Isolation is Not Such a Bad Thing

I regret to say that I really don't care what happens to the Euro. It was always a currency without a country; it was always unpopular with ordinary Europeans, who saw it - quite rightly in my view - as a threat to their national identity, and it was always designed to create a 'federal' state out of countries so disparate in nature and temperament as to make such a design an impractical and unattainable dream.

Neither do I regret that David Cameron's actions have 'isolated' the UK - if, indeed, they have done so in the long or the short term. Britain has been 'isolated' on many occasions, and she can stand being isolated again - particularly if, in her isolation, she can avoid losing her sovereignty or falling victim to the fell hand of Standard & Poor's. Better to go into isolation than to get into bed with Typhoid Mary.

I do, though, very much regret the very real anger and antagonism that ordinary people in northern Europe have begun to express against other, much poorer, southern Eurozone countries, whose debts they now feel that they will be obliged to pay. That is an understandable attitude - but it is not a healthy one, and it is not one I would want to see expressed in the same way in the UK.

Isolation is really not such a bad thing...

Black Country Reinvestment Society Gives Loans to Local SMEs

I think we have all known for a very long time that big banks do not like SMEs, and that Project Merlin was unlikely to change what is effectively a well-entrenched sector-based discriminatory attitude.

In Wolverhampton, the Black Country Reinvestment Society has come up with a solution for local SMEs.

The Society was founded in 2002, and funded by entrepreneurs and companies located in the Black Country. Its funds have now been added to by Local Authorities who want to promote development in the area, and its small business fund now amounts to £5 million.

The Society will make loans of £10,000 to £50,000 for a number of business purposes to SMEs located in the Black Country, Staffordshire and environs which might otherwise be unable to find funding. Repayment terms are one to five years, and businesses seeking funding can apply on line.

Investors in the Society, by the way, can claim tax relief on monies put into the Society.

It's encouraging and pleasing to know that there are people who want to put something back into their community and are prepared to help small local businesses survive and thrive. What a pity it is that this attitude and model is not more widespread.

Visible Commercial Clout

I have many times over the last couple of years pointed out that large companies can afford to dictate their own terms and that some of them do, and that attempts by suppliers to resist or override those terms tends to result in those suppliers being 'delisted' or otherwise penalised.

Over the last month or so, I have twice seen large company commercial clout in action - and it was a graphic illustration of the possible (and in one case very likely!) 'knock-on' effect of trying to impose terms on a very powerful customer.

E. LeClerc is a huge company that owns supermarkets and hypermarkets all over France. They are hugely popular, and sell practically everything - including, in some locations, holidays - so I was surprised, when I went shopping at our local branch of LeClerc recently, to find so very few of the major brands of butter on offer. Or at least, I was surprised until I saw the notice on the cooler cabinet that explained that some brands - unnamed - were not available because they did not comply with LeClerc's pricing policy.

I am very fond of nice butter, but in France most butter is very nice; I was quite happy to buy one of the brands on offer rather than the brand I would normally buy - and so, I suspect, were hundreds of thousands of other people all over France, a percentage of whom will stick with the new brand rather than going back to the old one.

The butter suppliers' dispute with LeClerc over pricing may well be resolved in due course - just as Intermarché recently resolved its dispute over the price of bread with the Harrys Group - but loss of 'brand loyalty' means that damage to suppliers will amount to far more than a short-term financial hiccup.

EU Late Payment Rules to be Fast Tracked

On the 20th of October last year, the European Union voted in favour of a new Directive intended to combat late payment in commercial transactions within the Union. This Directive will replace the existing Directive (2000/35/EC).

The Government recently stated its intention of "fast tracking" this Directive into UK law a year early - a reliable and welcome indication that the coalition is taking the persistent (and all too prevalent) problem of late payment and its impact on SMEs and the economy as a whole very seriously. The question remains, though, whether the new legislation will succeed in ensuring that suppliers are paid on time for the goods and services they provide - which is exactly what the existing Directive (2000/35/EC) was intended - and has failed - to achieve.

Recent research among UK accountants revealed that late payment remains an issue for 63% of accountants' clients. Very significantly, almost 46% of those clients had seen large customers forcibly extend payment terms.

Philip King, the CEO of the Institute of Credit Management, has emphasised in the past that it is important not to over-simplify the late payment issue as one of big business being bad, and smaller businesses being 'the downtrodden masses' because late payment is a problem across the board, and I thoroughly agree with him.

