Proud to Be British!
Posted Nov 2012: The Brits are a whiney, whinging, depressed people. As a Brit my epitaph will be "If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have become a subject of the Queen." We are told constantly that the country is drowning in debt (it is), being overun by immigrants (it isn't), will never win the soccer world cup (Ok, you got me there!) and that we have an incompetent government (the jury is still out on this but can anyone do better - it's like herding cats!).
I mention this because in many ways, living in Britain is a simple affair. We pretty much all share the same values and have an 'island mentality' to the rest if the world. |
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I recalled a good example of this recently. When I was an MBA student I went to listen to a junior foreign minister in John Major's government (William Waldegrave) who told the tale of his recent trip to Israel. He went to the office of the Israeli Foreign Minister, pulled out the brief that the UK Foreign Office had prepared and was about to launch into the diplomatic message. The FM put up his hand to stop him and said:
“Minister, there is no need to brief me on the aim of Britain’s foreign policy as this has not changed for hundreds of years. You are a small Island off the northern coast of the European continent with few natural resources other than
the ingenuity of your people. So you must trade. Trade is the lifeblood of Britain’s foreign policy and always will
be.”
How right that man was. As a state, the United Kingdom (I never forget the northern Irish!) has given several ‘good’ things to the world which might include: an imperfect form of representative democracy, a penchant for freedom of speech, damn good quality video and theatrical entertainment (although the Yanks are kicking butt in this space too, but arguably we gave the world the YANKS, so touché!), and a reasonably good example of a civil service.
Over the last decade, particularly through my contract work with checkSURE, a UK commercial credit checking web property (see video), I have come to realise that one of the best extensions of the latter is UK Companies House. This is hardly surprising when you think that limited liability companies are critical components to commercial trade anywhere. In case you don’t know, Companies House is a large Executive Agency under the remit of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). It aims to satisfy customer needs and regulatory obligations with economical, efficient and quality services. With records of millions of live and dissolved UK companies on their database, they aim to become one of the best public sector
organisations for customers to deal with.
Companies House was also one of the few public sector organizations that can say that it was at the forefront of digitising its information so that it can be accessed through the Web - although, it has some way to go in this respect from the point
of view of ease of use. In fact, over a 100 million company documents received in Companies House over the last 20 or so years are now available. Apparently, the total grows by more than 5 million documents a year, making it one of the world's largest publicly-accessible repositories of digital image-based information.
However, since the legal measures taken against those who do not adhere to the law and refuse to submit accurate information in a correct and timely manner is taken reasonably seriously in the UK (so terribly British!), Companies House has a superior track record than broadly similar bodies in other countries in getting the data right. In the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, many limited businesses choose to pay an enforced levy rather than reveal their financials to their German equivalents. This may be a sensible position from a commercial point of view since company data is sensitive at the best of times and meeting these legal reporting requirements might endanger their business plans.
Nonetheless, when business people choose to limit their liability behind a legal personality such as that of a limited company, they should expect to provide information on their activities, which is available to everyone. In this way trade can expand with a degree of transparency but people can still take the risks necessary to underpin a successful free enterprise system.
A comparative study of the worldwide regulatory regimes for incorporated businesses would undoubtedly show some deficiencies in the way that the UK Companies House operates (recent changes to the rules governing 'service addresses' for both companies and directors is a case in point). Nevertheless, this is an executive agency that the
United Kingdom should be very proud to promote as being amongst the best at what it does in an increasingly changing globalised economy. Proud to be British!
“Minister, there is no need to brief me on the aim of Britain’s foreign policy as this has not changed for hundreds of years. You are a small Island off the northern coast of the European continent with few natural resources other than
the ingenuity of your people. So you must trade. Trade is the lifeblood of Britain’s foreign policy and always will
be.”
How right that man was. As a state, the United Kingdom (I never forget the northern Irish!) has given several ‘good’ things to the world which might include: an imperfect form of representative democracy, a penchant for freedom of speech, damn good quality video and theatrical entertainment (although the Yanks are kicking butt in this space too, but arguably we gave the world the YANKS, so touché!), and a reasonably good example of a civil service.
Over the last decade, particularly through my contract work with checkSURE, a UK commercial credit checking web property (see video), I have come to realise that one of the best extensions of the latter is UK Companies House. This is hardly surprising when you think that limited liability companies are critical components to commercial trade anywhere. In case you don’t know, Companies House is a large Executive Agency under the remit of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). It aims to satisfy customer needs and regulatory obligations with economical, efficient and quality services. With records of millions of live and dissolved UK companies on their database, they aim to become one of the best public sector
organisations for customers to deal with.
Companies House was also one of the few public sector organizations that can say that it was at the forefront of digitising its information so that it can be accessed through the Web - although, it has some way to go in this respect from the point
of view of ease of use. In fact, over a 100 million company documents received in Companies House over the last 20 or so years are now available. Apparently, the total grows by more than 5 million documents a year, making it one of the world's largest publicly-accessible repositories of digital image-based information.
However, since the legal measures taken against those who do not adhere to the law and refuse to submit accurate information in a correct and timely manner is taken reasonably seriously in the UK (so terribly British!), Companies House has a superior track record than broadly similar bodies in other countries in getting the data right. In the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, many limited businesses choose to pay an enforced levy rather than reveal their financials to their German equivalents. This may be a sensible position from a commercial point of view since company data is sensitive at the best of times and meeting these legal reporting requirements might endanger their business plans.
Nonetheless, when business people choose to limit their liability behind a legal personality such as that of a limited company, they should expect to provide information on their activities, which is available to everyone. In this way trade can expand with a degree of transparency but people can still take the risks necessary to underpin a successful free enterprise system.
A comparative study of the worldwide regulatory regimes for incorporated businesses would undoubtedly show some deficiencies in the way that the UK Companies House operates (recent changes to the rules governing 'service addresses' for both companies and directors is a case in point). Nevertheless, this is an executive agency that the
United Kingdom should be very proud to promote as being amongst the best at what it does in an increasingly changing globalised economy. Proud to be British!
