on young apprentices. Over the next 10 weeks the National Apprenticeship Service

will provide up to 5,000 Apprenticeship Grants for Employers of 16 and 17 year olds

(AGE 16 and 17). The grant of £2,500 is to enable employers to offer 5,000 new

Apprenticeship places and take on an unemployed 16 or 17 year old apprentice

immediately. The £2,500 grant is in addition to the costs of training which are

already met by the National Apprenticeship Service.   

As I started my career in 1994 on a Youth Trainee Scheme which was the old name for an Apprenticeship I really do see the value of giving a young person the chance of building your business and their career.

It is not very often I champion the Government but I think these grants are a great idea and as an employer you would be a fool not to take advantage of a burst of young energy into your business.

There are currently lots of young people looking for Apprenticeship opportunities so to find out more call 08000 150 600.

Two thirds of UK high street retailers give non publicised discounts to customers who are brave enough to haggle, according to a report published last week by moneysupermarket.com.

In the study of UK retailers and consumers, 61 % of shop owners and managers report that the recession has made them more likely to offer ‘non sale’ discounts to close a deal.  Yet almost a third of retailers claim that customers rarely haggle with them and only 15 % report that they have a strict ‘no discounts’ policy.

Indeed a third of UK shoppers state that they have never tried to negotiate a price down on something they were buying, with the majority stating that embarrassment holds them back from trying to get a better deal.  Only 10% say that they haggle on a regular basis.

Yet of those who have tried haggling, they report being successful on two out of three occasions and, on average, negotiated a 13.5% discount.  Just 7 % of hagglers received a straight no from the retailer and 73 % of people who asked for free items to be thrown in with a purchase were successful.

The products that consumers feel most comfortable negotiating on are electronic items such as TVs, DVD recorders and stereos.  In contrast, just 8% of people negotiate when buying insurance or purchasing a car and only one in 20 haggle on their mobile phone contracts – ultra-competitive industries well-known for offering discounts or price matching.

To see this in practice, moneysupermarket.com sent eighteen volunteers out on to the shopping streets of London to try haggling for themselves. They visited over 120 stores including House of Fraser, M&S, H&M, TopShop, PC World, Boots, independent retailers and market stalls. 

Twelve out of eighteen volunteers managed to haggle successfully in a high street store and were granted discounts of between 5-20%. Consumer electronics stores and independent retailers were found to be the most open to haggling and, as expected, market stalls proved to be great negotiation territory. The way that you dress also appeared to have a bearing on the discount possible with 80% of the experiment’s successful hagglers being smartly dressed.

High street chains, department stores and supermarkets proved less haggle-friendly with many quoting central pricing policies.  However, there are exceptions to the rule with House of Fraser offering a non-publicised 20 % discount on the purchase of two Jaeger men’s shirts.   Tesco also offered a five per cent ‘at till’ discount on a case of champagne.  Haggling also threw up a large number of poorly publicised in-store discounts that would otherwise have been missed.

Populus research among UK retailers backs up these findings with 81% of independent stores saying they are open to negotiation on price.  Perhaps surprisingly, 73% of the UK department stores polled and 71% of high street chains say they are happy to give discounts at their discretion.  Only 31 % of supermarkets are willing to give a non publicised discount.

The recession has taught small company owners many vital business lessons, such as the need to diversify, the importance of an accurate budget and that the quality of a deal is more important than the volume.

When the economy was performing well people were worried about the number of deals that they got through the door, how quick they got them in, delivered them and got them back out. However, I've seen a definite shift in business towards concentrating on good quality business deals.

I've never before heard the word ‘margin' mentioned so often and in such an educated way in the last six months than I have in the last five years. The downturn has taught businesses to focus on the right deals. I said one of my favourite sayings to a business the other day: some of the best deals that you do are the ones that you don't do at all.

The downturn has taught businesses to focus on the right deals - some of the best deals that you do are the ones that you don’t do at all

This business had seen their margin squeezed down to a stage where all a particular contract meant for them was activity. They were working to a breakeven point, there was no profitability in the deal.

Firms must accurately calculate the cost of a product. The naive person works out how much it costs to put together; the business person works out all the labour costs and the margin that needs to go into it to turn a profit.

One of the biggest lessons the recession has taught companies is the need to diversify their business. A lot of firms were reliant on a few big contracts to carry them through, but this meant that if one contract ended it seriously affected a company's turnover and cash flow.

Since June last year we've helped 101 businesses back from the point of administration - if we hadn't have helped them they would have gone bust. The most common denominator was that the firms did not have a budget, or if they did it was not accurate with what was coming into the company in the current times.

A budget is actually very simple to do. It's just a case of being very aware of your figures, working back from that and understanding what the business actually needs to achieve on a daily basis. This is an absolute must in the current economic climate and more SMEs are aware of this than they have ever been.

I actually think that small businesses are the best place to be right now in the current market place. I am a champion of small and medium-sized companies; they are the backbone of this country and the lifeblood of the business community.

Small firms can make decisions quickly to adapt to changing market conditions and ensure that their business is stabilised. Decisions like this can take several weeks to be approved and implemented in larger organisations, and this can make the difference between a firm surviving or going under.

Although I'm not convinced by those talking about ‘green shoots' of recovery - we will know when we are beginning to emerge from the recession when the base rate rises and loan-to-value with mortgage lenders starts to go up - I do not expect the economic situation to get any worse.

If small business owners have weathered the economic storm so far then - as long as they don't forget the lessons that the recession has taught them when the deals begin to come in - they should survive thanks to the measures that they have implemented.

and yes I have checked and my staff are all bright eyed and bushy tailed for work!

The big stores have got their seasonal stock out with 80 days still to go.. At least there's no excuse not to get loved ones just what they wished for. But first of all I'll settle for my Halloween costume and then fireworks before I get too carried away. 

As the minutes tick away your anger rises but all you can do is wait your turn like
everybody else has to.

This is how I would imagine those people felt stuck at the check-in desk at
Manchester Airport’s Terminal One. As they tried to soothe themselves with the
thought they would soon be on a Tenerife beach they probably couldn’t believe
their eyes when the airline’s boss let fly.

Furious Philip Meeson, chief executive of Jet2.com, laid into his workers when he
saw the queue during a visit to the airport.

He has been criticised for his actions which landed him with a warning from police.
But his approach was refreshing and would have restored the faith of those
passengers who in turn gave him a round of cheers. The old saying goes the customer is always right and the value of good customer
service was the very reason for Mr Meeson’s response.

Massive numbers are dropping out of our schools, colleges and universities. Fine if
they've got something to do but more and more of them are setting themselves the
same unattainable goal.

In the same way that this is unrealistic, air brushing sees young girls striving
against images of women who have been digitally touched up within a millimetre of
their lives.

No one is excluded from this. Look at Cheryl Cole - as much as she is a beautiful
woman, she is underweight. Yet the media would still air brush her..
I couldn't fake my services in business so in the same way it should be a legal
requirement to state when air brushing has been used.