Labour’s plans. This will reduce the cost of Labour’s tax rise on employers by more than half.
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Empty promises and an empty Budget from an empty Labour Government UK
David Cameron responds to Labour’s empty Budget
Wednesday, March 24 2010
David Cameron has responded in the House of Commons to the Chancellor’s presentation of the last Budget before the general election.
He said Labour “have made a complete mess of the British economy and they are totally failing to clean it up”.
Cameron set out the big argument in British politics: Labour say “don’t do anything before the election, let’s just sit tight and keep our fingers crossed”, and the Conservatives say “we need real action to get our economy moving – and urgently”.
Highlighting new policies that copied existing Conservative proposals, such as the stamp duty cut and new university places, he said the “only new ideas in British politics are coming from this side of the House” and that “the only thing Labour bring are debt, waste and taxes”.
The figures that stands out above any other, he said, was that Labour have “doubled the national debt, and they’re going to double it again”.
Outlining the Government’s failure Cameron criticised “all those schemes that they launched with great fanfare” for failing to help enough people. He also drew comparisons on the state of the economy when Labour came to power to the present – including the huge increase in the debt and deficit, and a falling down the global league tables in terms of competitiveness, tax and regulation.
We need a credible plan to deal with Britain’s record debts”, he said, criticising the Chancellor’s repeated hope to halve the deficit by 2014 as giving us a deficit “almost as big as when Denis Healey went to the IMF in the 1970s”.
Moving on to the delay in dealing with the deficit, he said “the risk to recovery is not in dealing with the deficit now, it’s in not dealing with the deficit now”. Cameron said that “every family knows that when your debts mount up, you need to start paying them off or things will only get worse”, and that it is time for the Government to learn the same lessons”.
“The Prime Minister and Chancellor faced a choice – between bold action in an election year or playing politics. Once again, they chose politics.”
Cameron also emphasised the need “to show the world that we are back open for business”, saying that because Labour “flunked the difficult decisions on spending, they are raising tax after tax after tax – all after the election”. “These are the ticking tax bombshells timed to go off the day after the election and that will destroy our recovery.”
He said that the greatest risk to Britain’s economic recovery was another Labour government. “No one has yet thought of a question to which the answer is five more years of this Prime Minister”, he said.
“We need a credible plan to cut the deficit. We need an unleashing of enterprise across the nation. We need a plan to boost employment through radical welfare and school reform. If ever there was a time when this country needed a radical change of direction it is now.”
He concluded that Britain needs a Conservative government “to clean up the mess made by this Labour Government”.
“Britain needs new energy, leadership and values to get this country moving again. That’s the argument we’ll take to the country the moment the Prime Minister has been forced by the law of the land to call the election he has avoided for so long.”
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Fuel prices set to rocket – Highland business at serious risk Scotland UK
Business and hard pressed people across the Highlands face even greater hardship due to fuel prices that are set to soar. Some estimates suggest that the more rural parts of scotland will face prices of around £1.30 per litre.
This is totally unacceptable and as if we wern’t facing enough problems this latest bombshell may see more and more people struggling to cope. How will penshioners manage to heat their homes ? The fact that the vast majority of the cost is tax that goes straight into the Labour Governments pockets is scandalous when they can see the pressure that people are already under thanks to Labours recession.
And what of the LibDem MP Danny Alexander. What will he do ? Not much. Not much a minority party MP like him can do anyway.
This general election will give the people of the Highlands an opportunity to elect an MP who will be able to deliver.
If the country is fortunate enough to elect a Conservative Government then I as the MP for this region will be in a far stronger position to bring real help and support to the people of the Highlands of Scotland instead of the empty weak words of the Liberals who can only whine and wring their hands in helplessness.
Jim Ferguson
Petrol Price Woe For Drivers As Costs Soar
4:28pm UK, Tuesday March 16, 2010
James Jordan, Sky News Online
Petrol prices could reach an eye-watering 120p per litre later this year, the AA is warning.
The organisation is claiming that unleaded fuel could even top the price, equivalent to £5.41 a gallon, and Alistair Darling is being urged to delay the introduction of a planned 3p increase in petrol duty due to come in on April 1.
AA president Edmund King said: “The UK is barely out of recession, yet petrol prices threaten to rise to record prices seen during the boom of 2008 – shortly before the collapse into recession.
“If families, drivers on fixed incomes and those on low pay were unable to cope with record prices then, they are even less likely now.”