I cannot agree, however, that any amount of 'better professional credit management advice' is going to address the most worrying aspect of the late payment problem - the climate of fear that effectively undermines any attempt to solve the problem by whatever means.

The new legislation allows suppliers to complain of treatment that is effectively illegal, but (like the original legislation) provides no protection for whistle-blowers. Commercially savvy suppliers will certainly continue to suffer in silence rather than pursue a course that would result in their being 'delisted' by large and powerful customers.

Large companies can afford to dictate their own terms; some of them do, and attempts by small suppliers to resist or override those terms tends to result in those suppliers being 'delisted'. Commercially savvy suppliers will therefore continue to suffer in silence and accept any terms that are imposed upon them rather than face the risk of being 'delisted'.

The late payment problem has been around for a very long time. This is not the first attempt to legislate it out of existence, and I fear it won't be the last. What's really required is a shift in the moral climate. Could be a long time coming.

Mr. Maude: I Don't Know Whether to Say Wake Up or Dream On

Back from a long, peaceful and news-less holiday, I'm playing catch up - and reading the sort of news that makes me wish I could have stayed forever in a Times-less and internet-free space.

According to the July 20th issue of Business Credit Management Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude has warned 'prime contractors'- by which he means large and powerful corporate entities - that Government Departments will "name and shame" those that are failing to pay small businesses promptly.

Mr. Maude has also apparently promised - and I am quoting from Business Credit Management's article here in case you think I am still on holiday, asleep and dreaming - that "Small companies will be able to anonymously identify sluggish payers, with the results published on the Cabinet Office website."

Mr. Peter Ewen, the Managing Director of Venture Finance and Chairman of the International Factors Group apparently thought Mr. Maude's proposition an excellent idea. I am happy to say that Mr. Philip King, the Chief Executive of the Institute of Credit Management, did not. His reasons are set out very cogently here and very glad I was to read them, since they proved to me that at least one person is in touch with reality.

We all know that, in Mr. Ewen's words "many SMEs are buckling under financial pressure caused by rising supplier costs and late payment from large, corporate customers", and we have all known that for a very long time. We all know, too - as apparently Mr. Maude does not - that laws, initiatives and Codes notwithstanding, no small supplier will under any circumstances shop a powerful customer to anyone at all for any reason at all, because anonymity is a doubtful proposition, and the consequences of whinging and whistle-blowing have been made all too clear to them, all too often.

I have said many times that I do not know the answer to this problem, and I regret to say that I am beginning to believe that there isn't one. Nice try, Mr. Maude, but no cigar.

HM Revenue & Customs is Creating a Graveyard

The Government needs money, and - as governments always have - it is looking to find it by raising or collecting taxes. Consequently, H.M. Revenue and Customs is taking an increasingly hard line all round in an effort to collect tax that it believes is owed - and actually, truth to tell, probably is owed.

The most visible result of the 'hard line' taken by HRMC is the increase in the number of Winding-up Petitions it has issued in the second quarter of this year.

HRMC was always a very good customer of the Court Service when it came to issuing Winding-up Petitions - as anyone can testify who has ever stood (as I certainly have!) in the issuing queue behind them - and in a very good economic climate that might not have been a very good thing, but it was at least an acceptable thing. At the moment, however, HMRC seems to be intent on excelling itself in this and every other area, and I wonder whether, given the present economic climate, that might not be a very bad thing indeed. I certainly find it a doubtful proposition.

Would it not be more sensible to allow companies facing 'critical' financial problems more time to pay? Would it not be more sensible to demand less tax from those companies for the time being so as to allow them to trade their way out of their problems and keep their employees, rather than sending potentially viable and vibrant businesses to the graveyard and creating further employment? Would it not be more sensible, in fact, to have a more flexible tax system?

According to Begbies Traynor's Red Flag Alert Report worst-hit sectors are travel and tourism, hotels, and general retailers. Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I believe that the UK has been living on those particular golden eggs for years now.

So tell me, where's the percentage in winding up the Geese?

HMRC - Intelligence Gathering Must Not be Allowed to Become Rat Hunting

HMRC recently offered a partial amnesty to businesses working in the plumbing trade. It seems to have been a profitable exercise, because HMRC now says that it will be 'inviting' other groups of tradespeople to come forward and declare unpaid tax.

Specifically, sometime between now and next year, HMRC is going to begin to take a closer look at e-marketplaces and people who provide private tuition and coaching.

