I see from a recent survey that 92 per cent of business owners, if they had their time again, would not start a business.

You can put me fairly and squarely in that 92 per cent. I did not dream, when I dreamt of my future, of becoming either a social worker or a bureaucrat - and yet I have become both.

Once upon a time, English law relating to English business was sensible. It was mainly criminal rather than civil based and said that as an employer the might of the Law would come after me if I undertook any sort of fraudulent activity i.e., the financial side of business, or if I endangered any of my staff's lives i.e. the human side of the business. These laws became more and more stringent as the 20th century advanced and trade unions began to have real clout. You could always argue about what is a fair wage but by the last quarter of the 20th century, most people were not being conned, robbed, exploited or threatened.

Then along came our Europrat friends with their unique view of economic forces and they said "we need more jobs. We don't have to create wealth to create the jobs. We'll just create the jobs". The quickest way is to force employers to comply with more rules which will mean their hiring more administrators to force employers to give employees more rights so that more people will be required to do the same work.

So lo and behold, we have maternity rules and paternity rules and working time directives and minimum wage and revised health and safety. In fact, somebody reckoned recently that businesses have been hit with over 1,000 new regulations since Labour came to power "new Labour, new rules". I'm told it's a good thing if a member of staff takes three months paternity leave, because that gives an employment "window" to someone else for three months. Never mind that they may not have the skills to do the job (senior people in my industry need a minimum of five years' experience) and I'll put them back on the dole three months later.

Never mind, that the customer is key, and he has a panic and we're trying to pull out all the stops - oh dear, you've worked over 48 hours this week. Never mind we give our staff a light, airy modern office environment - we still have to pay £1,200 to get a certificate which proves our wiring is safe.

So instead of concentrating on keeping my customers and finding new customers and protecting my market share, I have to divert precious revenue to policing idiot rules by proving I've policed the idiot rules by providing a kibbutz in which my staff can have meaningful "life" experiences.

Start a business? Never again!

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.