December 2024 Round Up
What a year and what a time it has been, a real rollercoaster, except it hasn’t, the hard work pays off, but it’s a slow steady curve. Whenever friends or family ask how business is, it’s a straight line, we’re running to stand still, cautious optimism or misplaced hopefulness. At the end of the it is all down to us, there’s no one coming to help.
I cannot remember a time when our economics and politics had such an effect on our well-being. There’s less support out there than ever before and computerisation rather than making things easier for the human race has distinctly made life more complicated. It might be just whinging and one has to try very hard to remember what it was like before, but whether it’s submitting a VAT return or filling some Amazon policy, it’s not easier.
I have learned that a real benchmark of our business is the state of the economy, if things downward turn our clients come visiting, then need marketing they have to build up their website, get sales in and be seen, Google Ads, Instagram, eNewsletters all tools of our trade. When things are rolling well in the country, everyone can take their foot off the pedal a little and we go quiet. Why general marketing leads when the work can’t be taken on?
There is no question like him or loath him the last time we had a quiet spell was the summer of 2022, Boris Johnson had just won a landslide. Now that Keir Stammer has taken up the reins, business is taking off, which can only be worrying as he too won a landslide victory.
I think everyone accepts changes to the tax regime have to take place, but we or they are really struggling to find a way to make changes that encourage people and businesses rather than upset them. The truth is in all these shenanigans there is only one truth every change can be seen as a grab for power. Every change that happens at the moment is about a give and take on power, almost more than money. And sadly, we see this more and more. It keeps us alive.
What’s at Play
Take the Privacy Online argument, there is now a full industry set up to deal with us, lawyers, techies, and websites: There are now hundreds of ways to block cookies, give consent, hide Analytics, but at the same time nothing has changed. Most people and we have the stats to prove it now, just click Accept. Even if a person denies tracking of their data there are so many ways around it ti beggars belief. The biggest issue of all probably is that now your data is surreptitiously available to many more people.
It’s all legal, and we the people are none the wiser. Have you tried to have your data removed from a website? You virtually have to give your deepest secrets about yourself to verify your request, all data is then kept somewhere. Tragically, we’ve moved from a few bad players spoiling the fun to literally everyone having a go.
Originally, GDPR had different rules for consumers and businesses, but who can tell which website is what? In most B2B cases it just looks odd if there isn’t a Cookie Bar explaining your rights, yet this is totally unnecessary in a legal sense.
Packaging Rules are another legal minefield, to sell something you need to be responsible for the packaging throughout the life cycle of the product you are selling. it’s a perfectly legitimate cause, but the implementation is appalling. In short, everyone will end up having to sign up for expensive third-party services that ‘monitor’ your sales and ensure you’re enabling the recycling of your packaging. It kinda does not make sense yet.
We’ve dealt with clients that have no packaging whatsoever on their products, yet the rules apply to them as much as anyone else. The fundamental issue at stake is that the rules are being brought in before the technology is available to make them work.
Another example is overseas trade, ostensibly a good thing and to be encouraged, but Customs & Excise can track parcels, containers, lorries and people, they cannot track if you decide to buy a service from abroad. For example Website Hosting.
It makes no difference to a business whether they buy a service here or overseas, except if you buy within your own country VAT is involved, if you buy overseas – no tax is applied. But it makes no difference as a Sales Tax is an in-out tax for a business and thus it is all swings and roundabouts.
However, the combat mechanism to prevent is sort of economic activity is exchange rates. You cannot pay for an overseas service in anything but their currency, so you have to make an exchange rate – that is all well and good, but what about the reverse? You cannot sell anything either.
If you sell something you have to either use an exchange rate or keep the currency in which you sold it.
And the killer part of this equation is that you cannot use your earned foreign currencies to buy foreign goods. For some things, you might get away with it for a bit. But the higher up the business grows the less you can offset one against another. Try it. It is literally not possible, the Internation banking anti-fraud regulations prevent this action. Instead, you are required to exchange the money into your local currency before exchanging it back again to make your next purchase.
Tech vs Convenience
This neatly sums up 2024, it has been a genuine year of home truths, technology is still in its infancy and while so many things may appear to be easier than ever before, at the same time they are absolutely not. As the rules to protect children or detect illnesses or secure financial transactions come into play, ever more so is humankind held accountable to technology.
Cars take weeks or months to buy, houses take years to build, our food supply chain might last 48 hours if there was a prolonged power cut, our gas supplies are held to ransom, a storm in Florida will upset our travel plans, I cannot think in what area of life things have become more secure or simpler as we depend more and more on digital.
AI has taken off in 2024, there are literally millions of people saying how amazing or wonderful it is. But is it? I know people who have created their logos, written their blogs, and organised their Newsletters using AI, and that’s just in my industry, but it hasn’t garnered extra sales, it hasn’t made life easier and if fact most of the time it just gets in the way.
The real issue with AI at the end of the day is that Humans are the experts not computers, at least not yet anyway. AI is a step on a long journey and it is no where near the end yet. We’ll continue to see revolutionary applications of AI. but for most mere mortal, referring to the above notes, it’s another power grab on your information, your knowledge and your expertise, if can’t be anything else by definition.
At that sums up 2024, we are going to struggle to express our originality in the years to come and 2024 marked the moment we we were enlightened to what may well be ahead.