Sunak's defunct SaaS scheme spent seven percent of budget designed to help 100,000 SMEs A local software subsidy scheme launched by UK PM Rishi Sunak, designed to help struggling small businesses following the pandemic, has spent less than seven percent of its £300 million budget. After last week's Spring Budget, officials from the Department for Business and Trade said initial analysis of the Help to Grow: …
From what I recall, the scheme was just about accounting software and similar generic business management stuff. It didn't include software and services that enabled anyone to actually do science and engineering.
If I were more cynical, if say it was a scheme by the government to help SMEs correctly pay their taxes to the treasury, not to actually conduct or grow their business.
It was a text book mess. The consultation was pretty much just a refusal to listen , often delegated to subcontractors with no interest in the main issues or overall design. ‘We’re doing the UI can we talk to some of your disabled people’. Literal quote. I suspect someone in HMT announced a voucher scheme and the Dept was happy as that meant they had control of the budget.
We had central government civil servants deciding what sort of software SMES should buy. The voucher was claimed by the vendor and just competed with vendor discounting and was not a level playing field and restricted SME choice. The combination of obfuscated, random and high eligibility that required pre application by the vendor and then a protracted process to claim the voucher just was not worth it to the vendor. Value added resellers who have the actual experience to help SMEs were excluded and if the vendor used VARs they could not claim either. It only supported online retail basically. No implementation help or support was covered.
Give the support directly to the SMEs preferably via a nudge supertax credit and include skills and training as well.
The only thing they got right was that it should included SaaS so was opex not capex.
People need to understand that strong SMEs are not in the interest of far-right.
Tories create a façade, an impression that they are on the side of SMEs, but that is only to get votes of the gullible.
It is the same playbook the Nazi party used to gain votes of workers, small and medium businesses only to have them shafted.
This brings to mind the home insulation fiasco- which had a similar trajectory. Public had to apply for a voucher in a complex and complicated scheme (e.g. You could only get the payment for some items as a "secondary" when you were having other ones done- but often those required the full amount of the grant). Then you had to get quotes from (supposedly a number of) approved contractors- but there weren't nearly enough contractors approved in time for the start. And many of those didn't even bother to quote, because it costed them money and anyway they already had more work on than they could cope with. So most of the potential applicants couldn't get on the scheme and the scheme collapsed. The only people who got the insulation were the ones who moved really quickly* in the first days ( or hours) after the launch.
*I was online within minutes to get my application accepted.. Because I'm a cynical sod- I knew how it was going to go. And I still struggled to get quotes. I got two, one of which was taking the piss. But that was OK. Because it made the one I wanted sound good. And I did get the much needed insulation done. But not many people did.
Ah no, the budget was designed to get big headlines in the press when the big announcement was made and impress the public. As usual, there was no proper follow up to make the thing actually work, and they quietly abandoned the thing when the news could be buried in a small story on page 23 when everybody was otherwise distracted.
I doubt that there was any intention of actually letting that much money be spent from the very beginning.
《Pictsies eat unicorns for lunch.》
And doubtless lions for dessert.
"Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willnae be fooled again!
"They can tak' oour lives but they cannae tak' oour troousers!
"Crivens! I kicked meself in ma ain heid!
Some the funniest lines Terry Pratchett's from Discworld were from the nac mac feegles.
I sometimes wonder whether the Tiifany Aching stories or the Ramtops stories will ever be filmed. I can imagine an opportunity to portray Granny Weatherwax would attract the most talented.
《As a Scot, I find that interesting...》
Well, well... I never realized the horned beastie on the coat of arms was Scots.
Scots politics might have it moments but absolutely nothing compared to the current mindless antics of Whitehall where even Jarry's king Ubu would be embarrassed.
I can understand why the mythical creature might want to throw off the chains and to hoof it from the coat of arms. Would look better on a azure background surrounded by a circle of a dozen golden stars. :)
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