BBC NewsBorrowing was £17.4bn last month, the second highest October figure since monthly records began in 1993.
Finito World
It’s quite difficult running businesses. It goes without saying that you have to sell a lot of whatever you’re selling, while also meeting tax requirements, keeping and ideally expanding your workforce, and creating a desirable workplace culture.
As the huge number of bankruptcies each year attest (around 2,000 per month in 2024), a lot has to fall into place for that to happen in the best of times. And these past years have, to put it charitably, not been the best of times. From Brexit to Covid to inflation and beyond, stuff keeps happening.
So spare a thought for those who try to do all the difficult things above – and also to do it with a social conscience, and make sure they employ people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Finito World recently heard of a top recruitment firm in London which has always had a bursary scheme in place for recruiting people from impoverished backgrounds. It was part of the ethos of senior management to want to do this.
Now that Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has mooted the notion of unfair dismissal on day one as touted by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, the scheme has had to be curtailed. The firm can’t take the risk of litigation which would undoubtedly ensue should they have to let people go . “It could be a week of poor performance and then a no-win no-fee lawyer. We can’t commit to that,” the chairman told us.
Such are the unintended consequences of what is surely well-meaning legislation designed to promote the rights of employees.
At the heart of the issue is the question of trust. Can businesses be trusted to make genuine efforts off their own bat to tackle social mobility? The answer will be yes or no on a case by case business. But the suspicion remains that a bit of freedom can go a long way – and its curtailing usually means litigation. That will create, as night follows day, a society of lawyers. Sir Keir Starmer of all people might be expected to know that – he used to be one after all.
