The NI changes are going to cost my organisation £1000 per employee

I’m so sorry to hear that, you must be so worried. Why not sell the business and walk away from it?

He nearly did drop dead on Monday this week. I dont understand his world well enough or the technology to take it over quickly. We need to pay a really good person the going rate for running a complicated business, and to find one that's trustable, is not going to happen.

Which is exactly why lockdowns and furlough should be regrettable

Actually @Blossomtoes, some people would be very hard to replace. I know you are not being awkward for the sake of it. He's not indispensable but we've spent 10 years looking for a replacement and we are still looking. There isn't a £100k payday on the table, frankly.

Yeah exactly. Care homes is a good point.

The care industry struggles to recruit and retain staff, so making it more expensive to employ workers is surely going to be a negative for them? How will this help a labour shortage?

Spot on @Paul2023.

Many care homes and social care charities are on fixed contracts with statutory providers. They can't increase their charges.

Recruitment will be an ever worsening issue. Standards of care will reduce. CQC will be revelling in a flurry of 'inadequate' inspections.

Homes will close.

Social care sector charities will close.

The very sector that holds the NHS up.

The whole health & social care sector is in a more precarious position than ever before. When it fails, God help us all.

The current tax take is the highest it's been in many, many years. Something has to pay for Covid.

DH would like to retire but doing so will seriously compromise an aspect of military capability. So he hasn't. I am not exagerating.

I’m really trying not to be unpleasant but if he dropped dead an alternative would have to be found. Nobody’s indispensable.

In 1992, in a big recession, aged about 35, both DH and I went self employed, pre-kids. The economy hauled around thanks to Kenneth Clarke, and Tony Blair won the 1997 election on the measures KC had inititated. As new businesses, one creative and one in engineering, we worked every single hour we could. In 1995 I worked all the way through Christmas Day and Boxing Day so the executives at xxxxx company could read over and comment on my work on Dec 28 so an update could be produced by Dec 29.

Eventually, life stopped being stupid, and it all worked for a while.

@Blossomtoes, DH would like to retire but doing so will seriously compromise an aspect of military capability. So he hasn't. I am not exagerating.

I think I understand business ok , cheers. But this particular poster doesn't stick to rules of normal English parsing.

Maybe they're just too old. I dunno.

Can you make sense of their word spaghetti?

Which services would you like reducing? From what we see public services need a huge investment whether it be housing, social care, emergency services, health, schools

Which services would you dispense with?

I would rather we had fewer public services and much lower taxes but the high tax big spending Tories and the Labour party too do not offer us that choice.

It’s ok not to understand business @HotTopicsWithImogen most people who don’t run a business don’t!

It feels a really long time that I’ve been reading your posts, surely it’s time to activate your exit strategy and retire? You’ve spent a lifetime building that business, isn’t it time to drop the rope and enjoy the fruits of your labour? I’m a couple of years older than you and acutely aware of running out of road, don’t waste your remaining active, healthy years. Nobody ever died wishing they’d spent more time at work.

Yeah you're right she won't read this. If only there was some other way for titans of industry to be heard.

Rachel Reeves probably won't read this, but I would not start any business in the UK under this government.

I'm sorry but I honestly don't understand what you're saying. Can you break it down at all?

At 69, with our working days done and our risks taken, you know (the ones that asked you to put your home on the line at 35 against the money you were borrowing to start a new business), I probably view risk differently to you. IMO, the greatest risk now is political.

(and neither are you, you sad fantasist)

It all sounds very simplistic to me. But then I'm not a titan of industry.

Well if businesses are going to survive a large increase in costs, they have to do something don’t they? Better to cut costs than go under and everyone lose out.

It’s a shame, life is about to get a lot harder for employees

Yeah, they've had it really good up till now. The UK is famed for it. Milk & honey etc.

I think you'd find the switch to Argentina to be quite challenging as a business owner, medical conversations aside.

We will not be hiring this year is, I fear, going to be the big message that goes out from smaller companies.

I know MN loves Labour now, but I don't think you will by December 2025. I predict a rush for Reform. I actually quite fancy retirement in Argentina right now, but my Spanish isn't up to the detailed medical conversations I've had to have this week. So that's curtailed the options.

Our business is very different to Ozgirls, because we are industrial. But there will be no new jobs in 2025.