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29.1.09

Amid the gloom - look at the positive

Up here in Yorkshire thebusinessdesk - the leading online business news portal - has launched a campaign in favour of positive stories regarding business.
I like this a lot because even if your business is doing well it is easy to become obsessed by the Radio 4 Today Programmes' daily morning relish in all the economic awfulness and become full of self-doubt about your own business.
At GREEN we are doing very well at the moment thank you very much - eight new business propositions in the past two weeks at least, solid team of colleagues determined to do their best, and a clear vision for the business.
However, in the last two days two companies in our market have gone belly-up - Designers Republic (excellent Sheffield design agency) and TAS Communications (award winning PR agency in Beverley - 15 jobs lost. Very sad).
So big pat on the back to David Parkin - who had the balls to launch thebusinessdesk in the first place and leave the comfort of his position as business editor at the Yorkshire Post - for calling for positive business stories.
David says: "While not wishing to underestimate the impact of the current downturn and the effect it is having on company finances and jobs, our users are really keen for us to highlight some good business news to shine some light on what has become a relatively gloomy outlook for business.
"Our users have made the point to us that the national media are increasingly focused on the latest corporate victims of the downturn and rarely balance that with anything positive.
"We understand that despite the gloom there are some great businesses out there that deserve to have their stories highlighted. Our audience is made up of people in high level roles across the region and they understand that if we all just accept that the outlook is bad and getting worse then no business will look at opportunities to grow."
Companies we are currently working for - I can't disclose them here for obvious reasons - are doing incredibly well. They are expanding, spending money on our services, recruiting staff and, crucially, seeing opportunities in adversity.
Make no mistake the next six months are going to be shitty but I think a lot of the companies that go under have probably been basket cases for years. Indeed, I could never understand all the media fury about the administration of Woolworths - it should have gone under years ago. And, I suspect, a lot of crap will be washed out by the current recession and the good companies will emerge.
What do you think?

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