That means he should admit defeat and walk away. A good businessman knows when it is time to quit but the trouble is that Gordon Brown is not a good businessman. All SME owners will be hoping and praying that David Cameron gets his legitimate place at 10 Downing Street and we can start fixing things and cuttign corporation tax and creating jobs.

As a fan of The Apprentice I was intrigued to see that Sir Alan was joining the losing “Team Brown”. For a man with gut instinct it means one of two possibilities – Sir Alan believes that Mr Brown is going to recover or his gut instinct is telling him that it’s the fastest way to a peerage. But the big mystery is – did he consult with Margaret or Nick?

An accountant colleague of mine is fond of repeating the mantra he tells clients. ” If it’s not in writing it didn’t happen”. Sound advice indeed. I wonder how the threat of having one’s phone calls intercepted changes this ? Nothing beats a face to face meeting!

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!