Dissident

VoteMatch - help in decising who to vote for in the European Elections

With the current events in Westminster, you could be forgiven for not realising we are just a couple of weeks from an election.  On Thursday 4 June, voters in Britain will have a chance to elect their representatives in the European Parliament for the next five years.

Today I came across Vote Match

This tool is incredibly simple: give your opinion on thirty statements, mark which ones you consider to be particularly important or unimportant, and the website calculates where you stand in relation to the parties standing for election in your region based on their own responses to the same statements.  It's totally transparent - the website doesn't just give you a match, it explains how the calculation was made.

No doubt you are planning to cast your vote on 4th June and if like me you are somewhat unsure about which party stands for what what in these elections it might just help you make up your mind.

Have a go now. And please forward it on to all your friends and family to help them make up their minds as well.  They've tried to make this as easy for you as possible with the help of Twitter and Facebook.

On the “party choice” question at the end I suggest that you select all by skipping the page.  It means that you can compare your thoughts with all parties.  You can skip the details section at the end too.

I am reliably informed that a number of people have been very surprised by the results. For myself it helped me confirm that the party I was going to vote for, purely instinctively, does in fact have the best match to my answers to the policy questions put forward.

Mark Prisk talks about the issues of running a small business in Briatin today

As a small business owner myself, struggling under the ever increasing burden of government regulations and stultifying tax, I had a vested interest in the eCademy networking event that took place on Tuesday 15th July, where Mark Prisk MP was guest speaker.

Mark Prisk  is MP for Hertford & Stortford, Shadow Minister, Enterprise, Deregulation & Competition and Shadow Minister for Cornwall  He presented on "Running a Business in Britain Today".

As a former businessman, Mark has a wide interest in all entrepreneurial activity. He is the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on Small Business and on Freelancers, the treasurer of the all-party group on Entrepreneurship, and a trustee of the Industry Parliamentary Trust

I captured the full presentation on video (24 mins) - well worth looking at if you have the time - a mix of amusing anecdotes, worrying statistics, and maybe hope for the future. Some key points I noted:

• There are currently 3000 business support schemes in operation, managed by 2000 different public bodies at a total cost to the taxpayer (i.e. you and me) of £2.6 billion (yes...billion!)
• A recent survey revealed that 75% of these schemes have no ideas whether their money is being spent effectively - i.e. there is no measure of success.
• Only half of one percent of business owners of these schemes were satisfied with their service.
• Government does not recognise the existence of home businesses or SME's with less than 50 employees - except of course when recovering business taxes - i.e. they are simply not on the radar.

So, if these statistics are not sufficient to warrant reform of the system, I don't know what is!

See also the Doug Richard's report (he of Dragon's Den fame) on the proposals to overhaul the Government's business support system, which it describes as "complex" and "out of control".

If you want to know more about the Conservative's ideas on small business reform, check out the website. There's also a link to a nationwide survey which Mark Prisk is coordinating to see how a Conservative Government could best help SME’s. Regardless of your political persuasion, if you are a small business owner, you may as well have your say.

 

The meaning of life, the universe and everything

You may recall that the answer to the question “What is the meaning of life, the Universe and everything?” was  “42”, according to the Deep Thought Computer in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

The problem for Arther Dent and Ford Prefect was that in order to understand the answer, they first had to find out what the ‘Ultimate Question’ was.

Well, now we know. It’s clearly “how many days we should be allowed to hold a suspected terrorist without charge.”  How, this will affect the meaning of life, the universe and everything is no entirely clear, except if we were to presume that the outcome of today’s vote in Parliament resulted in defeat for the Government and the realisation that the game is up for Gordon.  Will this herald a new dawn, or will the earth cease to exist tomorrow? This is indeed a worrying time for us all!