The media love a feel good story, especially at the moment with everything the way it is. The 4NI website runs a small story about Arlene and the Coleraine Borough Council and as ever she uses it as a giant machine of economic spin.
The Minister reinforced the commitment from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment and Invest NI to companies in Coleraine and across Northern Ireland, stressing that manufacturing continues to account for the majority of the work undertaken by Invest NI.
Doesn't matter what you make, if there's no demand then there's no sales, no sales then there's no need to manufacturer more. It should then be an exercise in cost reduction, looking at the two large number first: rent and manpower.
Invest NI's "initiatives" always make me either laugh or cry. So bothered about helping big business as it generates feel good press releases but totally ignoring the fact that the "Go For It" programme is just a basic information service. No grants, no nothing to help people who want to get started up and going. Hey I'm ranting again....
Barcampbelfast was held on the weekend and the overwhelming feedback is that there are a lot of emerging small scale startups just on the horizon. People want to work and provide for their families, please Invest NI just bring back the SABP properly (with grant money) and give folk a fighting chance. There are literally hundreds of ideas kicking around at the moment, it just needs someone to get up there and do them.
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InvestNI is a joke, just a funnel for state money to be thrown at multinational businesses with very little help given to local small firms. Just look at Seagate with its InvestNI-purchased capital goods.
ReplyDeleteI think you're being overly kind. The 'Go for It' scheme is worse than a dead duck. Having attended a few sessions of go for it, I saw people whose ideas were obviously not vetted for either validity or frankly sanity.
ReplyDeleteThis scheme actually sucks money out of the investment pool and give nothing back
I did the start a business programme a few years ago and it was okay. It stops at, "you need to do a business plan and go to a bank". There's nothing about bootstrapping a business from scratch.
ReplyDeleteThe Go For It and SABP are about numbers, bums on seats and very little else. The grant at the time was basically for turning up, not for starting a business.