Targets will be people who use e-marketplaces (like, for example e-bay) to buy or sell goods as a trade or business and fail to pay tax on the proceeds, and professionals who are in a position to earn money by providing tuition and coaching (either as a main or secondary income) in cash and on, as it were, 'the black'.

HMRC's Director of Risk and Intelligence said that HMRC wanted 'the views and experience of people and organisations outside his department to play a fuller part in the campaigns we design for customers', and hoped that it would be possible to maximise the 'exchange of information'.

He added that HMRC would use the information it gathered to pursue people who chose 'not to use the opportunities provided for them to put their affairs in order on the best possible terms'.

I have no objection to HMRC looking for the money it is owed in taxes. It has a right to do so, and it is right to do so.

I do, though, find it very objectionable indeed that a spokesman for a UK Government Department feels that it is right to invite people (however obliquely) to snitch on their service providers, friends and neighbours. Sadly, there are people who will see that invitation purely and simply as an opportunity to make life difficult for other people, and it is therefore to be hoped that HMRC staff will be able to sort the wheat from the chaff when those nasty little calls start to come in - as I have no doubt they will.

As a timely reminder to anyone who needs it: many an unpleasant regime has been built upon and perpetuated by encouraging (or, indeed, forcing!) its citizens to snitch on each other. Theirs is not an example we should wish to follow.

Geoff - http://www.metlissbarfield.com

Beware of EU Regulation Cookie Cutters

Cookies are little pieces of code that many websites automatically install on site visitors’ computers in order to recognise and remember site visitor log-in details, browsing history, and ordering information, and allow users to navigate their site pages efficiently.They are also used by analytics software that monitors website usage, and third party advertising - like Google’s Ad Sense, for example.

Whether or not any given site user accepts cookie installation from any given website is up to the user, because whilst most modern browsers support cookies, they also allow users to disable or otherwise deal with them. Common options are:

To enable or disable cookies completely, so that they are always accepted, or always blocked.

To allow the user to see the cookies that are active with respect to a given page by typing javascript: alert (document.cookie) in the browser URL field.

To use a browser that incorporates a 'cookie manager' which allows the user to see and selectively delete cookies currently stored in the browser. (Internet Explorer, incidentally, only allows third-party cookies that are accompanied by (Compact Policy) field by default).

To use a browser that allows a full wipe of private data including all the cookies (most browsers do).

To purchase an add-on tool to manage cookies.

Nevertheless – thanks to a recent update to the EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations - it is now technically illegal for UK websites to install cookies on a user’s computer without first seeking the user’s conscious consent despite the fact that users are capable of protecting their own privacy should they so wish. The fine for non-compliance can be anything up to £500,000.

The legislation came into force on May 26 last and – surprise, surprise – no one is quite sure how it is going to work in practice.

The Information Commissioners Office, which is the body that will police the Regulations, has said that if it receives a complaint, it will give the website owner ‘up to one year’ to comply with the legislation, but obviously if your website uses cookies, you will need to get in touch with your website designer or developer and work out a method of obtaining the required consent from users as quickly as you can. It may be possible in the future to rely on the user’s browser settings to indicate consent – the Government is discussing the legislation with browser manufacturers – but it isn’t possible to do that now, and may not become possible in the usefully short term.

Geoff - http://www.metlissbarfield.com

Reporting Internet Porn

The trouble with having the sort of internet presence that nearly everyone seems to feel is essential for SMEs these days is that spam forms part of the 'high profile' package.

Most of the time it's fairly harmless stuff - lots of pharmaceutical aids to a short and happy life, a fake designer watch or two and the odd offer of a life-changing degree from a non-existent university make up my normal daily spam sandwich - that isn't worth reporting to any one of the many places that it can be reported to. Sometimes, though, spam arrives that is so fundamentally unpleasant that it needs to reported to the proper authority as soon as possible.

On Tuesday last, and for the first time ever, I received an e-mail advertising internet pornography. One of the items on offer - and it was only one item on a very lengthy list - was 'underage sex', for which, of course, read 'child abuse'. I've had five similar messages since so 'Metliss Barfield' is obviously on somebody's list somewhere.

I reported the original e-mail immediately to the Internet Watch Foundation by filling in their on-line form, and received a swift acknowledgement full of good advice as to what to do should you receive something like this - or even, alas, other things that seemed to be me to be even worse.

