Election 2010, with all the live debates, bickering and electioneering, has resulted in a ‘Hung Parliament’. The press has been warning us of the dangers of a Hung Parliament, and the Politicians have been telling us to tactically vote in order to prevent it from happening. It seems, however, that the General Public have been unable to come to a clear conclusion about which party should rule our country.

So, what is a Hung Parliament? In Great Britain we have a ‘First Past the Post’ political system, meaning that the country is divided in to various constituencies, each of which holds a seat in parliament. In order to have a majority government, a political party must hold 326 of these seats in the houses of parliament. A Hung Parliament occurs when a political party, whilst still holding more seats that the other parties, fails to reach an overall majority by holding the 326 seats that are required.

In the event of a ‘Hung Parliament’ there can be a coalition formed between the current government and other minority parties, or the political party with the most seats can form a minority government. Neither of these solutions is good for the country; a coalition government works on bargaining and deals, where as a minority government, as they hold a minority in the Houses of Parliament, will struggle to have policies passed.

Both of these solutions can create instability for the country, and weaken us economically. Fiscally, our International credit rating would drop in either situation, and in an uncertain climate the impact of this is so far, unknown. In reality, very little change may happen within the country as there is no clear majority within Parliament. A coalition government is somewhat more stable, with more powers to pass policies, and works successfully in countries like New Zealand.

What is to come for Great Britain in the wake of this General Election is unknown until it becomes clear where our leaders will go next. BBC News declared this as a “time of uncertainty” and we, as a country need nothing more than certainty right now. I am deeply concerned about the impact that this election result will have on small businesses. At this time we all need to pull together, offer advice and support and keep focused on our business goals.

The results from the first quarter of 2009 are now in and it appears that the main problem affecting UK small businesses is the fall in consumer demand, experienced by 64% of SMEs. Surprisingly, only 25% of them felt that their access to finance has been affected by the downturn. 

The other main effects of the poor economy were issues concerning suppliers and trade credit (14%) or having to shed key staff and deal with morale problems (13%). 

Falling demand has hurt businesses the most in the West Midlands (75% affected) and the least in Scotland (only 56%). Welsh businesses were also hit badly (65%), along with those in East Anglia (71%) and the North (62%). 

The main side-effect of the fall in demand has been reduced cashflow and delayed payment of bills, resulting in small firms usually being owed more by their customers than they owe suppliers. 

According to Professor Robin Jarvis, head of ACCA’s small business unit, this recession is quite different to 1991 in that “business are now much more concerned about falling demand and are relatively less concerned about the availability of finance.” He suggests the Government should therefore be focusing on stimulating consumer demand to hasten our economic recovery. 

Tip of the hat to the ACCA for providing this information 

Here are some of my favourite small business blog posts from around the world by some of my favourite small business blogs:

• Web Worker Daily writes about finding work on the web, could not be more topical if you tried in these times. Samuel talks about ’sideline jobs’, or what I call a business ‘on the side’.
• Shama has one of my favorites this week with ‘101 Ways to Rock and Be Rocked by Twitter’ – I was rocked – great post if you ever wanted to know what twitter is all about.
• Small Biz Labs has a wonderful collection of links around coworking, ever wanted to work in an office and take your kids to work every day, then have a look.
• Tom Lindstrom has also some useful information about twitter, a little video on how to set up a professional profile, I did have a look.
• Teresa Morrow – eMoms at Home – gives you five ways to cannibalize your business. Go and read and then chew it up.
• Worst Economic Crisis Since The Great Depression: Who’s To Blame? This is a long rant, but it is a good rant.
• Can I Start A Business? – John has taken to answering questions of his readers, the way to go.
• Jason talks about who small business owners trust more their accountants or their bank managers? Go on – have a guess.
• Kathie is wondering if she is becoming a hermit? Last time we meet, she wasn’t!

That is it for this week, next week I’ll let you know again what I found and liked in the small business blogging scene. To all my American readers ‘Happy Thanksgiving’. — ST.

I read some good articles last week and want to share them with you here:

• Web Worker Daily has a business example of a 100% Online We Consulting Firm, as I hope a growing trend.
• Jason Holden follows one of my favorite themes in Online accountant and online accounting?.
• Shama Hyder, apart from getting me onto twitter, has a great interview with TheFreeLanceNation.com.
• Wendy Piersall is telling all us bloggers how to monetize your blog, in nine different ways.
• The Digerati Life blog will let you know How To Safely Borrow For A House Purchase, as the US House votes to license mortgage brokers.
• John Jantsch has two pieces I liked – How to SCORE some seriously good start-up help AND NYC doing small business right.

That is my little round-up for this week and your weekend. I hope you will enjoy some of these links, and undoubtedly you will find more great stuff while following these links. Let me know if you find anything I should mention here. ST.

After a long night at the AccountancyAge Awards 2007, I’m very happy to announce that Goodman-Jones have won the prestigious award for “Best use of Internet: Practice” again, for the second year running. It has to be said it was a close race with the other two contenders for the title. It was nice to meet Phil Woodgate and some of his colleagues again.

My conversations of the evening have been focused around my changing attitude toward the accounting profession, and I was quite surprised to find that most of my conversation partners agreed with me on my assessment of the “backward looking profession” and it’s damaging effect on very small business, which has been a constant source of concern for me in the past few years. Hence WinWeb’s complete change in it’s way to market. I had no idea that my views on this are so well known in the profession – with obvious little effect, of cause – which kind of proves my point.

