Monday, February 11

Our God and our Wright


''I think that a lot of employment law acts against job creation in this sector [small businesses] I know many small businesses who would like to to employ someone but darn't''. You are often confronted with huge documents of regulations. Yet if 4.5 million businesses employed one extra person, it would have a phenomenal impact, he says. 'We should be more like America, where businesses employing up to five people are exempt from a lot of the legislation' ''

The quote is from John Wright, Chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) from an interview in the 'in house' magazine 'Voice' published and dispatched to the expanding number of Federation members (currently 210,000 ) this week.

Mr Wright is right in highlighting the burdensome effect of employment laws. Indeed he should know all about the effects of the massive volume of employment law which has impacted on businesses since for many years (going back to when he was a Trade Union activist with NALGO) Chairman Wright has sat on many employment tribunals in his native northeast of England.

Though being more like America (Mr Wright means the USA) is most defiantly not on the agenda of our actual government now based in Brussels. Such a concept is not an acceptable part of the ethos of the all embracing European Union (EU). It is of course in the complex and often bewildering institutions of the EU that the UK's employment laws (and all other significant laws) originate which since 1974 British governments have dutifully implemented onto the UK's statute book.

A glance at (http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/progress/index_en.htm) the EU's web site which describes the EU’s new employment and social solidarity programme (titled PROGRESS) will confirm that the Mediterranean will freeze over before our political and bureaucratic masters in the EU (they are but one) will allow small businesses any significant (and probably none at all) concession on the ever increasing volume of EU employment regulations which, as John Wright points out, are hampering growth of small businesses in the UK.

Whilst our cousins in the USA can trust in God (and self government) we in the UK have no choice (because our Parliament so wills it) other than to trust in the EU (without the advantage of self government), a point that Mr Wright of the FSB does not mention in his interview.

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