Reporting this e-mail took seconds. If you receive one like it, please take a few seconds to make a report. I realise that it is easier to dump the e-mail in the trash and try to forget about it, but that isn't going to make the internet (or in fact the real world) a safer place for children or other vulnerable individuals.

Geoff - http://www.metlissbarfield.com

Sign up to Get Britain Trading

Get Britain Trading is a new campaign which aims to raise awareness of the contribution that SMEs make to the UK economy and improve the conditions under which all SMEs are forced to operate. It calls for changes to be made that would allow SMEs to prosper - and, of course, to grow, and employ and/or train people - and therefore it's obviously something that's worth supporting.

In order to make sure that the campaign has the maximum impact and achieves the desired results, the Forum of Private Business, which has launched the campaign, needs as many SMEs as possible to support the campaign and its aims by going to Get Britain Trading , and signing up to the 'Get Britain Trading' pledge.

Signing up takes seconds - actually, signing up, downloading the logo you can see on the left of this blog, and putting it into place took me, an admitted IT idiot, less than a minute.

Anyone who puts in an e-mail address - and I did - will get a free guide giving practical and expert advice on common small business issues like bank lending, late payment and cost reduction. You may feel that you know at least one of those issues so well that the last thing you need is a free guided tour around something you never want to see again in this or any other life, but the fact is that we all need the changes that the campaign could bring about, and so you owe it to yourself and everyone else to take the time to take the pledge.

Do it now here .

So Barclays Isn't Into Magic After All

Several banks promised to make funds available to SMEs as part of 'Project Merlin' in order to promote economic growth. Barclays was one of them.

Unfortunately, and even as Barclays was promising the Chancellor that it would boost loans to small firms this year, the Bank advised customers with turnovers of less than £5m a year that it would no longer provide them with asset finance - money that would enable them to buy machinery, office equipment, and vehicles. In effect, having committed to give more credit, the Bank withdrew essential lines of credit from thousands of its existing customers.

A spokesperson for Barclays stated that clients who could no longer rely on the Bank for asset finance could still 'tap the bank for alternative sources of finance such as working capital loans, overdrafts and term finance through loans and commercial mortgages' - which all sound like very expensive options to me.

Frankly,my advice to SMEs who have been using Barclays is to take their custom somewhere else - preferably to an organisation that is prepared to live up to the commitment it made to the Chancellor, and has a real interest in promoting economic growth in the UK.

Project Merlin - £76bn Available in Loans to SMEs

If you were attending to George Osborne on the 9th of February, you'll know all about Project Merlin - and if you weren't and don't, then you can find out all about it by visiting Real Business and reading Carryn Dewing's article, which you'll find under 'Finance'.

Once you've done that, though, you might want to visit the Forum of Private Business , where you'll find that Phil Orford, the CEO of the FPB, has raised a very interesting question about the pledges made by the Banks as part of Project Merlin. Mr. Orford wants to know how the banks intend to increase the flow of credit to smaller businesses by 15% if, as they claim, demand for lending is down and applications are running at an 80% acceptance rate - which is exactly what I've been wondering myself.

As the Bank of England is going to be acting as watchdog to ensure that loans are being made available to businesses under Project Merlin, though - and particularly as honouring the commitment to provide credit to business is now going to be one of the performance targets used to determine bank CEO's bonuses! - I'm pretty sure that the answer to Mr. Orford's question will be revealed to all of us very soon.

Mr. Orford, in the meantime, believes that in order to fulfil their commitment to lend more, the banks are going to need to cut down on sector-based discrimination, be less punitive on viability assessments and more pro-active in securing up-to-date financial information from their clients and - very importantly - be prepared to communicate clearly what key assessment criteria are so that applications are more compliant with the lender's needs. I believe that he's right, but whether any of these modern miracles will come to pass is more than I can say.

Mr. Orford also had a message for all SMEs, and I think it's more than worthwhile passing it on: "... the banks," he said, " have committed to lend more. Test them on their commitment and get your applications in."

Good advice!

The Reason You Are Not Getting Is Because You Are Not Asking?

According to recent information provided to the Bank of England by its network of regional agents, credit conditions are almost back to normal for larger firms, but smaller businesses are still finding it hard to secure bank lending - which will not, of course, be any great surprise to anyone who is trying to run a small business.

What was particularly interesting to me about the Bank of England's Report was the fact that it indicated that a proportion of smaller firms had given up hope of persuading banks to lend to them and had therefore ceased to ask for credit , and that it was that factor that was confirming the banking community in its belief that the demand for business credit was weakening.

