Business & Economy

by Paul Riddell. Platform PR, the award-winning Highland-based public relations company run by Jane Cumming, has invested in a new communications agency in Shetland as part of a formal partnership. Platform Shetland has been established by Paul Riddell, a former editor of The Shetland Times and former senior assistant editor of The Scotsman.

PopUp Britain, the retail arm of national enterprise campaign StartUp Britain, is calling for a change in the law to fast-track the re-opening of empty shops. It approached administrators to acquire some of the empty shops for small firms. But it found that there is a legal dis-incentive to open up shops to pop-up initiatives like this.

Scot-buzz editor Bill Jamieson thinks that after the experience of the past four years it never does to be cheerful about business prospects. But there are growing grounds to believe that consumer confidence is improving, mortgage lending is on the rise – and the UK economy may – at last – be returning to growth.

The Scottish government was at it again yesterday, announcing another £3 billion capital spending on schools, hospitals, roads and other infrastructure “set to support 40,000 jobs across Scotland this year”. Impressive, isn’t it? But just where is all this shovel-ready action on the ground?

The poor are always with us, says Kenneth Maitland, and it's in somebody's interest to keep it that way. Across the UK there must be hundreds of thousands of relatively well-remunerated careers dependent on others being poor - council social workers, sociology professors, welfare rights officers, be-suited directors of charities, and academics with their endless studies into ‘deprivation’.

Finally got the taxman off your back? Looking forward to a little light relief? Think again, says the TaxPayers' Alliance as it finds 299 new tax rises in five years. Air passenger duty, Aggregates levy, Alcohol duty, Climate change levy, Capital Gains Tax - if it hasn't gone up already, it's in the pipeline...

Scot-Buzz Editor Bill Jamieson on the season of tax hell… Tax deadline day, January 31 falls this Thursday. It casts the darkest shadow before it, and the deepest gloom long after. Each year in my household the dark purgatory of the tax return gets steadily worse. I wish I could say it gets easier in “retirement”. Instead, it’s worse than ever.

A high speed rail link between Scotland and the rest of the UK: it sounds a business and political dream ticket. But the plans unveiled yesterday extending the HS2 north from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds may prove a liability for Scotland and marginalise Scottish business and commerce...

Seldom in recent history has the blame game been played with greater ferocity. Instant history books and economic appraisals typically blame lack of growth, the banks, austerity. But might responsibility lie more uncomfortably nearer to home?

Annabel Palmer asks Jeff Lynn whether new lending schemes can really help entrepreneurs. Crowd funding has taken off since the banks proved unwilling to lend to small business, but Is it a feasible concept for entrepreneurs and investors?