SMALL and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) are used to Cinderella status and the recent weeks of lockdown have been no different. Big businesses have been grabbing headlines—we have listened to many of them asking for bespoke bailouts. Most of the time, those of us who work at the other end of the economy don’t mind being forgotten; we share many of the same concerns with our bigger brothers and we have neither the time nor money to hang around in the right bars in Whitehall nor employ expensive public-affairs consultants.
There is, however, a danger in times to come, when money is scarce, that we lose sight of where investment usually gets the best return. SMEs are defined as organisations with fewer than 250 people. Most of them employ many fewer than that, yet they provide about 70% of all jobs in the private sector. They are almost certainly responsible for an even higher percentage of new jobs created and their role is considered especially significant in rural and underperforming regions, where they are often the bedrock of a local economy.
Smaller companies tend to adapt more quickly to change and they can be the most likely source of innovation, although big business is better at trumpeting its successes.
Esta historia es de la edición June 10, 2020 de Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
