I know… not a normal question for us to pose on this blog, but we have a reason for asking.
Linda has been invited to take part in a BBC TV debate on Monday and being a social media company, we thought that rather than just present our opinion, we ought to crowdsource ideas from our community.
Do you have a comment / idea / opinion on any of the following?
- Tax rates
- Red tape
- Youth/graduate unemployment
- Hiring
- Bank lending
- What’s holding the economy back?
- Exporting
- Manufacturing
- Technology infrastructure
- What should be done get things moving?
- Are things actually better than the media make out… are they at risk of talking us into another recession?
People on the panel will include politicians from all the main parties, business leaders (that’ll be us!), working families and unemployed.
Please let us know your thoughts below. We’ll try to include any relevant points if they come up in the debate.
And one last thing. The show will be recorded on Sunday evening, and broadcast on Monday 19th at 23:05 on BBC1. Follow Linda’s Twitter stream if you’d like live updates over the weekend!
Best thing to get our economy moving would be for teh government to stop taxing everything so highly ,and leave some money in our pockets ,to spend and help growth.
As a small businessman I wonder when the government became a silent partner in my business with the amount of money they want in various taxes.
We’re frequently told we’re the lifeblood of the economy… wouldn’t it be great to receive more substantitive vs. spiel support? 🙂
I’d love George Osborne’s promise to “come down like a ton of bricks” on those avoiding stamp duty [on The Andrew Marr Show this weekend] to translate into more investment in small businesses and start-ups.
In the tech start-up world, there’s a well known and significant funding gap between the US and here… via tax incentives, attitude, approach to risk/pensions… paraphrasing a wealthy UK investor – “In the UK, once you make it, you invest in property and retire to the Coltswold. In the US, it’s about what’s next, to get involved with and invest in”.
Maybe we should we start a UK campaign to “invest in businesses, not second homes”?!
I like the campaign idea! As you can probably tell I’m generally not in favour of most taxes and regulations, but a way the tax system could make a difference for a whole host of reasons is to massively penalise second home ownership – would encourage capital to flow to businesses and also make it easier for younger generation to get on the property ladder which in turn would give them more of a chance of starting a business rather than acquiring more and more debt to buy a property which hampers their ability to spend money on anything else (which also makes those at the top of the pyramid more and more wealthy off the back of their earlier property acquisitions and subsequent debt inflation of the property market).
Oh god, where to start, I will write a huge blog post on this one day!
Reduce taxes for everyone, particularly entrepreneurs and business owners. Stop making new laws and get rid of old ones, particularly as most of them hamper business and innovation and are as a result of public sector and corporate lobbying to protect failing organisations. Get out of Europe, an organisation that is run along non-democratic lines by career socialist bureaucrats who don’t have the first idea about business.
Encourage the average person with capital, i.e. those over the age of 50, to, instead of buying a second property or handing their money over to a pension fund, invest in web startups that will shape the future economy. The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme will help but the over 50’s with capital need to be educated about the internet.
Stop issuing more government debt, stop supporting and bailing out defunct banks and businesses. Privatise huge swathes of the public sector a la Maggie T and make all people ‘sing for their supper’ in a meritocratic free market system.
From the top, Cameron and Osborne need to educate themselves about social media and start using it themselves. And then shape government using social technologies. See this post about Iceland:
http://mashable.com/2012/03/15/iceland-technology/
This post by me sums up a few reasons why Cameron should be using social media: http://jonathanlea.com/why-david-cameron-has-to-use-twitter
Thanks Jonathan. Where to start indeed… Echoing what I said in Facebook, a TV newbie that has a lot to learn about how to get point across / get to the point faster – had several hours’ worth in my mind… would have been lucky to get several minutes of airtime!
First of all – well done Linda! Better, faster Internet coverage please: the hype does not meet the reality. 4G anyone? Good communications links good business.
Thanks – although not sure ‘well done’ in order given my shell shock! I was very keen to mention this, but there was no time/opportunity 🙁
Here’s CubeSocial as a broadband business case study for Hampshire County Council: http://www3.hants.gov.uk/business/property-infrastructure/broadband/business-case-study.htm
If you do tune in tonight, be warned (relieved?!) that if you blink you may miss me. Lots of interesting people and topics, so limited opportunity to get really stuck in.
One of the issues I provided intro opinions for was youth employment/IT skills shortages – if this is of interest, I will be speaking more on this, live at 07:15 tomorrow, on BBC Radio Berkshire.
Just spotted you at approx 12 mins! I think this post is relevant for politicians and BBC people when they talk about where the ‘jobs’ are going to come from: http://jonathanlea.com/how-the-internet-doesnt-create-jobs-but-leads