The attraction of the evening was Boris Johnson – hopefully our new mayor for London, I certainly wish him every success – with his as usual very “eloquently” put points about the state London is in. Having had the pleasure to hear him speak, make his points, there is no question in my mind, that he is the right man for the job. Some of you might say, “that is not difficult, after what Ken Livingstone has done in the past years”! While that is true, I feel we would get back to some sensible ideas, like our London buses, what was wrong with the route master busses(?), or why is Ken spending Londoners money on a space program?

Although, Boris was not that dismissive about the space program, since it included the possibility of shooting Ken into space, clearly one of the more “realistic” policies Boris would follow, if voted into office! IMO, his manifesto is getting better and better. That is of cause if we are talking about a one-way ticket to ride, Boris?

I for one, would prefer to live in London, where we can get up in the morning with a smile on our faces, about a serious point made the “Boris Way”, rather than being embarrassed and upset by an intolerable and arrogant Mayor, who clearly does not understand even the basics of the problems we face in the future, a trait he shares with many in his party, especially when it comes to micro- and small business issues.

All in, I enjoyed last evening immensely and thank AccountancyAge for putting up a great show. ST.

Jennifer Lee emailed me yesterday, to tell me about this event:

“Hello Stefan, I’m writing to let you know that Senator John Kerry, Chair of the U.S. Senate on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, will be live online tomorrow, Nov. 14 at 4 p.m. ET, to take questions from small business owners on Slate.com. He’ll answer questions on health care, tax incentives, entrepreneurial development and other small business issues. …..”

Since I’m otherwise engaged today, I will miss this event too – but the good news is you don’t have to.

You can submit questions to him, so get involved. ST.

WinWeb is to sponsor the Accountancy Age Award 2007 in the category: Best use of Internet in Practice for the second year. The event is held as last year at the Battersea Park Arena, Battersea, London, in the evening on November 14th, 2007.

This award is the most appropriate award for us to sponsor, since – incredibly – we are still the only online accounting software provider, with an ICAEW approval. It is two years since we first received our accreditation. It is surprising to me that not more accreditations have been made so far, the world is moving online. In accountancy the world is probably turning a bit slower, that makes these awards even more important.

Last year our friends at Goodman-Jones won the price, it will be interesting to see who will win it this year, especially as Goodman Jones is shortlisted again:

• BRAL
• Goodman Jones
• Morris Owen

I wish all the shortlisted candidates good luck and thank those who are not on the list for their great attempts to win the award and hope they will try again next year.

Yours truly will be presenting the award and I look forward to meeting one or two of you at the event. Should be a great night. ST.

Last week I received an invitation from ZANA Network to be their guest at the first ever small and medium business Global Export Summit in Washington, D.C.

For me the main topic is:

“….. US small and medium business under representation in the global marketplace; risk-mitigating resources for small and medium businesses and the economic impact and even reduction of the U.S. trade deficit derived from global participation by small and medium businesses. “

So, should you be in D.C. on the November 14th, the summit will take place from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Reagan Building, you can register for free. Members of the U.S. government and different departments are there and you can make your voice heard. Which would be a good thing, since most politicians need help with understanding some of the basics about small business. There is also a great line-up of companies wanting to help those, who are interested in exporting.

We used to have separate products called ExportOffice and GlobalOffice, which were especially designed for the very small exporting business, but we learned in time, that our OnlineOffice provided all the needed components as well, so we simply-fied our product offering in this regard.

I will not be there since WinWeb sponsors an award at the UK Accountancy Age Awards, Best use of Internet in Practice, I’m committed to present the award in person. But, I’m sending an colleague of mine, Mr. Göran Thorell – should you be around, go and find him and talk to him about your exporting ideas, I’ll be blogging about the Global Export Summit again, after the event.

I would have loved to go, since I firmly believe the small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtusal assistants is highly under represented in the global market place.

Opportunities are everywhere, you just need to see them. ST.

Disclosure: All travel arrangements for this event for my colleague are being paid for by ZANA Network LLC.

Jason had an article about the fact that over 60% of business start-up activity comes from people aged over 50:

“….. Figures released indicate that the average ’silver startup’ will work alone and from home with an average annual turnover of £67,500, and with one in ten turning over more than £100,000. Not bad for a home based business, but imagine what you could do with business support? …”

He calls them “silver startups”, I had never heard this term before, the term I know is “Boomer Startups” – whatever it is, it is good news. We all get older and have a much healthier life in older age, so why not do something you enjoy and make a business out of it.

I agree with him, with added business support and a small business infrastructure, we could help many more entrepreneurs to be more successful in business long term.

As I said so often before, this startup boom is just getting started, we will see much more in years to come, across all age groups. ST.

U.S. Small Business Administration, the Office of Advocacy has just released the latest figures for 2004 on small business activities, and the central statement is:

Small Business has added 1.9 Million New Jobs.

Other updated profiles show that:

• In 2006, the nation had an estimated 26.8 million small businesses, of which 6.1 milion were employer firms.
• Small businesses employed 50.9 percent of the nation’s non-farm private workforce in 2004.
• America had 1.1 million Asian-owned firms, 1.2 million Black-owned firms, 1.6 million Hispanic-owned firms, 201,400 Native American-owned firms, and 28,900 Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander-owned firms in 2002 (latest data). (Note: cannot be totaled, as business owners chose multiple ethnic and racial categories).
• Women-owned firms totaled 6.5 million and generated $940.8 billion in revenues in 2002 (latest data).

“Small businesses are America’s job-creating dynamo,” said Dr. Chad Moutray, Chief Economist for the Office of Advocacy. “Clearly policy-makers need to consider their impact on small business when they are making policy decisions.”

I say – here are some civil-servance in-tune with their small business feelings. I hope our PM Gordon Brown is taking notes. ST.