I’m not just a company formation agent, I am also a practising accountant and trustee of a financial advice charity. I am seeing a pattern emerge where people who lose their jobs are setting up as self-employed, often working for the people who made them redundant but this time with a transfer of risk. So when the government crows that “so and so many” thousands of businesses are being set up and therefore the depression has ended, just bear this blog in mind.We don’t have to be pessimistic but a dose of realism is what we need to get out of this mess.

So the Bank of England has announced exactly what a certain company formation agent in Manchester has been saying for several months. How nice to hear. Company formation has always been an accurate economic barometer, not just because we see activity per se but because we talk to our customers and get under the skin of what is actually going on on High Street. We have a relationship with the people who keep us in business – unlike HM Goverment plc.

Water coolers are the place where office gossip abounds and views on how well the business is doing are swapped. As part of the drive to cut costs we jettisoned ours a month ago – after staff consultations of course.The tap water up here is healthier and tastier than the bottled stuff and I rink it at home as well (got rid of that water cooler nearly 2 years ago).

Nobody batted an eyelid and the new meeting place is the kitchenette.It’s a bit of a squash and harder to scuttle back to your desk when the boss walks in because there’s only one way in and one way out! The most telling part of it was that the supplier immediately offered us the machine free for 12 months. Now that’s a REAL worry!

Here at FD it’s been a wobbly few months with the old predictable days sales all over the place. Gone are the days when Monday was guaranteed to be busy and Friday slow. It all seems to depend on how confident people are feeling.

News that property prices have stabilised and people buy property companies. News of a major industrial failure and sales of engineering companies splutter to a halt.

As this sort of reaction plays out across the economy it doesn’t take much to see that without confidence we’re going nowhere fast.

And how to get confidence ? A new government would be a good first step.

When times are tough many firms mistakenly cut back on looking after their customers. My wife went to M & S recently and tried to use a credit voucher against a purchase. After 20 minutes of faffing around she was curtly advised that as the bar code had degenerated so that it was not readable they would not honour it. So we complained in writing and received a “bedbug letter” stating that the terms and conditions are quite clear, so tough luck Mrs Younger! They totally failed to apologise for the 20 minute wait in store and we wonder if they print these credits on thermal people in order that they will become illegible. Mr Younger has written back to Mark and Spencer asking why they chose to ignore part of the complaint. You would have thought that they would bend over backwards to avoid PR fiascos like this. It is petty tactics like this that make a bad situation worse. At least the flow of correspndence will divert the attention of the staff from the miserable financial news emanating from Baker Street.