Frankly, I believe that the demand for business credit would be seen to be stronger than ever were small businesses to be actively encouraged by the banking community to apply for credit - as opposed to being actively discouraged and all too frequently refused funds by organisations that were profligate and greedy in the past, and are now making up for it by being altogether too parsimonious.

Wrong Dogs, Mr Cameron!

Well, HMRC is to set its rottweilers to chase SME rabbits later this year - but the wolves at the Insolvency Service have had their teeth drawn.

The Insolvency Services' budget was cut last year to just over £4,000 per case - a ridiculous figure given the work involved in managing even an average run-of-the-mill insolvency - and 400 jobs at the already under-resourced service are due to disappear very soon.

So tell me, who is now going to pursue the jackals - the Directors who deserve to be disqualified, and who (in the absence of a well-funded and committed watchdog) will likely be free to evade taxes, significantly fail to keep accurate or proper records, run business after business into the ground and retard economic recovery simply because they are clever enough to manipulate the system?

We certainly need to make cuts in public expenditure - but I can't help thinking that the Government has sent the wrong dogs to the dentist on this particular occasion.

The Insolvency Service has never been a popular body - an icy-eyed, slavering Governmental wolf is a hard sell - but the fact is that we need a strong, committed, well-funded involvency service that is capable of regulating the business community, because, sadly, there will always be people who deserve, one chilly, chilling mornng, to explain themseves to an icy-eyed, slavering, Governmental wolf.

The Ultimate in Brass Neck

Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs is planning to cast its eagle eye on small businesses tax payments and record keeping later this year. It will be looking for what it calls 'significant record keeping failures' and (of course!) unpaid taxes. Fines for either default could exceed £3,000.00.

The Forum of Private Business has, as usual, come up with some very good advice, and you can read it by going to 'News' on their site.

In the meantime, I think I have to say that coming from a Government Department whose 'significant record keeping failures' resulted in the very recent past in large numbers of people having to find - suddenly, unexpectedly, and immediately - comparitively large sums of money in order to rectify the errors of HMRC employees is surely the ultimate in brass neck.

The fact is that the tax system is now such an impenetrable maze that it baffles the people who are supposed to administer it. The Forum of Private Business and its members are calling for various reforms, including a major root-and-branch simplification of the system to make it easier for small businesses to negotiate their tax responsibilities.

I would call for a major root-and-branch simplification of the system to make it easier for everyone to negotiate their tax responsibilities. I would also call for 'accountability for error' to apply to HMRC and its employees rather than just to the rest of us. And whilst we're about changing the behemoth that HMRC has become into the public servant it is supposed to be, compulsory training for all HMRC employees in communication, public relations, and customer service would not come amiss...

Come Tweet With Us

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that hardly a day went by without somebody sending me an e-mail or an article about social media and how to use it. Today it was my wifes' hosting companys' turn.

The subject line of the e-mail read 'Embrace Social Media in 2011', and the text went on to advise us that Twitter has 200 million users, and that smart businesses know that Tweeting isn't a passing fad, which we already knew. The article attached to the e-mail, though, was very interesting indeed, and you can find it at Hostway's Web Resources Page.

This particular article happens to be about Tweeting, but there's a search box at the top of the page called 'What Do You Want to Learn About'. I typed in 'blogging' and got an initial list of ten interesting and informative places to go. Definitely a site to put into 'favourites'!

Can't Be Bothered With Social Media? Don't See the Point? Might Be Time for a Re-Think.

Apparently, a lot of SMEs can't be bothered with social media and don't see the point of getting involved with it or using it - and quite a few others have stuck a toe in the water and found it too cold for comfort. In fact, a recent poll of 5,800 of its members by the Federation of Private Business pulled up some very negative responses to questions about the use (and usefulness!) of social media to SMEs.

Which leads me to ask: how many SMEs have taken the trouble to learn how to use social media properly and to their own best advantage?

I appreciate, of course, that learning (and then using!) something completely new takes time - and as an SME myself I understand that every day is crammed with essential tasks, and that squeezing something else into an already over-crowded twenty-four hours isn't a pleasant prospect. But I also see that social media has become such a vital marketing tool for SMEs that there are an ever-growing number of websites and seminars dedicated to teaching them how to use it.

One of those websites is Social Media for Small Business . It isn't the only place to go to learn about social media and its advantages, but it's a free place to start to have re-think about what you might achieve by taking advantage of technology.