AA research found an average family with two cars is paying £52 a month more to fill up now than a year ago.
Motorists are being legally mugged at the forecourt by petrol companies.
Lindsay Hoyle, Labour MP on the Commons business select committee
The average petrol price in the UK is 115.9p for a litre of unleaded and 116.6p for a litre of diesel.
Even if the 3p increase is withdrawn, the price paid by drivers could soon hit 120p a litre – £5.41 a gallon – according to the organisation.
This would overtake the previous high of 119.7p of July 2008.
The AA said the price increases were caused by the rise in the price of wholesale gasoline since the end of January.
Lindsay Hoyle, the senior Labour MP on the Commons business select committee, said it was “a complete disgrace”.
He told the Daily Telegraph: “Yes, crude oil has gone up this year, but nothing like the rise in petrol prices. Motorists are being legally mugged at the forecourt by petrol companies.”
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Unite Union has an unhealthy grip of Labour
Charlie Whelan’s new militant tendency
Tuesday, March 16 2010
Michael Gove has spoken about “Charlie Whelan’s New Militant Tendency” in a speech setting out how dependent the Labour Party is on Unite – Britain’s biggest trade union.
His speech marked the launch of a new document that shines a light on how Unite has taken advantage of Labour’s near bankruptcy and the departure of Tony Blair to gain an unprecedented grip on the party.
Under the political direction of Charlie Whelan, Unite is using its financial and organisation muscle to drive government policy and build a Labour Party very different to the one that appealed to Middle England and won three general elections. Instead, with Gordon Brown as leader, there has been a reversal of much-needed public service reforms, a return to industrial militancy and a regression into atavistic class war rhetoric.
“There can be few more powerful forces of conservatism opposed to the flexibility, freedom and choice of the post-bureaucratic age than the Whelanist Tendency now in control of the Labour party”, Gove said.
“Labour’s re-unionisation has put them in bed with the past at a time when it is crucial that this country wakes up to the future.”
The document sets out in detail the way in which, in the three years since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, Unite has spent more than £11 million of its members’ money on buying influence within the Labour Party.
This extends from placing a key union operative inside 10 Downing Street to taking effective control of many cash-strapped constituency Labour parties and installing Unite activists and officials as prospective Parliamentary candidates.
Gove said that “the last thing we need is a political system where genuine participation in democracy is out-muscled by union power”.
“This election will decide the future of this country and Labour represents a move backwards, not forwards”, he added.
Read Michael Gove’s speech in full
You can read our dossier on “Charlie Whelan’s New Militant Tendency” in the document reader below, or alternatively click here to download a copy in PDF format.
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For the sake of the British people we must get rid of this Labour Government UK
The biggest risk for Britain is five more years of Gordon Brown
Wednesday, March 10 2010
William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, has argued that the biggest risk for Britain is five more years of Gordon Brown.
Speaking to the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, he said that ”our ability to undertake economic modernisation will be critical to Britain’s future influence”.
“When capital, labour and technology are increasingly mobile we cannot stand still”, he said. “That is why James Dyson’s report about how we can give more weight to science and technology in our economy is so welcome”.
“That is why our proposals on business taxation are oriented towards attracting and maintaining investment, why our programme of education reform explicitly draws from best practice across the globe, from Alberta to Sweden to Singapore, to ensure we make the most of every young person’s talent in the future.”
Hague warned that the modernisation our economy needs is not guaranteed. “If our opponents’ mistaken arguments and mistaken principles prevailed Britain will move backwards towards a ’70s style model, with a bigger say for the trade unions who want to impose rigidity and unaffordable regulation across the public and private sector. The bridge will be drawn up against innovation and investment.”
He also warned that Labour is no longer “the outward-looking thinking of the late 1990s”, but that it’s taking “an explicitly old-fashioned Left approach” – particularly in selecting candidates who are ”hardened union activists with a track record in resisting modernisation”.
Hague said Gordon Brown was right to refer to the economy being “at a crossroads” in a speech he gave today. “We could continue with five more years of his debt, waste and taxes. We know where that would lead – just yesterday an international credit rating agency warned that Labour’s plans would result in the loss of our credit rating. ”
“That would be a catastrophe for our economy and for our reputation around the world”, he said.
“So the biggest risk for Britain is five more years of Gordon Brown. The alternative is to change direction, deal with our debts more quickly and restore confidence in our economy. A new Conservative Government will be a chance to send the signal far and wide that Britain is once again open for business.”
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