Your WWW - Forget the Bells and Whistles

Some people's websites are works of art, and I love looking at them and exploring them. The problem is that the message often gets lost in the flash and the pictures and the sheer artistry of it all, and finding the information that I actually want sometimes becomes so difficult that I eventually give up and go and look for it somewhere else.

In fact, quite a lot of websites that I look at these days remind me of a television advertisement that was shown over and over many years ago. It featured a tiger racing across sand dunes, and it was an extraordinarily beautiful piece of photography of an extraordinarily beautiful animal. It was intended, of course, to induce people to buy one brand of petrol rather than another. The difficulty lay in remembering what the product was, never the mind the brand, once the image of the cat had gone from the screen but was stuck in your head...

The whole point of having a website is to inform other people of whom you are, what your product or service is, how they can get hold of you or it, and how quickly.

Keep your website simple stupid. Bells and whistles are wonderful, but they do tend to be distracting.

WWW - Not Really Such A Big Place

When I was talking to various people about websites (and asking them why they hadn't got one!) quite a lot of them said they didn't feel that getting a website was worth the effort because the internet was too big a place for a small firm to make any impact.

That isn't really true. In fact the internet is a much harder nut to crack for a large firm looking to do business internationally than it is for a small firm looking to do business locally.

Small businesses can take advantage of Business Listings, Business Directories and town sites that offer free advertising to local shops and service providers - and obviously it's worthwhile tracking down free advertising opportunities.

Small firms can also make their internet world a lot smaller by choosing a domain name that specifically states what they do and where they are - like 'plumberatcirencester.co.uk', for example, which was in fact available when I checked it this morning, just in case you happen to be a plumber in Circencester who's looking to get a website started!

Obviously there are things that you need to do when you're building your site to ensure that search engines find it, but if you are building your site with your hosts' on-line tools, you'll find lots of advice available as to how to do that easily and advantageously in your hosts' 'help' section.

WWW your Company the Easy Way

The easiest (and cheapest!) way to begin to build an on-line profile for your Company (or yourself) is to look for a reliable one-stop-shop - somewhere you can buy a domain name and a hosting package, and use the host's own templates and on-line tools to design your site and publish it.

There are quite a few hosting companies around that will allow you to do all of those things, but Fasthosts is a good place to begin to find out what you can get and for how much - particularly as they are offering 50% off hosting packages for six months and a free UK domain at the moment. You'll also be able to see examples of the sort of templates, tools and add-ons that the Fasthosts 'Sitebuilder' service can provide.

By shopping around, you might find even cheaper options - but make sure that the host you propose using offers adequate support. Fasthosts does - 24/7 on-line and telephone support comes as standard with every hosting package.

I don't incidentally, use Fasthosts myself at the moment - but I might well change my mind!

Make a Resolution to Get Noticed!

Just lately I can't seem to open my in-box without finding something new about social media and its usefulness and importance to SMEs - and if social media isn't on the menu that day, articles about web awareness and internet technology are nearly always there instead.

I'm not surprised. The internet offers huge opportunities for any business to sell its products or services, promote itself, raise its profile and stand out from the crowd, and any number of people have a vested interest in making sure that as many unconverted or unconvinced people as possible know that. What does surprise me, though, is that many SMEs don't seem to be taking advantage of powerful promotional tools that can very cheap or cost nothing but time.

I began to think about that initially last October, when the Forum of Private business published the results of a referendum themed around electronic technology and smaller firms. 5,800 business owners took part, and the results astonished me.

Only 58% of the people polled used social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter - and only 7% of those people thought them very useful. 19% of of people polled did not have a website and a fifth only communicated with customers and suppliers through 'traditional' means.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of small businesses operating in the UK, and I couldn't help wondering whether those percentages would hold true overall, or whether - as I suspect would be the case - a country-wide referendum would paint an even less technologically optimistic picture.

I also began to wonder why so many people were having such poor experiences with social media - or were avoiding experiencing it at all - and why so many people were not bothering to get a website, which has to be the cheapest and most efficient form of paid advertising ever invented.

Having asked around, I found that people were worried about taking on a project that they perceived as being difficult and potentially expensive - which is a pity, because putting together a successful web presence for any small business is a relatively easy and inexpensive project if you are prepared to spend some time doing things yourself. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be explaining how I did it, and how much it cost me to do it. In the meantime:

Happy New Year!